phelps

hope not to jinx him, but Fabrizi is one of the 7 guys with the clean score after 50 targets...hopefully, he's gonna make it tonight and so the Trap question is over for us (including the double start in the sh***y Mixed Team event)... for Pellielo this time is gonna be really tough to make the team, but since we don't have real in-or-out trials, you never know...he could well be selected over who actually won the Olympic spot, if only he shows that he's in top shape coming those dog days of July/August 2020...

in the meantime, in the Czech Tipsport Extraliga, the playoffs Preliminary Round is over... and once again there was an epic fail by Sparta Prague...they lost the series 3-1 to HC Vìtkovice Ridera, with game #4 ending in a depressing 1-5 and all the fans in the arena heavily booing the team (to say the least)... the other match-up went to the decisive game #5, where BK Mladà Boleslav took advantage of the home ice and won 4-1 after an illusive 1st period lead for PSG Berani Zlìn, thus winning the series with a score of 3-2... meanwhile yesterday night the quarterfinals (best-of-7 series) already started with the first 2 pairings on the ice: Mountfield HK vs HC Kometa Brno (who won 3-1 game #1 on the road) and HC Škoda Plzeň vs HC Olomouc (the home team thrashed out 8-1 the guests from Olomouc in game #1)... the remaining 2 match-ups (scheduled to start their series tomorrow, March 20th) are: HC Oceláři Třinec vs HC Vìtkovice Ridera and Bílí Tygři Liberec vs BK Mladà Boleslav

and after Day #1 in the men's Trap, we have 7 shooters with 50/50 and the others up to the 40th place (40!!! ), they all have a 49/50 score... it looks like they're shooting at asteroids rather than the usual clay targets...

2019 World Cup, Stage #2 (Acapulco, MEX) Women's Individual Trap Gold: Jessica Rossi Silver: Laetisha Scanlan Bronze: Deng Weiyun Olympic Quota: Italy, China

hopefully, she's back to her good old standard...she's back on top of the podium! and now we also have 2 Olympic Spots in women's Trap, first shooting event to be completed for us...

pity for Alessandra Perilli, who missed the shoot-off only by 1 hit (she ended her qualification effort with 118/125)...

interesting qualification round in the women's Trap in Acapulco... Satu Makela-Nummela broke the qualifcation world record with 123/125... she was followed by Jessica Rossi with 121/125, then Deng Weiyun, Melanie Couzy and Wang Xiaojing with 120/125... all those 5 shooters are already qualified to the final...and the second Chinese girl (Wang) is the only one who already earned an Olympic spot...therefore, the other 4 are all fighting for the 2 places for the Tokyo Games... the 6th and last finalist will be known after the end of a shoot-off between Jasmina Macek, Yulia Tugolukova, Maria Lucia Palmitessa, Laetisha Scanlan, Katrin Quooss and Penny Smith (all of them ended the qualification round with 119/125...Scanlan is the only one of them who already got her Olympic spot)...

I saw also some knockouts reversed in DSQ for hitting after the referee's "stop" (for instance, our Vincenzo Mangiacapre at the 2017 worlds against a...surprise, surprise...a Kazakh guy)... for our guys it's more complicated than what it could look... first, we don't have anymore a professional movement that's worth the abandon of the Olympic National Team, even if now it looks that the new agreement between our main Pro promoter and the new media platform DAZN could bring in some more money for our pro fighters...still, those in the lower weight classes, don't have enough opponents and chances to make money to leave the "economically protected" AIBA environment... moreover, most -if not all- of those guys are enrolled in the military corps and it's difficult for them to leave those privilege...with them, they have a guaranteed job (and salary) even after the boxing career, therefore it must really worth the chance for them to turn pro... however, a couple of guys who were among the key fighters in our Olympic team have made the step last year (among them, heavyweight Guido Vianello, now in the States trying to make a name for himself in the richest pro system of the world and one of our most promising yougsters, Mirko Natalizi, who's definitely more suited for the pro boxing than of AIBA's, being a "stone hand" rather than a fine technical boxer)...

now I'm quite scared...

surprising first career podium among the seniors for our 18-year young talent Tommaso Marini...and he did reach the final assault beating the reigning world champion Alessio Foconi, non the less... and great, great match between Deriglazova and Volpi...women's foil at the very best...some exchanges were really amazing and exciting...if only once every while we could watch a few more assaults like that! p.s. and finally, a top quality streaming feed...

Women's Individual Foil (Anaheim, USA) Final Results Gold: Inna Deriglazova Silver: Alice Volpi Bronze: Larissa Korobeynikova & Jeon Hee Sook Semifinals: Deriglazova b. Korobeynikova 15-7 Volpi b. Jeon 15-9 Gold Medal Match: Deriglazova b. Volpi 15-14  Here is the Full Final Ranking (and Results) from Today's competition: http://fie.org/competitions/2019/121/results/rank

Men's Individual Foil (Anaheim, USA) Final Results Gold: Julien Mertine Silver: Tommaso Marini Bronze: Alessio Foconi & Cheung Ka Long Semifinals: Mertine b. Cheung 15-13 Marini b. Foconi 15-9 Gold Medal Match: Mertine b. Marini 15-11  Here is the Full Final Ranking (and Results) from Today's competition: http://fie.org/competitions/2019/140/results/rank

he's not a burnout...he's still one of the best 2 skiers on the circuit... the problem with him it's still that fu**ing fall after a training jump right after he started to be totally dominant in 2012 (after he won 3 races in a row at Jason lamy Chappuis' home in Chaux-Neuve)... since then, he's never been the same guy on the hill and therefore he started struggling so much in the overall competition (still, he managed to get a 4th place in Sochi and a Silver Medal at the Falun's Worlds in 2015, both from the normal hill...and a few world cup decent placings in these dark years of his career)... he's been unlucky...just that...

well, in a given situation (and fencing his definitely one of those), you can easily see if 2 people working together have a very professional only kind of relationship or if the dynamics between the 2 suggest that they might be friends, too...or if they work well together compared to another "team" where the personality of one of the 2 is dominating the other... or even if there's something more personal (especially the male coach/female athlete duos are often really transparent on their kind of relationship...if they're just professionals or they go well beyond that)... in a long day at the fencing hall, those things necessarily come out sooner or later...it's up to the viewers, to find out the details... p.s. obviously you can always be wrong, make mistakes and misunderstand some situations...

naaaa...I'm not a "social" user...I'm too old for that stuff... I already have enough with a couple of forums and watching my favourite sports on TV (I also used to go to the arena to watch Ice Hockey, but since there's nothing serious anymore here in Milan it's quite a while I don't go there anymore...maybe, if only someone could get a good team playing a top european league -one for all, the KHL- back in Milan, then I could also get back to my old habits of spending a couple of nights a week at the city's ice arenas)... p.s. and I only have 1 account...

yeah, and he's also one of the emerging stars of the discipline... I think we'll see him on the podium of many major competitions, sooner or later... I think he was on site @ yesterday's Foil Grand Prix event in Anaheim and saw what was going on...

sure! non the less, remember that it comes directly from the Medieval duels... the ladies...well, it depends on the girl...there are some examples of very wild and "not so well educated" women (Boubakri being one of them, especially when she gets close to the medal rounds)... ITA vs RUS...it's a great love & hate relationship... right now, it mainly falls on the "hate" part because they're the 2 main powerhouses (among the senior and even more among the junior ranks) of the sport since quite a long time, because Russia in the most recent past used to steal our best coaches (and Christian Bauer, the best foreign coach of them all, working with us at that time) with not refusable economical offers just when we were suffering cut after cut in fundings and moreover, because of the political rivalry between the FIE President, the Russian multi-billionaire Alisher Usmanov, and his executive vice-President, the Italian NF president too, Giorgio Scarso... so, as you can imagine, there are a lot of unsolved questions between us and our Russian friends...but I'm sure that we still love each other...in the deepest (but I mean...really, really deep...you need to dig all day long to find it ) part of our hearts...

quite normal in these days for our boxing... according to our federation, which normally is very polite and always try to avoid any sort of polemic comment, we got really robbed at least twice in the men's quarters (which would have got us 2 medals)... however, this men's team was pretty poor (only a couple of guys are somehow decent) and moreover our only real great boxer wasn't there because of an injury (Aziz Mouhieddine in the -91kg, who won this tournament last year and probably is the only current Italian amateur who has a bright future ahead of him if and when he turns pro...actually to me he's already the best heavyweight in the AIBA world, but it's obvious that with the ongoing feud between our officials and both EUBC and AIBA lords he's not going to win any major medal among the AIBA/EUBC ranks)... for what concerns the girls, instead, we have quite a few talented girls (many of them too inexperienced yet, but still), especially Irma Testa, who dominated all the youth and junior ranks until 2016, but then lost her mind after she didn't come home from the Rio Olympics with a medal...now the girl seems to have regained a bit of passion for the sport and she's possibly ready to get back to the place she belongs (the top of the podium)... and also in this tournament we should have got something more than what we actually won, because our 54kg girl was robbed in the early rounds by the Russian who ended up with the silver medal and today the Irish Broadhurst was literally gifted the gold by the judges at a point where our NF president and EUBC council member who was supposed to host the medal ceremony for that class, refused to go out and give the medals away to protest against the judges' performance... tbh, I didn't follow the tournament that much, but I read some news and all of them were remarking as most of the judges were absolutely shameful this week...many of them being just a bunch of idiots who don't even know what boxing is about...

don't worry for the Czech friends...in the next few years Davidova will put them back on the winners' chart big time...

Boxing EUBC Under 22 European Championships 2019, Men's Final Medal Table RUS, 7 / 0 / 0 BUL, 1 / 1 / 0 UKR, 1 / 0 / 3 AZE, 1 / 0 / 2 ENG, 0 / 3 / 0 GER, 0 / 1 / 1 MDA, 0 / 1 / 1 TUR, 0 / 1 / 1 WAL, 0 / 1 / 1 ROU, 0 / 1 / 0 SCO, 0 / 1 / 0 ARM, 0 / 0 / 3 BLR, 0 / 0 / 3 GEO, 0 / 0 / 3 CRO, 0 / 0 / 1 FRA, 0 / 0 / 1

Men's Medallists Recap men's -49kg Gold: Volodya Mnatsakanyan Silver: Cosmis Petre Girleanu Bronze: Yauheni Karmilchyk & Rufat Huseynov men's -52kg Gold: Daniel Panev Asenov Silver: Kiaran MacDonald Bronze: Rostyslav Bilostotskyi & Nodari Darbaidze men's -56kg Gold: Sergey Iarulin Silver: Boyan Panev Asenov Bronze: Mykhailo Dziazko & Artyush Gomtsyan men's -60kg Gold: Beslan Khamzaev Silver: Dorin Bucsa Bronze: Dzmitry Dziashkevich & Hrayr Shahverdyan men's -64kg Gold: Alan Abaev Silver: Tugrul Han Erdemir Bronze: Michael McDonagh & Alexandru Paraschiv men's -69kg Gold: Vakhid Abbasov Silver: Mohammed Harris Akbar Bronze: Richard Meinecke & Aliksandr Radzionau men's -75kg Gold: Aleksei Semykin Silver: Sean Lazzerini Bronze: Vakhtang Harutyunyan & Dmytro Rybalko men's -81kg Gold: Oleksandr Pokhrebnyak Silver: Sammy Lee Bronze: Bayram Malkan & Jabrail Elikov men's -91kg Gold: Vladislav Ivanov Silver: Lewis Williams Bronze: Soheb Bouafia & Nikoloz Begadze men's +91kg Gold: Mahammad Abdullayev Silver: Viktor Jurk Bronze: Gurgen Hovannisyan & Luka Pratljacic

finally, he did finish tied for 35th place (-5 his final score)...

and because today it's the Italian Sports Day 2019, also in Golf we got some success... Guido Migliozzi, in fact, at the age of 22, playing only his 14th tournament on the major European tour, won the Magical Kenya Open presented by ABSA, becoming the 14th Italian player to have won at least 1 tournament on the main European Tour... http://www.europeantour.com/europeantour/season=2019/tournamentid=2019026/news/newsid=367343.html

Boxing EUBC Under 22 European Championships 2019, Women's Final Medal Table RUS, 5 / 2 / 1 ITA, 1 / 2 / 2 TUR, 1 / 1 / 4 ARM, 1 / 1 / 0 FRA, 1 / 0 / 1 IRL, 1 / 0 / 0 POL, 0 / 2 / 0 ENG, 0 / 1 / 1 ROU, 0 / 1 / 0 ALB, 0 / 0 / 1 BLR, 0 / 0 / 1 BUL, 0 / 0 / 1 GEO, 0 / 0 / 1 NED, 0 / 0 / 1 SCO, 0 / 0 / 1 SVK, 0 / 0 / 1 SWE, 0 / 0 / 1 UKR, 0 / 0 / 1

Women's Medallists Recap women's -48kg Gold: Ekaterina Paltceva Silver: Melek Yamak Bronze: Emi-Mari Todorova & Roberta Bonatti women's -51kg Gold: Anush Grigoryan Silver: Geliusa Galieva Bronze: Hamide Yavuz & Giovanna Marchese women's -54kg Gold: Caroline Cruveillier Silver: Anastasiya Artamonova Bronze: Anastasiya Lisinska & Ana Khunjua women's -57kg Gold: Irma Testa Silver: Ellie Scotney Bronze: Stephanie Thour & Victoria Glover women's -60kg Gold: Amy Sara Broadhurst Silver: Rebecca Nicoli Bronze: Shona Whitwell & Fatia Benmessahel women's -64kg Gold: Ekaterina Dynnik Silver: Ani Ovsepyan Bronze: Miroslava Jedinakova & Chelsey Heijnen women's -69kg Gold: Busenaz Surmeneli Silver: Angela Carini Bronze: Natalia Sychigova & Darya Asmalouskaya women's -75kg Gold: Anastasiya Shamonova Silver: Agata Kaczmarska Bronze: Esmanur Koc & Elsidita Selaj women's -81kg (3 Starters only) Gold: Mariia Shishmareva Silver: Aleksandra Smuklerz Bronze: Tugba Oz women's +81kg (3 Starters only) Gold: Alina Tkacheva Silver: Alina Gabriela Ene Bronze: Sueda Sahin