phelps

we posted the same concept almost at the same time...

if he learned his ice skating from video stuff, he surely must have watched hours of Chad Hedrick's mid-/long distance races... so, here comes the showman within himself...

aaaarrrggghhhh!!!! the mixed indoor discus throw! hope nobody among the IOC members are watching this!

personally, I "only" got a flu... but today was also a sad day because my neighbour died all of a sudden because of a supposed heart attack... we were not close friends (he was way older than me, actually had the same age of my dad more or less), but still he was someone I used to see around and speak with almost every day...therefore I'm quite down now... no tv coverage at all...we only have the finals sessions live in streaming on our public tv (rai) website (with awful picture quality, way worse than UWW's pictures)... and absolutely no mention of this event on any other media (except for the usual couple of sports websites that at least always publish the results of the global championships and a few articles about Chamizo and the other italians, when they do something reasonably decent)...

no, you're not the only one... until today, I've been watching all finals session (even if only delayed, therefore I'm not commenting that much nor posting medallists regularly) and a few preliminaries as well... then, today was a really bad day for me for personal reasons, so unfortunately I couldn't watch anything... I must say that the empty hall is really depressing, but still we've seen quite a few decent and entertaining bouts, despite most big names are not competing... p.s. just noticing the difference between a wrestling Nation like KAZ and ITA... look at the draw in the men's freestyle -74kg...Chamizo vs Demirtas and then the winner against Gadzhiyev... or the -57kg always in freestyle: Davidovi vs Dukov and then the Romanian against Atli... in certain Countries (KAZ is only one of them) it would have never happened...

it's not a IJF proposal for themselves only...it's a general idea that could work for all those sports with Olympic Qualification based on multi-year ranking... however, I hope that there will be no need for that and everything (I mean, everything about the virus and public health, of course) gets fixed in time...

obviously that part would work only with those disciplines that have a qualification system based on ranking... the other sports must find their way to fix the question or just add a few free quota... however, it's all based on speculations of some Italian media...there's nothing official about that (even if I also think that IOC and most IFs already have a plan B ready or at least they are developing it)...

Eckhoff 59th, 2.08.0 behind Roeiseland...saving her Pursuit start for just 3.5 secs ( Megan Banks is the unlucky 61st)... I don't think so... it's not only about the actual world champs, as she already has 3 scores of "0" (or DNS...it's the same) in the World Cup... she needs to climb the ranking and score some WC points if she doesn't want Wierer to take a big lead before the next weeks' races... I expect her to start on Sunday and go "all in"... p.s. weather conditions are expected to change once again from Sunday...the forecast is for a significant raise of the temperature, which will change a lot of things in the snow and in the ski preparation...

however, some Italian media reported that at least for what concerns the individual sports, China will receive some special wild cards (in excess also of the total number of athletes set to take part in the Olympic Games, not to make any damage to the usual "free quota" Nations) if they won't be able to compete in some OQTs because of this fuck*n' virus... IJF (Judo) is one of the International Federations pushing for this solution (just hold the tournaments without CHN and then just add the Chinese that right now are in line to qualify to the final list of qualified athletes, even if they drop out of it because of the current ban on their participation)...

Karate1 Premier League, Stage #2 (Dubai, UAE) Day #1 action recap... women's Individual Kata Gold Medal match: Sandra Sanchez Jaime vs Sakura Kokumai Bronze Medal match #1: Chien Hui-Hsuan vs Dilara Eltemur Bronze Medal match #2: Mahsa Afsaneh vs Grace Lau Mo Sheung men's Team Kata Gold Medal match: Spain vs Kuwait Bronze Medal match #1: Egypt vs Iraq Bronze Medal match #2: Russia vs United Arab Emirates women's Individual Kumite, -50kg Gold Medal match: Serap Ozcelik Arapoglu vs Nadia Gomez Morales Bronze Medal match #1: Aicha Sayah vs Sara Bahmanyar Bronze Medal match #2: Bettina Plank vs Li Ranran women's Individual Kumite, -55kg Gold Medal match: Anzhelika Terliuga vs Yassmin Attia Bronze Medal match #1: Jana Messerschmidt vs Wen Tzu-Yun Bronze Medal match #2: Tuba Yakan vs Dorota Banaszczyk men's Individual Kumite, -60kg Gold Medal match: Darkhan Assadilov vs Angelo Crescenzo Bronze Medal match #1: Orges Arifi vs Evgeny Plakhutin Bronze Medal match #2: Christos-Stefanos Xenos vs Nenad Dulovic men's Individual Kumite, -67kg Gold Medal match: Steven Dacosta vs Vinicius Figueira Bronze Medal match #1: Supa Ngamphuengphit vs Marvin Garin Bronze Medal match #2: Burak Uygur vs Rafiz Hasanov men's Individual Kumite, -75kg Gold Medal match: Luigi Busà vs Rafael Aghayev Bronze Medal match #1: Bahman Askari vs Erman Eltemur Bronze Medal match #2: Yermek Ainazarov vs Abdalla Abdelaziz

most likely RSA are the African Champions, even if I just can't find any result of last year's African Champs...

Brignone got gastroenteritis, Bassino back spasms... our women's team looks quite in trouble, even if both are expected to race in Maribor anyway (but who knows in what kind of shape?)...

gonna watch a lot more Central League games of the Japanese NPB (they are not going to use DH...never...we can be sure of that)...

it's in Russia...you know...politics... and however, we all know that the Sochi track technically always produce farcical races because of the temperatures and the awful ice conditions...we can't expect it to have changed from the recent past...

looking at this qualification races (and at all the training runs of the past 2 days), it seems that this year Germany won't have a very good time...at least in both singles' events (and possibly in the team Relay)... the doubles races, instead, are only Eggert/Benecken to lose...they look to slide on another planet... for Italy, D-Fisch and Rieder/Kainzwaldner way better than expected...hope they can steal a couple of medals...

Sprint Race Qualifications Sliders advancing to the Finals women's Singles 1 Demchenko, Viktoriia 31.325 2 Katnikova, Ekaterina 31.337 3 Ivanova, Tatyana 31.398 4 Taubitz Julia 31.455 5 Berreiter, Anna 31.473 6 Aparjode, Kendija 31.499 7 Zirne, Ulla 31.525 8 Mikhaylenko, Olesya 31.555 9 Farquharson, Ashley 31.558 10 Britcher, Summer 31.594 11 Cauce, Eliza 31.613 12 Rosenthal, Cheyenne 31.635 13 Egle, Madeleine 31.639 14 Maag, Natalie 31.648 15 Hofer, Verena 31.708 men's Singles 1 Aparjods, Kristers 35.074 2 Pavlichenko, Semen 35.164 3 Gleirscher, David 35.195 4 Gorbatcevich, Aleksandr 35.234 5 Mueller, Jonas 35.240 6 Aravin, Maksim 35.248 7 Kindl, Wolfgang 35.272 8 Fischnaller, Dominik 35.289 9 Repilov, Roman 35.404 10 Ninis, Jozef 35.423 11 Fischnaller, Kevin 35.432 12 Loch, Felix 35.455 12 Bley, Sebastian 35.455 14 Rozitis, Riks Kristens 35.472 15 Egger, Reinhard 35.515 Doubles 1 Eggert, Toni/Benecken, Sascha 31.280 2 Rieder, Emanuel/Kainzwaldner, Simon 31.446 3 Yuzhakov, Vladislav/Prokhorov, Iurii 31.452 4 Sics, Andris/Sics, Juris 31.453 5 Mueller, Yannick/Frauscher, Armin 31.487 6 Mazdzer, Chris/Terdiman, Jayson 31.552 7 Gudramovics, Oskars/Kalnins, Peteris 31.559 8 Denisev, Aleksandr/Antonov, Vladislav 31.564 9 Nagler, Ivan/Malleier, Fabian 31.573 10 Wendl, Tobias/Arlt, Tobias 31.583 11 Putins, Kristens/Marcinkevics, Imants 31.605 12 Geueke, Robin Johannes/Gamm, David 31.661 13 Kashkin, Vsevolod/Korshunov, Konstantin 31.676 14 Chmielewski, Wojciech Jerzy/Kowalewski, Jakub 31.896 15 Rieder, Ludwig/Rastner, Patrick 31.988

yeah, that's the problem... hope it's never gonna happen, anyway... long live the NL (without the DH)...

not gonna waste any time with the team sprint farce... so...night guys...

it was not the armband that cause his DQ...apparently, he lost his transponder (at least, that's what our broadcasters said)...

oh, man! I missed that... WR more than seriously under threat...

not that much, since it's his first senior pro season...he's young and improving all the time... I mean, to me they are all more than suspicious...but a young talent progressing quickly is not so shocking as a 30-year old suddenly going from average to medal contender...

yeah, anti-climatic as hell...

he started the season with a PB of 6.18 (in Calgary in October)... last week he skated 6.10 in Calgary... now he goes 6.06 in SLC... if he keeps this progression, considering that he skated 12.57 in October, I just can't wait to see him in the 10k...WR seriously under threat, I'd say...

Fish

meh! it was close, but Bloemen got the edge... most likely, skating after Kramer was the the decisive factor... Ghiotto was good, but nothing exciting...he didn't take any risk, going 29.x since the beginning (and still closing the last 2 laps at 30.x)...let's see if he can at least make the top 8...