phelps

to be honest, I still consider the 3-on-3 OT just fun stuff, good for the regular season and the exhibition games... but when it really matters, you just can't use it to decide the winner of a world championship (or a national league, by the way)... moreover...20 mins (or more) 3-on-3 after the regulation? in a tournament where you already have to play 10 games in around 2 weeks? c'mon, man! that's the best way to force the players to give up or dope or just die on the ice... I don't really like this IIHF's decision...

in Italy there's nothing considered "weird"... even if the question about insects is still open, anything else is normally used in our food (in certain Regions more than others, where people might look a bit more "conservative" -I'm one of those really skeptical about most of this kind of things)... even one of the most famous and appreciated dishes of the Northern Italian cuisine, the "Risotto alla Milanese" is made with cows' bone marrow... but especially in Tuscany and Lazio (Rome's Region) you can often find their typical dishes like "Trippa" (the cow's stomach and esophagus with their connecting parts) or "Coratella" (sheep's heart, liver, lungs and spleen all together) or many others (in Valdaosta there's a dish made with pork's mamels )... I guess you need some help to translate it, but here's a list (with photos and description) of the top 15 dishes made with unusual parts of the animals in the Italian cuisine... https://cucina.corriere.it/notizie/cards/boom-frattaglie-cucina-ecco-15-migliori-provare/boom-frattaglie.shtml

never thought Italy was that good also in bowling...

Men's World Bowling Championships 2018 (Hong Kong, HKG) Medallists Recap Singles Gold: Muhd Rafiq Ismail Silver: Dan McLelland Bronze: Andrew Anderson & Kyle Troup Doubles Gold: Malaysia 2 Silver: United States 2 Bronze: Canada 2 & South Korea 3 Trios Gold: United States 1 Silver: Indonesia 1 Bronze: South Korea 2 & Sweden 2 Teams (of 5) Gold: Italy Silver: United States Bronze: Canada & Singapore

as @Dunadan wrote, it's 2019, as the 2020 edition is scheduled after the OQ period is over...

all the scores, but those listed between last Summer and April 2019 (except for the recent world champs, of course) will give only 50% of points, meanwhile those registered in the last 12 months of the OQ period (april 2019 - april 2020) will give 100% of points...

yes, only the last Continental Championship held within the OQ period counts... so, if there will be some Continental Champs in 2019, they will count towards the 2018 ones... p.s. next week the serie A tournament in Shanghai will put some OQR points up for grabs...it will be interesting to see how many of the big boys (and girls) will start in China... back to Italian (big) troubles...Sara Cardin a couple of days ago had a torn ACL (+ broken meniscus), so she had to undergo a complicated surgery and she's expected to miss at least half of the next season, which means that it will be basically impossible for her to qualify through the World Ranking and that she'll have to rely only on the world qualification tournament in Paris after the OQP is over (May 2020)...

actually FIH says that the non-Dutch games are available on YT for the Dutch fans... https://www.worldcup2018.hockey/men/fans p.s. for those who have a sat dish in Europe, there's a wonderful HD feed available @ 7 East (it's encrypted, but biss key is well known -and it's the same for the entire tournament, so you don't even have to search for it every given day)... p.p.s. a VPN and/or KodiMod are also good (and illegal, too) options...

Field Hockey, men's World Cup (Australia vs Ireland) Handball, women's Europeans (Serbia vs Poland & Sweden vs Denmark) Swimming, Italian short course Nationals Cross-Country Skiing, World Cup Luge, World Cup (men's doubles) American Football, TNF (Dallas Cowboys vs New Orleans Saints), condensed version

but still... "The PwC report on refereeing and judging at the Youth Olympic Games Buenos Aires 2018 found that none of the key observations caused concern to the boxing competitions, and that the tournament’s integrity and credibility had not been affected." basically the most important thing of them all is put aside and almost ignored...they just gave a look at 1 youth tournament with 5/6 matches per weight class in total and because of that they think judging is no longer a problem... not only "throw boxing out of the Games!", but also "throw IOC out of this world! and find another institution to govern the sports world"...

feel free to watch... https://www.ehftv.com/us/

Arianna won Gold over 500m, Silver with the women's Relay and Bronze over 1000m in the Short Track tournament... and she was Italy's Flagbearer at the Opening Ceremony (even if it doesn't count for this prize)... Shaun White...well, it was a save on the line for you...

Women's Water Polo FINA World League 2019 Budapest (HUN) - 4 June 2019 - 9 June 2019 Official Website

Magnus Carlsen retains the Chess World title Three-time defending champion Magnus Carlsen and challenger Fabiano Caruana did face a nerve-wracking showdown in the World Chess Championship in London on Wednesday, after 12 regular games failed to break the deadlock. The two young masters face off in the tie-break, which consists of four rapid matches with 25 minutes for each player with an increment of 10 seconds after each move. But the Norwegian only needed 3 of those 4 rapid matches, as he won all of them to successfully defend his crown.

I like Milano/Cortina logo...1 billion times better than Torino 2006, for instance... meanwhile Stockholm...well, the IKEA designers would have done better (and it's definitely NOT a compliment, for those who might think otherwise)...

basta che i soldi vadano poi tutti allo sport Olimpico... battute a parte, l'unica "riforma" di natura economica che dovrebbero fare, invece, non la faranno mai... eppure basterebbe destinare il 10% degli incassi di superenalotto e lotterie varie (e se non vogliono rinunciare neanche a un centesimo della parte dell'erario, possono toglierli tranquillamente dal montepremi destinato ai vincitori "premium", che tanto avrebbero lo stesso cifre scandalose senza alcun merito) alle discipline Olimpiche -con strettissimo controllo su utilizzo e beneficiari, da premiare secondo criteri mirati e meritocratici... p.s. poi ci sarebbe la questione scuola e reclutamento...senza un serio programma di investimento sulle infrastrutture scolastiche (niente più catapecchie diroccate e senza spazi per lo sport nei centri storici, ma via con campus sul modello USA appena fuori dai centri urbani, con tanto spazio per palestre, piscine e campi per ogni sport escluso il calcio) e senza una valorizzazione accademica (crediti enormi e magari anche qualche "promozione d'ufficio" all'americana...e chissenefrega delle conseguenze, tanto già adesso ci si ritrova con tanti Toninelli qualsiasi nei punti chiave di ogni istituzione per raccomandazione...peggio non può andare comunque ) della pratica sportiva agonistica, non si va da nessuna parte...

do I really have to explain why I vote for Leticia Bufoni? https://www.instagram.com/leticiabufoni/?hl=it

well, I don't follow motorsports that much, so to me (I wrote that those are my absolutely personal picks and not the given truth ) he's a newcomer (in the sense that he was earning his place in the general sports headlines week after week for the first time*, not literally, of course...otherwise it would be almost impossible to find someone that strictly fits to this category...even in the US Sports awards they do normally interpretate this category in that wider way)... *and in any case this was only his second season in Moto2 class, so he was really I don't say new, but not an established contender for sure... unexpected...well, in this case his world title was really unexpected...nobody here in Italy had any Italian rider even close to winning a world title this year before the season started...

here in Italy the's no official ceremony about the "athletes of the year" and basically, all media operators name their own "man/woman/team of the year"... but the most prestigious award of this kind is surely the "Gazzetta Sports Awards", voting and ceremony organized by the famous Italian daily sports newspaper... the main problem with this, however, is the fact that the results are determined by the fans vote (everybody can register and express his/her preference in each of the 9 categories), which means that the final result is highly influenced by the popularity of the sport and/or the mediatic impact of the connected event and there's no real technical evaluation of the degree of difficulty of those achievements... however, the event has its own website and you can see how it works and who are the remaining candidates in each category (the journalists of the newspaper have chosen 8 nominees in each class and then the fans voting -today's the last day- will determine the 3 finalists in each category...then, from tomorrow until Dec. 3rd, there will be a new voting procedure to choose the winner of the award in each category...and on Dec. 4th there will be the actual ceremony with the official announcement of the winners -who get a beautiful and very precious ring as the prize for their win)... here's the website (where you can see the 8 remaining candidates in each category...just pass with your mouse on the small picture to see the name and/or click on "Vota il tuo Preferito" to see how voting is going right now): https://sportsawards.gazzetta.it/categorie/ my (absolutely personal...some of them won't even make the top 3) picks: Uomo dell'anno (man of the year): that's a no brainer...Francesco Molinari Donna dell'anno (woman of the year): that's really difficult...I'd rather choose a 3-way tie between Sofia Goggia, Arianna Fontana and Michela Moioli...but if I only have to choose 1, I'd go for Moioli (because she didn't win an Olympic Gold medal only, but she dominated the entire season like no one else)... Squadra dell'anno (team of the year): the actual vote is almost a plebiscite for the woman's volleyball team, but my choice is definitely different, as the girls didn't even win the title...my team of the year is the men's quadruple sculls (Rowing), which came back on top of the world after 18 years and dominated European and World champs but it's not even in the last 8 candidates list... Allenatore dell'anno (coach of the year): once again...the actual vote is only about Davide Mazzanti and the women's volleyball, but my personal pick is another man not even in the top 8 list, Christian Minotti (Simona Quadarella's coach)... Best Performance of the year: once again, I don't agree at all with the official choice...to me, this time it can't be (it should and it must not be) anything else than a 3-way tie between the 3 Olympic Gold medals in Pyeongchang... Exploit dell'anno (Most Unexpected success of the year): very difficult to choose one single event, but I go with someone already in the actual list of candidates, Francesco "Pecco" Bagnaia... Promessa dell'anno (Most Promising athlete): a good 2-way tie between Giorgia Villa and Letizia Paternoster (even if Letizia is somehow already a well established competitor also among the senior ranks)... Rivelazione dell'anno (Newcomer of the year): well, I don't understand why they didn't include Francesco Bagnaia in this category...if there's a successful newcomer among the Italia athletes, it must be him... Paralympic Athlete of the year: a no brainer...Martina Caironi (women) and Alex Zanardi (men) are the Italian stars of Paralympic sports...

Men's Team Epee (Bern, SUI) Final Results Gold: Russia Silver: Italy Bronze: South Korea Semifinals: Italy b. South Korea 45-31 Russia b. Hungary 45-29 Bronze Medal Match: South Korea b. Hungary 36-28 Gold Medal Match: Russia b. Italy 31-27 Here is the Full Final Ranking (and Results) from Today's competition: http://fie.org/competitions/2019/559/results/rank

Women's Team Foil (Algiers, ALG) Final Results Gold: France Silver: Russia Bronze: Italy Semifinals: France b. Italy 45-39 Russia b. Hungary 45-26 Bronze Medal Match: Italy b. Hungary 43-36 Gold Medal Match: France b. Russia 37-36 Here is the Full Final Ranking (and Results) from Today's competition: http://fie.org/competitions/2019/492/results/rank

I'm afraid you put the Irish Flag to the Ivory Coast in the women's and mixed events...

Grand Slam tournament in Osaka...and as expected, the hosts swept the rest of the world out badly... 11 of the 14 possible Gold medals in fact went to the Country of the Rising Sun... and 6 of those 11 wins were underlined by an all-Japan Gold Medal match, too (moreover, 4 times Japan won at least 3 medals -Gold/Silver/Bronze- with the icing on the cake of the women's -63kg class, where they won all 4 medals -Gold, Silver and 2x Bronze)... the remaining 3 Gold medals finally went to Canada (Jessica Klimkait in the women's -57kg class), Cuba (Idalys Ortiz in the women's +78kg, where she upset the Japanese Armada made by Sone, Asahina and Inamori) and Netherlands (the already mentioned Henk Grol in the men's +100kg, the only weight class in the entire weekend with no Japanese players in the Gold Medal match)... Full Results here: https://live.ijf.org/gs_jpn2018/results

yeah, we have a new German coach just for that... happy to see that our money hasn't been wasted... meanwhile Plaikner comeback's effect is still to be seen...

nooooo...that's a big spoiler! I just wanted to watch it later today... naaa...just kidding... by the way, for those who might be interested in watching some women's football from Oceania, all games are available in streaming on the OFC website (for the older ones you have to search a bit through the pages)... https://www.oceaniafootball.com/category/2018-ofc-womens-nations-cup/ p.s. so, now we know the semifinal pairings: it will be Papua New Guinea vs Fiji and New Zealand vs New Caledonia