phelps

Grand Slam (Ekaterinburg, RUS) Day #3 Recap Host Nation Russia on top of the final day in Ekaterinburg...they won in fact both the Heavyweights and the Super-Heavyweights in the men's division and at the end of the tournament they also did jump on the top of the medal standings... and finally Japan saved their honour, winning the only Gold Medal of their (quite disappointing) Siberian campaign... Today's Champions are: Noel Van T End (men's -90kg), Arman Adamian (men's -100kg), Tamerlan Bashaev (men's +100kg), Mao Izumi (women's -78kg) and Maria Suelen Altheman (women's +78kg)... in the Medal Ranking, as written before, Russia ended up on top with 3 Gold Medals, followed by France and Israel with 2 Gold Medals...the remaining 7 Gold Medals went 1 each to 7 more Countries ( Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Japan, Mongolia, Netherlands and Sweden)... Full Results here: https://live.ijf.org/gs_rus2019/results

it can always happen...fencing is a situation sport, not a performance one, so upsets and surprises are always around the corner...even if at the end of the day it's always unlikely to have an unknown winner...

luckily I have my 6000 boxes of cardiotonic pills with me...

guys, I crying for joy...

if he's in decent shape, he's good enough to win this one... but trust me...I just can't believe what's happening...the Italian Eurosport tv commentators are going mad...and me, too (my heartrate is dangerously high right now)... wow! what a day for our Biathlon...

Dvorkin unfortunately is not so good...she's ranked 130 in the world, but probably she's not even that "not good"... Zagidullina is a good athlete...on a given day, she could even make the podium or get close to it, but normally she's the 3rd/4th (more 4th than 3rd) Russian girl, for sure not in the same class of the Deriglazovas and Korobeyinikovas)...

I think they will say the final words about that at the IAAF general meet just before the World Champs in Doha, but no official announcement has been done even about when the final decision will be taken...

in the men's division, right now, Italians and Americans (Race Imboden being probably the most talented foilist of the entire circuit)... second row, France and Russia... lone stars, Richard Kruse and occasionally, some Chinese and/or Korean... in the women's division, Russians (Inna Deriglazova is definitely the "queen of foil") and Italians... second row, USA and France... other girls worth to be mentioned, Ines Boubakri, Leonie Ebert, the usual suspects from Korea and above all, the rising star from Japan, Yuka Ueno... also to be followed, the 13-year young sensation from Canada, Jessica Guo (Zi), already capable of a top 8 in a senior world cup stage... anybody outside those names making the podium of a world cup/world champs competition, it should be called a surprise...

you were right, in the end... pity for Pittin...he ended up in 4th place, just 11 secs behind Gruber... it would have been nice for him to close the season with a podium finish, just to build some more confidence in next year's perspective...

it will be...it will be...

finally! finally! finally! I'm so happy Doro proved me wrong...at least once in her lifetime! by the way, she got so close to give me reason also this time... but apart from that, I've always been so harsh on her because I've always felt so frustrated by her wasted chances...and more than anything by her reaction, her attitude toward those missed chances... and when it wasn't expected at all, when nobody thought she could do it...bang! the race of her life! p.s. I must confess that a couple of tears have made their appearance down my eyes at the end of the race... p.p.s. however, today it was Vittozzi to give me some "satisfaction"...just started and she already had 3 missed shots... in the end, she came back from second last to 8th (and just on Roeiseland's shoulders)...so, not a disaster, after all... p.p.p.s. however, in the women's division, this is really the world championship of the "Imaginary Invalid"...apart from Oeberg's 15km, there's no race where the podium is not monopolized by supposed sick girls... then they seem to be offended if someone says "I don't trust you at all"...

but it was only a test race for her...she's preparing the world cup's 50km, which is her target also for Tokyo 2020...

PCR Result: https://data.fis-ski.com/pdf/2019/NK/4147/2019NK4147PCR.pdf It could lead to an interesting race...

2019 WorldSkate SLS Pro Tour Seeding announced The first stop of the World Skate SLS Pro Tour 2019 will write an important page in skateboarding history, being the first event ever assigning points to the street skateboarding ranking for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games. So the spotlight is on the course as we could see the future Olympic skaters already in the Global Open Qualifiers! With the first World Skate SLS Pro Tour stop debuting in late May, we are releasing rules defining how the athletes will be seeded into each of the tours stops of Season #1. Further details about registrations, additional tour stops and seeding rule for the World Championship of Street 2019 will follow up shortly. Please, check the .pdf file for more info about seeding rules and format WorldSkate SLS Pro Tour Seeding Rules 2019

actually KAT and Horford are eligible to play for the Dominican Republic, not Puerto Rico... KAT did play for them (only) when he was 16/17...Horford, I have no idea if he ever did it...

it wasn't a tactical choice... it looks Wierer yesterday took too much cold and had a congestion, leading to severe stomach problems...which is quite scary also in perspective for tomorrow... and unfortunately, we only have 5 girls in our team, so Vittozzi had to ski also today's race (the other option would have been to withdraw for the relay, but probably it would have been unfair to the other girls and they choose to start this sort of B-team anyway)...

yes, if we only count Grand Slam tournaments, this is their first medal... until now, they only collected a bunch of 5th places as their best results... and fun fact, today's medal didn't even come from their best athlete by far (Komronshokh Ustopiriyon, who has already a few Grand Prix wins and Continental Champs medals in his palmares)...

Grand Slam (Ekaterinburg, RUS) Day #2 Recap Second day of the Russian Grand Slam and once again we have 4 different Nations winning the 4 Gold Medals up for grabs on today's schedule (2 of them adding another Gold to yesterday's success) and still no Gold for Japan, despite today they had a couple of players more credited than yesterday's lineup... and finally, we also have the first win for the Host Nation, until now one of the most disappointing teams in this tournament... Today's champions are: Darya Davydova (women's -63kg); Marie Eve Gahie (women's -70kg); Tommy Macias (men's -73kg) and Sagi Muki (men's -81kg)... in the medal standings, France and Israel are the only 2 Nations with 2 Gold medals, meanwhile all the remaining winners from yesterday and today have 1 Gold Medal each... Full Rankings, here: https://live.ijf.org/gs_rus2019/results

Grand Slam (Ekaterinburg, RUS) Day #1 Recap Time for another Grand Slam tournament, this week in the heart of Siberia... and this means that we have about half the usual Nations at the start, and some of them (most notably, Japan) not even with their best judo players... as said, Japan is here with their 100th tier team or so...and...surprise, surprise...in day #1 they didn't win a single Gold Medal... last time it happened, it was quite a long time ago... so, many other Nations had a good chance to step up and take advantage of this situation... and in fact, today's 5 Gold Medals went to 5 different Nations: Argentina (Paula Pareto, women's -48kg); Israel (Gili Cohen, women's -52kg); Canada (Christa Deguchi, women's -57kg); Mongolia (Unubold Lkhagvajamts, men's -60kg) and France (Kilian Le Blouch, men's -66kg)... Full Rankings, here: https://live.ijf.org/gs_rus2019/results

and finally, also the 2 main European Leagues (after the KHL, of course) ended their regular season and are ready to start their playoffs campaign... the SHL ( Swedish League) RS was won by Färjestad BK only because of direct match-ups against Luleå HF (both teams recorded 101 points in 52 games)... recently crowned European Champions Frölunda HC (3rd), Djurgårdens IF (4th), Skellefteå AIK (5th) and IF Malmö Redhawks (6th) complete the top 6...all of these teams are already through to the quarterfinals series... meanwhile reigning SHL champions Växjö Lakers HC (7th), HV 71 (8th), Rögle BK (9th) and Örebro HK (10th) have to look for their place in the top 8 by facing each other in the Preliminary Round (best-of-3 series)... and these are the Preliminary Round pairings: Växjö Lakers vs Örebro and HV 71 vs Rögle all the action starts Tomorrow, saturday, March 16th all Details, Results, Rankings and more are available on these 2 websites: https://www.shl.se/ http://stats.swehockey.se/ScheduleAndResults/Overview/9171 http://stats.swehockey.se/ScheduleAndResults/Overview/9820 in Finland, instead, the Liiga RS champions are the guys from Kärpät Oulu...meanwhile Tappara Tampere ended up as the runner-up team, but with a big 29-point difference (137 to 108, all in 60 games)... from the 3rd through to the 6th places, we can find the teams that are also already qualified to the quarterfinals: Pelicans Lahti (3rd), TPS Turku (4th), HPK Hämeenlinna (5th) and HIFK Helsinki (6th)... meanwhile, Lukko Rauma (7th), Ilves Tampere (8th), SaiPa Lappeenranta (9th) and JYP Jyväskylä (10th) are the teams playing the Preliminary Round of the playoffs (best-of-3 series), according to the following pairings: Lukko vs JYP and Ilves vs SaiPa also in FIN, all the playoffs action starts Tomorrow, Saturday, March 16th... all Details, Results, Rankings and more, here: https://liiga.fi/en/

oh...p.s. not to mention the fact that skateboarding is an "artistic activity" and not a sport...therefore it shouldn't even be part of the Olympic program...

but it would be highly recommandable to have some reasonable age limits... men are men and children are children...it's just unacceptable to have them competing in the same events... imho, no sub-16 people should even think to go to the Olympic Games...

Thailand self-banned from top level weightlifting (they already said they won't show up in any major championship until and after Tokyo 2020...the news are on the Doping Bans thread on this same forum) after they were caught more than 3 times in the last few months, probably aiming at some kind of "mercy" in the upcoming sanctions... and imho, Russia are clearly scared of what could happen if they go to compete in the US "under treatment" (and probably they thought it's not worth to go there and look like a second/third-tier team)...

at the same time, in the German DEL, the preliminary round of the 2019 playoffs is also over and everything is ready for the Quarterfinals to start... in both the very short best-of-3 series of the preliminary round, the lower seeded teams uset the higher ranked ones... Thomas Sabo Nürnberg Ice Tigers beat the Bremerhaven Pinguine in 3 games, all won by the road team (3-1 for Nürnberg in game #1 in Bremerhaven, 4-3 in 2 OT for Bremerhaven in Nürnberg in game #2 and finally 2-1 in the 1st OT for the Bavarians in North West Germany in the decisive game #3)... in the other series, the Eisbären Berlin swept 2-0 in the series their rivals (Straubing Tigers), 3-2OT on the road in game #1 and then 4-2 at home in game #2... so, the Quarterfinals (best-of-7) series are as follows: Adler Mannheim (#1) vs Thomas Sabo Nürnberg Ice Tigers (#10) Red Bull Munich (#2) vs Eisbären Berlin (#9)...interesting re-match of last year's Playoffs Final Series Augsburger Panther (#3) vs Düsseldorfer EG (#6) Kölner Haie (#4) vs ERC Ingolstadt (#5)

so, the KHL was the first top-tier European League to start their season and their playoffs...and now it's the first league also to have completed the 1st playoffs round... no major surprise was registered in the Western Conference, where the top 3 seeded teams all reached the 2nd round and only Dynamo Moscow as the 5th seeded team were able to upset their slightly more credited rivals (Jokerit Helsinki, #4)... Western Conference, playoffs 1st round recap CSKA Moscow (#1) b. Vityaz (#8) 4-0 (4-0; 6-2; 3-1; 3-1) SKA St.Petersburg (#2) b. Spartak Moscow (#7) 4-2 (0-2; 2-3; 5-2; 3-2OT; 2-1; 2-1) Lokomotiv Yaroslavl (#3) b. HC Sochi (#6) 4-2 (4-3OT; 3-0; 2-3OT; 1-3; 3-0; 5-2) Dynamo Moscow (#5) b. Jokerit Helsinki (#4) 4-2 (4-2; 3-2; 2-3OT; 3-0; 1-2; 6-2) and also in the Eastern Conference there was only 1 series where the higher seed didn't end up winning, but this time it was bit more surprising to see Salavat upsetting Metallurg in 6 games... and out East, we also had our only series gone the distance, as Barys had to fight for 7 tough matches to beat Torpedo... Eastern Conference, playoffs 1st round recap Avtomobilist Ekaterinenburg (#1) b. Traktor Chelyabinsk (#8) 4-0 (3-0; 4-2; 2-1OT; 4-3) Barys Astana (#2) b. Torpedo Nizhny Novgorod (#7) 4-3 (4-1; 5-4OT; 1-3; 4-5OT; 3-1; 1-3; 3-2) Salavat Yulaev Ufa (#6) b. Metallurg Magnitogorsk (#3) 4-2 (1-2OT; 4-1; 5-1; 1-2OT; 2-1OT; 3-2OT) Avangard Omsk (#4) b. AK Bars Kazan (#5) 4-0 (6-0; 6-3, 4-1; 3-2) therefore, following those results, now we know the Conference Semifinals pairings, which are: CSKA Moscow vs Dynamo Moscow and SKA St.Petersburg vs Lokomotiv Yaroslavl in the Western Conference and Avtomobilist Ekaterinenburg vs Salavat Yulaev Ufa and Barys Astana vs Avangard Omsk in the Eastern Conference (all series, "best-of-7")... all the action starts tomorrow, Wednesday March 13th (Western Conference going first)...