phelps

the problem it's not the girls competing...it's the boys and girls of that age competing with adult people and being part of a "dark world" as the one behind this kind of activity excercised in a professional way... I used that word because it hits immediately the attention and reminds to the worst things, but I just wanted to say that's insane to expose children of that age to the danger of overtraining, public overexposure, doubtful personal relationships (like those developing between certain coaches and too young pupils) and the effect that all this could have on them (mentally and not only mentally...think about a 12-year boy leaving the school and his friends for 2 or 3 years to pursuit "the Olympic dream" -often the dream of his parents rather than his- and which consequence it could have on him)... if you prefer, we can even use other words (even 3-line long paraphrasis) to describe the situation... but still the main problem remains that I'm totally against this "age deregulation" in certain sports...to me, 11/12 year old boys and girls should just go to school and play with friends, not running a professional acitvity (but, as I wrote, maybe I'm too heavily influence by the Italian culture, which tends to delay every aspect of people's life if compared with many other areas in the World)...

yes, next Saturday (some preliminaries will be next Friday, though) it will be a Shooting Super-Saturday with all 4 Olympic weapons' finals in a single day...

hey, there's a , in between the 2 arguments... I repeat, they're too inconsistent and they don't have enough pitching depth to be dangerous in an entire round robin tournament (like the OQT)... then, with their best pitchers on the mound, on a given day they can be a nightmare for everybody (and they can even win a 5th place match playoff)... today they were lucky, too...in the 9th inning they've been 2 centimeters away from being overtaken by GER...I still don't know how their shortstop stopped that ball hit by the German player (don't remember who he was) with bases loaded a no outs... to me, there's no chance they make the top 2 in the OQT...

Czech Republic saved a very complicated situation in the 9th inning (bases loaded and no out) and won 4-3 the 5th place match against Germany... with this success, they also earn the last spot available for the Olympic Qualification Tournament (in a few days in Italy)...

it's an exagerated expression to say that these boys are forced to live their sport experience in a way that only the adults around them benefit of their performance... I'm pretty sure that for those kids being that good often means to overtrain, even when they don't want...and I'm also sure that they don't realize (at least at 100%) all the business sh*t that's behind them... moreover, there's always the chance that they are forced to pursuit other people's dreams, sacrifying too much of their youth and education (that's why I called it "a sort of sport pedophilia", without -I hope- going further to real pedophilia dramas like it happened in sports like gymnastics, but not only gymnastics -another reason to put some strong limit to some strange relationships between the boys/girls and adults outside the family -but even inside it)... preventing rather than healing (when sometimes a true healing process is impossible)...we have already too many examples of things gone wrong, to afford not to think about the worst case scenarios...

women's Junior Individual 25m Pistol Gold: Camille Jedrzejewski Silver: Annabelle Christiane Pioch Bronze: Margherita Brigida Veccaro men's Junior Team 50m 3-Position Rifle Gold: Russia Silver: Hungary Bronze: Norway

women's Junior Individual 50m Prone Rifle Gold: Valentina Caluori Silver: Sofia Ceccarello Bronze: Melissa Ruschel men's Junior Individual 50m Prone Rifle Gold: Grigorii Shamakov Silver: Lucas Bernard Denis Kryzs Bronze: Soma Richard Hammerl women's Junior Team 50m Prone Rifle Gold: Switzerland Silver: Italy Bronze: Austria men's Junior Team 50m Prone Rifle Gold: Russia Silver: France Bronze: Austria women's Junior Team 25m Pistol Gold: France Silver: Italy Bronze: Russia

men's Junior Individual Skeet Gold: Aleksandr Ivanov Silver: Sotiris Andreu Bronze: Petros Englezoudis

best outcome for Italy since a very, very long time... Dell'Aquila was back on the podium (and he also beat world's no.3 Tortosa Cabrera once again), losing to his bete noir Jang Jun as always, but this time not by such a big margin ("only" 12-6...and accumulating only 1 "yellow card" through the whole match)... and all the points scored in Japan take him closer to the Olympic Qualification through the WGP Ranking... and Simone Alessio, finally healthy and fit, proved he's for real also in the -80kg class...the world title earlier in the season (in the -74kg class) wasn't a one-hit wonder...today he reached the quarterfinals (beating, among others, his teammate Roberto Botta), where he lost to Harchegani by a narrow margin (13-15), almost creating a big upset... he doesn't have any chance to qualify through the WGP Ranking, but now I'm a lot more optimist about him getting the Olympic Quota next year in the European Qualification tournament (which will be held in Milan...and this also could help)... and once he's flying to Japan next Summer, I wouldn't like to fight against him, especially in the early rounds (and even if my name is Beigi Harchergani or any other medal candidate)...

Chiba Grand Prix Final Medal Table KOR, 2 / 0 / 2 CHN, 1 / 1 / 1 IRI, 1 / 1 / 1 AZE, 1 / 0 / 1 THA, 1 / 0 / 1 FRA, 1 / 0 / 0 TUR, 1 / 0 / 0 RUS, 0 / 2 / 2 GBR, 0 / 2 / 0 CRO, 0 / 1 / 1 MAR, 0 / 1 / 0 UZB, 0 / 0 / 2 BRA, 0 / 0 / 1 ITA, 0 / 0 / 1 MEX, 0 / 0 / 1 ESP, 0 / 0 / 1 SRB, 0 / 0 / 1

Chiba Grand Prix Day #3, Medallists Recap women's -49kg Gold: Panipak Wongpattanakit Silver: Wu Jingyu Bronze: Tijana Bogdanovic & Sim Jae Young men's -80kg Gold: Milad Beigi Harchegani Silver: Maksim Khramtcov Bronze: Toni Kanaet & Anton Kotkov

I fear Lopez couldn't make the weight properly twice in a month or so... by the way, 7 out of 12 is still a very good percentage...

don't worry...this is just a dream of some people using news like this for electoral purposes... there's no way this is a realistic bid...

Men's Greco-Roman Wrestling, Day #2 Semifinals -67kg Mohamed Ibrahim Elsayed vs Ismael Borrero Molina Artem Surkov vs Fredrik Holmquist Bjerrehuus -87kg Zhan Beleniuk vs Denis Maksymilian Kudla Viktor Lorincz vs Rustam Assakalov -97kg Musa Evloev vs Mihail Kajaia Giorgi Melia vs Artur Aleksanyan p.s. all of these wrestlers also got an Olympic Quota Place for their respective NOC...

updated after repechage rounds...

he did what he usually does best...accepting generous gifts...

yes...

and finally it's over...after trying to get in troubles once again also in the bottom of the 9th...Italy win 7-6 and are in the Final... tomorrow it will be a new chapter of the most classical European baseball saga: Italy vs The Kingdom Of The Netherlands... first pitch @ 7 p.m. CET (live on Youtube, Playo.tv page)...

1 last out...and luckily also this game is over...c'mon, guys!

well, fortunately they were very quick... women's Final Gold: Misugu Okamoto Silver: Sakura Yosozumi Bronze: Sky Brown 4th, Poppy Starr Olsen 5th, Lizzie Armanto 6th, Dora Varella 7th, Isadora Pacheco 8th, Kisa Nakamura

awful, awful tv/streaming production...they didn't even show the score of the last Okamoto's run nor a recap of the final results... now I'm curious to see how long it takes for worldskate to publish those final results on their website... a new Olympic sport with such a media/spectator unfriendly coverage...shame on them!

Italy need more good pitchers for that tournament... with this roster we have no chance to qualify... and it won't be Alex Liddi nor Robel Garcia to change our perspective (even if they would help a lot)... pitching...pitching...pitching...otherwise we're going to be the Yankees of this world...

and Mineo does it again... after yesterday's walkoff HR, tonight he hits another 2-run shot to turn the score around in the 8th... 7-6 Italy, now...and also a runner in 1st and always only 1 out...

Colabello hits it out of the park... unfortunately it's only a solo HR... however, now it's 6-5 Israel...we're at the top of the 8th (1 out)...

and after the epic fail by the Italian duo, among the boys we have a final with 4 Brazilians, 3 Americans and the lone star from the rest of the World, Keegan Palmer from Australia... so, it's quite obvious that I'm going to cheer for him tomorrow...