phelps

have you already forgotten what happened at last season's world champs?

sure, I was speaking of last Saturday's race...and there was no Italian party in Scuol... now, tonight it's a different story, but I don't have the crystall ball, so I couldn't know that in advance 3 days ago...

Updated as of January, 12th 2020...

yessss!!!!! great win for our girls... and now the most unexpected among our teams has basically locked the qualification with 2 tournaments still to be played...

Women's Team Epee (La Habana, CUB) Final Results Gold: Italy Silver: Estonia Bronze: France Semifinals: Estonia b. Ukraine 45-33 Italy b. France 41-40 Bronze Medal Match: France b. Ukraine 45-44 Gold Medal Match: Italy b. Estonia 33-30  Here is the Full Final Ranking (and Results) from Today's competition: https://fie.org/competitions/2020/452

final update...

updates from La Habana... Italy are facing Estonia right now in the Gold Medal match... France won the Bronze Medal, beating Ukraine 45-44... Russia ended up in 5th place ahead of Poland (they won the 5th place match 37-33), USA were 7th and China finished in 8th place... then, Romania 9th, canada 10th, Switzerland 11th and Hungary 12th...

Iran this time were just unstoppable...5 Gold medals for them! not bad also the Turkish final score...3 Gold medals and many more Silver and Bronze... for Italy, a 2-way competition...very good in the female department (2 Gold and 1 Silver medal), a true disaster in the men's division, with all of our top fighters totally out of shape/focus (in particular, it was a big wasted chance for Crescenzo, who didn't take advantage by Samdan's absence, since he lost in the early rounds to a relatively unknown Moroccan)... next stop, the Premier League tournament in Paris (FRA) in 2 weeks...

Karate1 Serie A, Stage #1 (Santiago, CHI) Medallists Recap women's Individual Kata Gold: Viviana Bottaro Silver: Dilara Eltemur Bronze: Sakura Kokumai & Sanae Agalmam men's Individual Kata Gold: Alì Sofuoglu Silver: Enes Ozdemir Bronze: Antonio Diaz & Emre Vefa Goktas women's Individual Kumite, -50kg Gold: Serap Ozcelik Arapoglu Silver: Yorgelis Salazar Bronze: Junna Tsukii & Li Ranran women's Individual Kumite, -55kg Gold: Anzhelika Terliuga Silver: Sara Cardin Bronze: Tuba Yakan & Yassmin Attia women's Individual Kumite, -61kg Gold: Rozita Alipour Silver: Jovana Prekovic Bronze: Merve Coban & Yin Xiaoyan women's Individual Kumite, -68kg Gold: Silvia Semeraro Silver: Irina Zaretska Bronze: Halyna Melnyk & Gong Li women's Individual Kumite, +68kg Gold: Hamideh Abbasali Silver: Cao Hanqi Bronze: Meltem Hocaoglu Akyol & Sachiko Paulina Ramos Akita men's Individual Kumite, -60kg Gold: Kaisar Alpysbay Silver: Douglas Brose Bronze: Dany Cabello & Darkhan Assadilov men's Individual Kumite, -67kg Gold: Burak Uygur Silver: Alì Elsawy Bronze: Didar Amirali & Assylbek Muratov men's Individual Kumite, -75kg Gold: Bahman Askari Silver: Breno Teixeira Bronze: Erman Eltemur & Yassine Sekouri men's Individual Kumite, -84kg Gold: Zabiollah Poorshab Silver: Ugur Aktas Bronze: Igor Chikhmarev & Tomas Doussang men's Individual Kumite, +84kg Gold: Sajad Ganjzadeh Silver: Jonathan Horne Bronze: Saleh Abazari & Gogita Arkania (All) Medal Matches Replays

Women's Individual Sabre Grand Prix (Montreal, CAN) Final Results Gold: Olga Kharlan Silver: Olga Nikitina Bronze: Shao Yaqi & Charlotte Lembach Semifinals: Kharlan b. Shao 15-14 Nikitina b. Lembach 15-6 Gold Medal Match: Kharlan b. Nikitina 15-7  Here is the Full Final Ranking (and Results) from Today's competition: https://www.fencingtimelive.com/events/results/8A79FCABA6DC47D5BDAC9E44E81AE317 Quarterfinals, Semifinals & Final Replays

if, and only if, it's true that ITA vs EST is the gold medal bout and UKR vs FRA the bronze medal bout, according to the other info that we know for sure, this is the projected ranking at the moment: 1. 278 Q WR 2. 274 Q WR 3. 272 Q WR 4./5. 250 Q WR/Q Pan-Am spot 5./4. 242/254 Q Euro spot/ Q WR 6. 200/212 if ITA go 4th, then Q Euro spot, otherwise Out for now, but Q through Repechage (cause EGY are out of the top 16) 7. 195 Q Asian spot 8. 189 if ITA are 4th, EST get the Euro spot and USA get the Pan-Am spot, then they get the Repechage spot, otherwise they're Out for now 9. 175 10. 147 11. 142 12. 138 if USA are 4th, then Q Pan-Am spot, otherwise Out for now 13. 136 14. 129 15. 117/125 16. 109/117 17. 96/104 18. 84/92 p.s. remember that here we have still 2 events left after tonight, not only 1 like in the foil competitions...

final update...

final update...

wow! our girls won against Romania... very, very important result for them (even if we will likely have to wait quite a long time before we know all the minor placings and therefore we can make a complete analysis of today's event...and in any case, in this weapon we still have 2 more events left after this weekend)...

men's Team Foil Situation after today's event (1 tournament left)... 1. 436 (52) Mathematically Qualified through World Ranking 2. 340 (32) Mathematically Qualified through World Ranking 3. 280 (32) Mathematically Qualified through World Ranking 4. 252 (30) Currently Qualified through World Ranking 5. 250 (32) Currently Qualified, Asian Continental spot 6. 244 (28) Mathematically Qualified, European Continental spot 7. 215 (19) Out of the Games 8. 209 (23) Out of the Games 9. 203 (20) Mathematically Qualified, African Continental spot 10. 203 (23) Out of the Games 11. 175 (20) Out of the Games 12. 158 (21) Out of the Games 13. 154 (19) Out of the Games 14. 141 (8) Currently Qualified, Panamerican Continental spot 15. 140 (8) Out of the Games Note: in parentheses the number of points currently to be discarded after the last tournament... so, in the men's Foil we have 3 World Ranking (USA, FRA and ITA) and 2 Continental places (Russia in Europe and Egypt in Africa) already locked... also the Panamerican Continental spot is basically (even if not mathematically yet) booked by Canada... it only remains to be seen if Russia can finbally make it to the Top 4, leaving one between Hong Kong or South Korea home or if one of the 2 Asian teams can keep their top 4 place, thus helping the other Continental mate to qualify... in case Russia make it to the top 4, in fact, only 1 between HKG or KOR would be able to use the Asian Continental spot and a new race for the European teams would start, even if we have to say that more than a race, it would be a gift to Germany, as they are well ahead of all the other European teams at the moment out of the Games (and only GBR, with a highly unlikely combination of results, would still have a very remote chance to overtake GER)... tbh, 4 years ago the race for the Olympic spots was a lot closer and more exciting in all weapons (except maybe for the usual suspect, the women's foil)...

yeah, my mistake...fixed...

women's Team Foil Situation after today's event (1 tournament left, in Kazan, RUS in about 40 days)... 1. 436 (52) Mathematically Qualified through World Ranking 2. 340 (40) Mathematically Qualified through World Ranking 3. 300 (32) Mathematically Qualified through World Ranking 4. 282 (30) Mathematically Qualified through World Ranking 5. 253 (23) Mathematically Qualified, Asian Continental spot 6. 219 (22) Mathematically Qualified, Panamerican Continental spot 7. 201 (22) (Momentarily Out of the Games, can still hope for Egypt dropping out of the Top 16 of the WR) 8. 199 (25) Currently Qualified, European Continental spot 9. 198 (24) (Momentarily Out of the Games, can still hope for Egypt dropping out of the Top 16 of the WR and to overtake South Korea) 10. 191 (25) (still in contention for the European spot) 11. 184 (23) (still in contention for the European spot) 12. 153 (20) Out of the Games 13. 151 (19) Out of the Games 14. 136 (8) Out of the Games 15. 104 (0) Currently Qualified, African Continental spot (must stay in the Top 16 of the WR to save their place at the Games) 16. 99 (0) Out of the Games 17. 98 (8) Out of the Games 18. 94 (0) Out of the Games 19. 90 (0) Out of the Games Note: in parentheses the number of points currently to be discarded after the last tournament... so, we already have 6 of the 8 spots decided... the only competitions left are those for the European Continental place (Hungary have a slim margin -8 points and the same potential discard- over Poland, with Germany further 7 points below -and tbh, their chances are really, really minimal) and the fight of the Egyptian girls to keep their place within the best 16 in the world, so to confirm their African Continental place (provided EGY will score 8 points once again in the final tournament, Brazil most likely will overtake them, meanwhile TPE have to score at least 22 points -12th place- which is highly unlikely...it remains to be seen if SGP, who need 19 points -15th place, not impossible for them- will show up at the final tournament, meanwhile Romania need 25 points -9th place, possible, but really improbable- to kill the Egyptian dream...obviously, if EGY make it to the top 16 in the final tournament and score 18+ points, they are surely qualified to the Olympics)...

I'm definitely not satisfied with the Italian results this weekend... first, epee specialists have been a disaster (in the individual events they weren't even close to the podium and the way the men's team threw the bronze medal away yesterday is more than shameful; moreover, today's team event for the girls doesn't promise anything good...we have to face Romania in the last 16 and if we can pull a miracle out of that bout, China are waiting for us...all this means that we're not going to score reasonable points and we're likely going to drop out of the virtual qualification spots)... then, when things went good (individual foil events and individual men's sabre GP), we're still talking of a bunch of silver/bronze medals...the tendency not to win a single competition continues (and it's clear that we have a big problem with Volpi, out in round of 64 once again...St.Maur proved to be only an exception to a very dangerous situation)... not to mention today's semifinal in the women's team event, with Volpi being a total disaster (replaced by Palumbo way too late) and Di Francisca throwing away a good lead in the last stint once again, this time against Thibus (who already destroyed her in the individual competition)... frankly, I expect a lot more from our fencers...

Russian men, too (Italy can't be thrown out of the top 4 and no other European team can catch them)...

as I wrote in the previous page (not 100 pages ago, just 1 ), there is no live score nor live streaming from Cuba... however, here you can find the draw for today's team event... https://it-it.facebook.com/USAFencing/photos/a.464903249947/10157989687719948/?type=3&theater

Men's Team Foil (Paris, FRA) Final Results Gold: United States Silver: Italy Bronze: France Semifinals: USA b. Hong Kong 45-27 Italy b. France 45-44 Bronze Medal Match: France b. Hong Kong 45-38 Gold Medal Match: USA b. Italy 45-36  Here is the Full Final Ranking (and Results) from Today's competition: https://fie.org/competitions/2020/208 Bronze & Gold Medal match Replays

Women's Team Foil (Katowice, POL) Final Results Gold: Russia Silver: France Bronze: Italy Semifinals: Russia b. USA 45-36 France b. Italy 42-41 Bronze Medal Match: Italy b. USA 45-18 Gold Medal Match: Russia b. France 45-42  Here is the Full Final Ranking (and Results) from Today's competition: https://fie.org/competitions/2020/824 Bronze & Gold Medal match Replays

even if we are still quite early in the day, thanks to the results registered so far, we already have the first teams mathematically qualified to the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games: men's Team Foil: and women's Team Foil: + + and

no, I think there's no chance for him to overtake Figueira in the overall OQR (however, qualification through the WR is not an option...Assadilov and one between Samdan or Crescenzo will get the spots in the -60kg class, as they are way ahead of Douglas in the standings)... he needs to make up more than 2000 points, which is still mathematically possible, but really unlikely (moreover, the -67kg class is normally less "deep" than the -60kg, which means that Vinicius is likely to get easier chances to score good points in the last few events left in the race to Tokyo 2020)...

Alpine Combined is not a race that should be in the schedule anymore...it doesn't make sense under a strict technical point of view, it's not more spectacular then any individual race, it favors the slalom specialists no matter what starting order is used... however, the real "unfair" aspect of the world cup race is only the unbalanced schedule...until they don't change the number of technical and speed races, it's never going to be fair... the question is only this one...they have to schedule the same number for each of the 4 true disciplines (and get rid of all the sh*t like combined races, parallel "things" -unless they develop the PSL as a real standalone discipline with fair rules for all the competitors and a fair race format). point. p.s. in any case, it's fun to watch how the Austrian and Swiss federations build the world cup schedule according to their interests...when Tomba was dominant, they basically made it impossible for him (and all the technical skiers) to win the overall world cup (he had to find a lucky season to get just 1 in his entire career)... then, when Hirscher became the lone star of Austrian skiing, they changed the distribution of the events letting all the speed specialists without a chance... what's gonna happen next?