phelps

by the way, I just discovered that short track has surrendered to the new fashion and has included a mixed relay (2 men, 2 women) in the world cup list of events...

probably he had to pull out after last week's Vans Pro Tour finals, where he had an awful semifinal heat (no idea, but maybe he had a slight injury...who knows? )...

well, high level surfing is a lot more developed worldwide than skateboarding... actually, ISA World Surfing Games medallists of the last couple of years come from all 5 continents...and also the top WSL surfers come from all continents (even if most of them are from USA, Brazil and Australia -in this case especially in the women's division)...

so, only Sorgente (it looks that any chance to see him starting for Italy in the next years have evaporated ) and Barros are there among the top Vans Pro riders (and in fact they had to take 26 and not only 22 riders from the qualifying heats, because many -actually, 4- seeded guys finally didn't confirm their participation)...

damn, I totally forgot that in this discipline there are 3 places per NOC, therefore my not so accurate analysis in the previous post... so, thanks for your update...

all the html pages with results could have been adjusted to a table format, sometimes directly, sometimes with the help of an excel page... .pdf files were not so easy to manage...they always required a lot of copy and paste and cancelling starting from a blocknote page and going to an excel one before posting the table on the forum (all excel tables were perfect fit for the old forum/new results forum...but also now they can pe posted as an image -just look at the season calendar in the new fencing thread)...

here's the men's qualifiers video... http://www.world-skate.tv/live/?liveId=A217BCEBB2594BDF8FE2E65131DBF66302141

however, looking at the starting field, there are no Vans Park Series stars here...so, it's kind of B-World Champs... meanwhile, thinking about the Olympic Games, if we look at the top 20 places with a max of 2 skateboarders per NOC, in the women's event we only have 15 of those spots filled: JPN, USA, AUS, BRA, CHN, ESP with 2 each and BEL, ITA, PHI with 1 each... to find the last 5 quota, we should get back to those who were excluded after the qualifiers...and those 5 spots would eventually go to ITA-2, SWE, CAN, RUS, TUR...leaving out only the last 3 Nations (and 3 competitors overall) of the entire tournament (COL, IND, TPE)... on the other side, in the men's event we already have 18 "virtual spots" awarded after the qualifiers (USA, BRA, FRA, ESP, JPN, SWE, AUS with 2 each and CAN, NOR, GER, PHI with 1 each...and DEN + CAN-2 being the 2 quota awarded among those who are out of the top 22)... but, as I wrote before, it's just a useless ranking, since many of the real stars of this game are not included (unless some of them are among the 8 pre-seeded athletes who are already through to the semifinals by right, whose names I just can't find anywhere)...

Men's Qualifiers, Top 22 (those who advanced to the semifinal stage) Heimana Reynolds Luiz Francisco Vincent Matheron Liam Cloud Pace Jaime Mateu Robin Bolian Jake Wooten Yuto Horigome Murilo Peres Kensuke Sasaoka Oskar Rozenberg Hallberg Q.P. Henrique Tate Vincent Carew Danny Leon Gavin Rune Bottger Keegan Palmer Andy Anderson Jakob Robinson Tyler Edtmayer Kevin Baekkel Simon Karlsson Francisco Kiko

so, Home Gold coming in 2 years time... by the way, this is the video of the Women's Finals (real finals start at about 30 mins)... http://www.world-skate.tv/live/?liveId=A217BCEBB2594BDF8FE2E65131DBF66302141

Women's Final Results Gold: Sakura Yosozumi Silver: Kisa Nakamura Bronze: Poppy Starr Olsen 4th, Jordyn Barratt 5th, Misugu Okamoto 6th, Bryce Wettstein 7th, Kokona Hiraki 8th, Isadora Pacheco

Nippon Series 2018 a walk-off HR by Yuki Yanagita in the bottom of the 10th inning gave the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks the victory in a very entertaining game #5... this time we've had quite a few lead changes through the entire game and a close match until the end, but the result is the same as the last 3 matches, the Hawks win... and now they lead 3-1 (and a tie) in the Nippon Series, just 1 win away from the final triumph... the Hiroshima Toyo Carp now have their shoulders against the wall, but at least they will have their home crowd's support in the next chapters of this saga... game #6 is scheduled for Saturday in Hiroshima, always @ 6.30 p.m. Japan time (10.30 a.m. CET)... p.s. @heywoodu keep an eye on Saturday's game...there's a chance that Van den Hurk could pitch for the Hawks, even if it's more likely to see him on Sunday (if a further game is needed)...

Fukuoka Softbank Hawks took the lead in the Nippon Series thanks to an easy (and not so exciting) game #4 win vs the Hiroshima Toyo Carp (4-1 the final score) on home ground... today's match winner was really never in doubt...a 2-run shot in the bottom of the 3rd inning did break the tie and then the Hawks never looked back... game #5 is scheduled for tomorrow, always in Fukuoka and always at the same time (6.30 p.m. local, 10.30 a.m. CET)...

It’s fair for trans women to compete in women’s sports (Dr. Rachel McKinnon says)... https://www.cbc.ca/playersvoice/entry/its-fair-for-trans-women-to-compete-in-womens-sport

latest news (still nothing decided)... https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/calgary-olympic-bid-city-council-vote-1.4885670

it looks that Santo Condorelli will be cleared to swim for the Italyan National team very soon, probably already in time to enter the Short Course Swimming Worlds mid December in China under his new Flag... well, always if he can swim the required times in the upcoming meets which will be held in Italy in November... and on November 8th and 9th, at the Nico Sapio Memorial Meet in Genua, Federica Pellegrini will make her season's debut and for the occasion she'll get back to her beloved 200m Free for the 1st time since that magic race in Budapest in 2017...

wow! that's quite a "bomb"... I didn't really expext that... I hope it's just because he wanted to and not because he had to (for any reason)...

yeah, he's playing for the Hawks...and he took quite a beating last Sunday in game #2... Dutch players have a long history of playing in the Japanese leagues (Balentien was one of the top HR hitters also in this season, for instance)...

I don't think it's idealistic...it's about extreme measures for an extreme problem (for those who would like to save this sport and, above all, the athletes who train hard to fulfill their dream to take part into the Olympic Games)... otherwise, if nobody cares about a minimum standard of seriousness in the Olympic boxing competition, just throw them out and go on with the other disciplines...

no, because of their nature, pro boxing and Olympic boxing actually are 2 different sports...that's why I'd give this kind of boxing (and only to this kind of boxing) a chance...

the Major League Baseball is over for this year, but we still have a few important leagues running their playoffs/final series... one of those is the Japanese NPB, which is in the middle of their final series, the Nippon Series 2018... the 2 teams that are fighting for this year's crown are the Hiroshima Toyo Carp (winners of the Central League and with the home field advantage in the NS) and the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks (Pacific League champions)... game #1 was played last Saturday...and ended in an unconventional tie (2-2 after 12 innings...yes, Japanese rules allow games to end with a tie)... game #2 was played last sunday...and this time the home team (Hiroshima) got an easy win (5-1)... game #3 was played earlier today...and the SoftBank Hawks took advantage of the home ground and won after a hard (and crazy) battle with the final score of 9-8... game #4 is scheduled for tomorrow in Fukuoka @ 6.30 p.m. local time (10.30 a.m. CET)...

to give the athletes a chance, they still need to throw AIBA and their people away... I'm in favor of keeping boxing into the Tokyo 2020 schedule only if IOC are brave enough to cancel AIBA from their recognized organizations, declare all the until now AIBA officials (at any level) "not entitled to cover any role in the new Boxing World Governing Body" and create this new governing body for the Olympic Boxing, finding new faces to run the organization and, above all, new people, mainly former athletes themselves, to form a new jury/refs panel... that's the only acceptable compromise to save the fighters... p.s. and they should throw the pros out of that, too...

it's all live on the BBC website (with VPN, I guess) and for those who prefer the "traditional" way, it's on their TV channels, too... https://www.bbc.com/sport/gymnastics/45905964

Suzhou hosted the 2018 Vans Park Series Finals, with all the best specialists in the world... Among the men, the American superstar Alex Sorgente won the title, beating in a thrilling finale Pedro Barros. 3rd place went to Tom Schaar. 7 out of 8 finalists are from the USA. In the women's event, it was Brighton Zeuner to take the top prize home, meanwhile Yndiara Asp ended up in 2nd place and Jordyn Barratt was 3rd. Full news, details, results and all you need to know... http://www.vansparkseries.com/

the problem with ski races is not about audience... the most important thing that many people don't know (or want to forget) is the fact that the sport (especially in the Alpine regions) is mainly a form of advertising for the tourism industry and in all the other days (before and after the original schedule) those villages have all the hotel rooms booked by tourists and the pistes themselves must be open to the public audience... that's why most of those places never give FIS the chance to race in the immediately following days (and it's also the reason why sometimes, especially in the vacation high season, it's so difficult to find a place that really wants to host those extra races)...