phelps

because someone at the FIBA headquarters got heavily drunk before developing the Olympic qualifications' format... you know...in the French speaking part of Switzerland (where the FIBA HQ are located), absinthe is legal...you can easily find places where they sell it...it's not even expensive (for Swiss standards)...

senior Gold Medal matches recap... women's Individual Kata Gold Medal match: Manal Kamilia Hadj Said vs Sarah Sayed men's Individual Kata Gold Medal match: Ahmed Shawky vs Adnane Elhakimi women's Individual Kumite, -50kg Gold Medal match: Radwa Sayed vs Aicha Sayah women's Individual Kumite, -55kg Gold Medal match: Khawla Ouhammad vs Widad Draou women's Individual Kumite, -61kg Gold Medal match: Giana Lofty vs Btissam Sadini women's Individual Kumite, -68kg Gold Medal match: Feryal Abdelaziz vs Lamya Matoub women's Individual Kumite, +68kg Gold Medal match: Fatima Zahra Errabi vs Loubna Mekdas men's Individual Kumite, -60kg Gold Medal match: Oussama Edari vs Nader Azzouzi men's Individual Kumite, -67kg Gold Medal match: Alì Elsawy vs Abdessalam Ameknassi men's Individual Kumite, -75kg Gold Medal match: Yassine Sekouri vs Mamduh Abdelaziz Abdalla men's Individual Kumite, -84kg Gold Medal match: Mohamed Ramadan vs Thameur Slimani men's Individual Kumite, +84kg Gold Medal match: Hocine Daikhi vs Tarek Mahmoud Taha

-84kg and +84kg are merge into the "olympic class" of +75kg... and tbh, Daikhi is the only man from ALG who still have a (remote) chance to qualify to the Games at the final qualification tournament in May in Paris... by the way, you also have 4 women in the finals (some of them really surprising, especially the girl of Kata)...

the medal tables are not official (only the single classes rankings count)... you can read them as much as you like, keeping separate tracks for all the age groups or mixing all the events together...it's not that important...

it would be nice to have a playoff match between GER and DEN, with the winner going to the actual OQT... it will never happen, but I'd really like something like that...

it's because there are not many Nations participating...so, it's not a problem holding the champs all in a single location and in the same weekend (so the organizers can also save a lot of money)...

no idea... but I'd rather appreciate it in a fighting sport than in speedskating, where there's no physical contact at all (except for weird accidents, of course)...

as expected, the North African Nations (namely Egypt, Morocco and Algeria) are dominating the 1st day of the championship... today's competitions are not over yet, but so far all the categories close to the decisive moments have athletes from those 3 Countries in the big final (senior men's Kumite, -60kg class being the only exception, with a Tunesian guy in the final)... p.s. this is not a direct Olympic Qualification tournament, but the senior results count (with a lot of points up for grabs) towards the Olympic Qualification Ranking...

Karate UFAK African Championships 2020 Tangier (MAR) - 7 February 2020 - 9 February 2020 Official Website

thanks mainly to their domination in Kata, Turkey lead the medal table after day #1 with 3 Gold Medals, followed by Italy with 2 Gold Medals (also, all of them in Kata)... then, we have a bunch of Nations with 1 Gold Medal each... in particular, in 8 Kumite Cadets weight classes, we have 8 different Countries winning the Gold Medal... in total, after day #1, we already have 26 different Nations winning at least 1 medal... p.s. @hckosice hey, man! Slovakia have already 4 medals (3 Silver & 1 Bronze) that's almost powerhouse-alike numbers!

Day #1 Recap (Part #2) Cadets Individual Kumite women's -47kg Gold: Muserref Ozdemir Silver: Nina Kvasnicova Bronze: Chloe Breuzard & Sidney-Michelle Ott women's -54kg Gold: Kori Fital Silver: Irene Marturano Bronze: Iona Lobato Sanchez & Vira Fohlinska women's +54kg Gold: Volha Ramaniuk Silver: Maria Cristina Coman Bronze: Lara Zarei & Genta Lahi men's -52kg Gold: Muhammed Oezdemir Silver: Mher Ghazaryan Bronze: Mert Halici & Emre Saljiu men's -57kg Gold: Farid Savadov Silver: Dominik Dziuda Bronze: Erik Rahozenko & Valiko Poniava men's -63kg Gold: Luan Veras Silver: Lev Muhamadeev Bronze: Andrija Danilovic & Zsamoran Shotte Cabello men's -70kg Gold: Eduard Gasparian Silver: Dominik Keselak Bronze: Gvidas Disle & Artjom Jermolaev men's +70kg Gold: Leonard Moise Silver: Martin Elias Bronze: Mihajlo Vasilic & Konstantin Kokovurov

Day #1 Recap (Part #1) Individual Kata women's Cadets Gold: Sonia Inzoli Silver: Azahara Perez Alvez Bronze: Rita Siebert & Damla Su Turemen men's Cadets Gold: Furkan Kaynar Silver: Alejandro Jimenez Diaz Bronze: Thomas Galeotti & Adam Bardos women's Juniors Gold: Matilde Galassi Silver: Antonia Moysidou Bronze: Younmi Novo & Zsofia Kiss men's Juniors Gold: Enes Ozdemir Silver: Adam Stelcl Bronze: Danila Brantov & Oscar Garcia Cuadrado women's Under-21 Gold: Marta Garcia Lozano Silver: Keyda Nur Colak Bronze: Carolina Amato & Helvetia Taily men's Under-21 Gold: Franck Ngoan Silver: Vladimir Mijac Bronze: Konstantin Sutiagin & Julian Enrik Smoliga

Karate EKF Cadet, Junior & Under 21 European Championships 2020 Budapest (HUN) - 7 February 2020 - 9 February 2020 Official Website

that was the provisional version... here you have the updated one... https://totallympics.com/index.php?/topic/2014-fencing-fie-world-cup-2019-2020/&do=findComment&comment=249327

I don't think it will happen...the rivalry between ARG and BRA is bigger than a few miseducated whistles by the Colombian audience, I guess...

there was an auction to choose where the OQTs were going to be played (and the starting value was really, really high...out of this world, actually)... so, it's not the European ruling this world...it's just who paid the amount of money FIBA wanted...and it's not France's fault if AUS declined the chance because of the crazy cost of hosting a basically useless OQT (they knew they were going to qualify in any case since the beginning, as there are 3 places available and only 2 very good teams in the group)...

as I wrote yesterday (and as it was reminded by @Dunadan earlier), Vittozzi has quite a short memory when she talks about favouritism in our team... she was allowed to miss a relay earlier in the season (without even having to fake an illness, provided we don't know if that's true for Wierer or not...my guess? Doro was not "sick" on that specific day, but had some troubles with women's period and used it as an excuse to miss the relay, then the official version is that she got a flu symptoms because the Italian audience is...the Italian audience and here you are not free to discuss certain arguments publicly...they all know it happens, but nobody wants to hear about it on tv or newspapers...and when it happens -Paola Pezzo in the 2004 Olympic MTB race, Federica Pellegrini on the night of the Olympic final over 200m freestyle in Rio 4 years ago- they tried to hide everything)... p.s. forgot to mention that yesterday...Vittozzi (like all the other team members) is enrolled in a Military Corpse... because of that, she's gonna pay a high prize for this interview (and makes her more irresponsible...twice)...surely...

no... you have the whole world cup calendar in the first post of the world cup thread...there you can see how many stages are left in each discipline...

South American OQT, "Final Four", day #2 Argentina b. Colombia 2-1 Brazil - Uruguay 1-1 Standings 1st, Argentina, 6 pts (mathematically qualified to the Olympic Games) 2nd, Brazil, 2 pts 3rd, Uruguay, 1 pt (-1 goal diff. & 3 goals scored) 4th, Colombia, 1 pt (-1 goal diff. & 2 goals scored) day #3 (final), Sunday, February 9th h.18.00 (local time), Colombia vs Uruguay h.20.30 (local time), Argentina vs Brazil should 1 between COL and URU win their direct match-up, things would eventually get interesting, as BRA in that case would necessarily have to win vs ARG to save their asses (and I don't think it's gonna be easy)... should COL and URU have a tied game, basically they would eliminate each other, as BRA would only need to limit the damage to a 1-goal loss (or even a 2-goal loss, if they score 2 more goals than URU in their game vs COL)...

nice match and good win for France vs Australia... not important in terms of qualification (both teams are basically sure to fly to Tokyo), but it could prove mentally significant once they meet (if they meet) in the actual Olympic tournament...

well, if she had a bit of respect for herself, she should have said that immediately after the end of last season and put down the question in terms "me or them". point. and of course she should be ready to pay the prize for such statement. and she should have made this argument with the coaches and the NF's officials, not by releasing an interview to friendly press, which makes her just a coward to most people's eyes... then, in any case, she should have never chosen this moment to say anything...as now she clearly destroyed the whole team before the home worlds (which are absolutely the "superior Good" for a super-niche sport like Biathlon in italy)... moreover, I just can give the real weight of the words she used...her accustations are really heavy and personal...there's no way people can continue working together after those words... she completely missed timing and form of her "outing" (imho, she missed also the point, as it's not because she skied those 6kms on a given day if 2 weeks later she didn't even made the top 60 in the Oslo Sprint race, thus missing also the decisive mass start on the final day of that stage, forgetting that in an earlier stage of the world cup she was given a break on a relay race and Wierer had to do it in what probably was her worst weekend of last season)... however, probably Italy and the Netherlands in this aspect are different, but here the team athmosphere is sacred...what Vittozzi did completely broke this rule and it's totally unacceptable...

Italian Biathlon is dead just before the most important event in its history (the home worlds, for the first time with reasonable ambition to win more medals)... earlier today, in fact, Lisa Vittozzi released an interview to a local (to her) newspaper where she explicitly says that our coaches are the only responsible for her losing the overall world cup, because they favoured Wierer all the time, especially at the world champs, when they allowed Doro to miss the women's relay just 24 hours before her mass start triumph (which, according to Vittozzi, is a proof of the fact that Wierer wasn't sick at all, as they said to justify her absence from the relay)... she also said that her and Doro are not friends at all, just members of the same NT, but fierce rivals, that they have nothing to share with each other and so on... and Vittozzi's mom threw oil on the fire on her social media accounts... perfect timing, I'd say... to me, Vittozzi should be kicked out of the team immediately (at least until Doro is active and successful)... this whole story reminds me the stupid feud between Di Francisca and Errigo in Fencing...it's really sad to see how every time we have more than one very competitive woman in the same team, sooner or later they're going to destroy everything around... I'm really disappointed and annoyed by this farce...nothing's gonna be the same anymore when I watch women's Biathlon in terms of the Italian results perspective...

nevermind... it was already posted by @Grassmarket I'm always too late...

meanwhile today's training in Garmisch has been cancelled because of the heavy snowfalls of the last couple of days...

so, good luck! hope everything gets fixed soon...