phelps

because among the starters there were the 3 German stars of the last 10 years... the other placings (and the other races apart for the women's) were almost always subject to the weather lottery and heavily influenced (falsed) by that...

I don't know why they are always obsessed with Igls opening the season so early... places like this and the German track should only be used for official competition in January...that's the only month of the year cold enough on average not to risk having lottery races (like it always happens in this period of the year)... p.s. and no matter how weather conditions are...I'm really disappointed with the Italian riders so far (waiting for Nagl/Malleier to save the day, which in any case is highly unlikely)...

p.s. good luck for the situation in your Country... I hope everything gets fixed in a good manner quickly and nobody (other than those unfortunately already have) gets hurt anymore...

usual Igls result...those starting early had a big track advantage... and many girls made big driving mistakes here and there (Voetter managed to completely mess up the start, just to make an example)... overall, not a good 1st run for Russia and Germany (despite Tiebel's being currently in 2nd place) in particular... however, this women's world cup season announces itself to be quite interesting (at least on the tracks outside Germany...on their races, I expect also girls like Taubitz and Tiebel on top of the rankings...

Love that! of course Palmeiras is also my favourite Brazilian team, as they are closely related to the Italian community (the team was founded by the Italians)...

Grand Slam (Osaka, JPN) Day #2 Recap and if yesterday Amandine Bouchard was the hero of the day for the rest of the world, avoiding the Home Nation's clean sweep of Gold Medals, today nothing could stop Japan from winning all 4 the Gold Medals up for grabs. Masashi Ebinuma (-73kg) plus Takanori Nagase (-81kg) among the men and Masako Doi (-63kg) plus Yoko Ono (-70kg) among the women are today's champions in Osaka. Moreover, not happy with this amazing superiority, Japan added to their Gold medals also 3 out of 4 Silver and in the women's -63kg class they had a true clean sweep of that weight category, taking all 4 medals. The best of the rest, therefore, was Kim Polling, who was the only non-Japanese fighter reaching a Gold medal match (women's -70kg), where unfortunately she lost to Yoko Ono by a strangle technique in the Golden Score period... Full Results, here: http://www.ippon.org/gs_jpn2019.php

it's quite obvious that I was joking about @Laraja being a fan of another Brazilian team wishing FLA all the worst... p.s. but now I'm curious...which team might it be?

mmmmh...someone from Brazil shouting "go River!" am I missing something?

mmmmh...someone from Brazil shouting "go River!" am I missing something?

@MHSN Today Saei Mollaei made his official comeback on the World Tour after the messy end of the 2019 Worlds in Tokyo... of course, he competed in his own -81kg class under the IJF patronage... he did look in decent, but not perfect shape...but he still managed to win his first 2 bouts against Emmanuel Lucenti (ippon) and Lee Sung Ho (hansoku-make), before losing the pool final against Sotaro Fujiwara (ippon) and the repechage round against Frank De Wit (ippon at the golden score)...

I really know that feeling very well, mate! at the moment, I'm watching the Judo Grand Slam on TV (sky sports Italy) + the Alpine Skiing and Luge World Cup on my PC... I fear I'm getting squint... later in the day, I'm going on with more Winter Sports, Fencing and tonight it's all about (US) College Football (the L.A. derby above all, USC vs UCLA)...go Bruins!

first very busy weekend of the season... Men's Epee in Bern (SUI) Live Results: http://www.fencingworldwide.com/en/competition/57-2019/global/ Live Streaming: https://fie.org/live Women's Foil in Cairo (EGY) Live Results: Fencinglivetime site is off at the moment...link coming as soon as possible No Live Streaming as it happened for last week's men's Sabre... Women's Sabre in Orleans (FRA) Live Results: https://evenementsescrime-ffe.fr/cdm-orleans/resultats/ Live Streaming: https://evenementsescrime-ffe.fr/cdm-orleans/en-direct/

I know... I was just joking...

Grand Slam (Osaka, JPN) Day #1 Recap Last Grand Slam tournament of the season and, as expected, usual dominating performance by the Home Nation, Japan. One of the most anticapated themes of today's session was the chance for them to have a sweep of all 5 available Gold Medals...and this just didn't happen only because of Amandine Bouchard's success in the Golden Score in the women's -52kg class against Uta Abe. So, Japan finally won "only" 4 out of 5 Gold Medals awarded today: Naohisa Takato (-60kg) plus Hifumi Abe (-66kg) among the men and Funa Tonaki (-48kg) plus Momo Tamaoki (-57kg) among the women. The other great theme from today's session was the everlasting fight for the Olympic spot between Hifumi Abe and Joshiro Maruyama (men's -66kg class). and well, both easily reached the final, where they once again put on a great show. But this time Abe came out as the eventual winner (not even to be said, in the Golden Score...and thanks to a genius move), taking the overall score of their personal match-ups in international competitions to a 2-2 tie and keeping his hope to make the Japanese Olympic team alive. Full Results, here: http://www.ippon.org/gs_jpn2019.php

you're a true example of fair play and sportsmanship, sir!

p.s. I'm surprised we didn't have a celebrating visit by our friend @hckosice after yesterday's medal won by Patrick Jany... is it possible that he missed that? I just can't believe it...

last action for the 2019 season... 2019 Pistol & Rifle Shooting World Cup Final (Putian, CHN) President's Trophy, Mixed Team 10m Air Rifle Gold: Snezana Pejcic & Divyansh Singh Panwar Silver: Apurvi Chandela & Zhang Changhong Bronze: Seonaid McIntosh & Yu Haonan President's Trophy, Mixed Team 10m Air Pistol Gold: Manu Bhaker & Artem Chernousov Silver: Anna Korakaki & Chaudhary Saurabh Bronze: Zorana Arunovic & Shahzar Rizvi

maybe they're just saying the track is not ready yet (makin' it look not ready at any international inspection), but in fact it is and they're already secretly having massive training sessions over there... with the Chinese Officials you can never be sure...they're not your best example of integrity, fair play and transparency...

but normally they are given the passport of their "new" Country... in Rugby, that's not always the case...if I'm an Australian playing club rugby in Italy and I'm good, but not good enough to make the Australian NT in the past 2 years, I'm immediately eligible to play for Italy, without even bothering to take the Italian citizenship... basically, they have the same rules of club competitions, with foreign players allowed to play for a NT, which imho is absolutely crazy and unacceptable... and this could change a lot of things from your regular rugby tournaments and the Olympic teams, as the IOC has very different ideas about eligibility...

no, it's the opposite...ioc rules are for all sports and are a lot stricter than those of some international federation, IRB being the worst among them (in Rugby Union, a National team can play also with people who don't have a passport of that Country, only a couple of years in that same national championship -and not having played for another National team for quite a while- are enough to become eligible to play for a given NT)...

I agree on the point and I'd rather let the people know the score only at the end of the bout (of course the head of the judging panel must know the score round by round and possibly have the cance to warn those not doing their job properly on the fly)... but at the same time, if they keep the current aiba judging criteria, someone giving the impression to just refusing to fight can always lose a round 10-8 without even getting knocked down...and in this case the final score would be 28-28, with the decisive preference normally going to the boxer who had a fair behaviour on the ring... as I wrote in the past, it's not about the rules, it's always about the people in charge of the operations... p.s. I'm quite happy that they explicitly said that no judge and/or ref involved in the Rio Games will have anything to to with the Tokyo Boxing tournaments, qualifiers and actual Olympic showdown... in a world that can't be perfect, it's still something that had to be done...and it's a good start (they should have been even more harsh and exclude at least also those who were involved in the worst episodes of London 2012 and all of those who were at the recent aiba world champs in Russia, especially those who had a role in the women's event)...

2019 Pistol & Rifle Shooting World Cup Final (Putian, CHN) Women's 10m Air Rifle Gold: Elavenil Valarivan Silver: Lin Ying-Shin Bronze: Laura Georgeta Coman Men's 10m Air Rifle Gold: Divyansh Singh Panwar Silver: Istvan Peni Bronze: Patrik Jany

2019 Pistol & Rifle Shooting World Cup Final (Putian, CHN) Women's 10m Air Pistol Gold: Manu Bhaker Silver: Zorana Arunovic Bronze: Wang Qian Men's 10m Air Pistol Gold: Pang Wei Silver: Park Dae Hun Bronze: Artem Chernousov

so, at the end of the round of 16, the Elite 8 of this year's Champions Hockey League are known... they are: Mountfield HK Red Bull Munich EHC Biel/Bienne Lausanne HC EV Zug Djurgården Stockholm Frölunda Indians Luleå Hockey as obvious as it looks, we have 2 European National Leagues dominating the field, the Swedish SHL and the Swiss NLA, qualifying 3 teams each among the best 8... and the only other Nations still in competition at this stage of the tournament are Czech Republic and Germany, with 1 team each... once again, the big losers are the Finnish teams, this time in good company of all the 2nd tier European leagues, as this year we don't have any surpring entry among the top teams of the CHL... sad to be noticed, Sweden and Switzerland are also the 2 Countries with the lowest attendance to the games, which means that the better the leagues are, the less their average audience is interested in International Club Hockey...

Round Of 16, Second Leg, Part 2 Wednesday 20.11.2019 - Result 20:00 Red Bull Munich (GER) - Yunost Minsk (BLR) 6-0 (9-2 on Aggregate)