phelps

and finally Romania retain their LW2X world title after a beautiful race...silver to the USA (too little, too late their comeback attempt) and bronze to the Netherlands, just a fraction behind the Americans...

the Olympic events Finals have started... and Canada won a wonderful battle against New Zealand in the Women's Pair...they just rowed another race compared to the rest of the field, in fact Spain edged out Italy for the Bronze Medal, but good 14 seconds behind the eventual winners... in the men's Pairs, instead, it's a one-boat show by the Sinkovic brothers, with ROU and FRA fighting hard for Silver and Bronze...and it's Romania that edge out France for the second place...Canada and New Zealand, who had a strong start, then literally burned out and ended up well behind the medal winners... next up, the Lightweight Double Sculls (ladies first, of course )...

confirmed...the 6 girls who did qualify for the Combined event Final are those named above...

however, not the greatest start for the Hungarian teams...it looks they've been massacred by teams that are not even supposed to be the strongest of "your" league...

tonight some of the most important European Leagues started their new season... among those, the Finnish Liiga (JYP lost to HIFK in OT and Tappara lost to Ilves the Tampere Derby), the German DEL (Red Bull Munich won on the ice of the Eibaren Berlin the re-match of last season's final series), the Czech Tipsport Liga (Plzen destroyed Liberec in the most attractive match) and the Slovakian Tipsport Liga (the reigning champions, Banskà Bystrica lost at home on penalties against Liptovky Mikulas their season opener)... tomorrow it's time for the Swedish Hockey League (SHL) to start...

Karate 1 Premier League Stage #6 (Berlin, GER) now we are to a new level, since this is the 1st K1PL stage with points for the Olympic Qualification Ranking up for grabs... and this is a quick recap of what happened today in the first half of the program... Women's Kata Gold Medal Match: Sandra Sanchez Jaime vs Kiyou Shimizu Bronze Medal Match #1: Natsuki Shimizu vs Emiri Iwamoto Bronze Medal Match #2: Mirisa Ohuchi vs Viviana Bottaro Women's Kumite, -50kg Gold Medal Match: Ayaka Tadano vs Serap Ozcelik Arapoglu Bronze Medal Match #1: Radwa Sayed vs Shara Hubrich Bronze Medal Match #2: Kinatsu Endo vs Alexandra Recchia Women's Kumite, -55kg Gold Medal Match: Li Lirisman vs Anzhelika Terliuga Bronze Medal Match #1: Jenna Browwn vs Yassmin Attia Bronze Medal Match #2: Carlota Fernandez Osorio vs Sara Cardin Men's Kumite, -60kg Gold Medal Match: Angelo Crescenzo vs Yugo Kozaki Bronze Medal Match #1: Kaisar Alpysbay vs Firdovsi Farzaliyev Bronze Medal Match #2: Darkhan Assadilov vs Amir Mehdizadeh Men's Kumite, -67kg Gold Medal Match: Vinicius Figueira vs Luca Maresca Bronze Medal Match #1: Hiroto Shinoara vs Dionysios Xenos Bronze Medal Match #2: Steven Da Costa vs Jordan Thomas Men's Kumite, -75kg Gold Medal Match: Yusei Sakiyama vs Rafael Aghayev Bronze Medal Match #1: Ken Nishimura vs Noah Bitsch Bronze Medal Match #2: Erman Eltemur vs Scott Thomas

and the 6 girls that made it through to the Combined Event Final should be: Janja Garnbret Jessica Pilz Akiyo Noguchi Miho Nonaka Petra Klinger Sa Sol but we still need confirmation of that... so, don't take this list for granted...

Women's Boulder Gold: Janja Garnbret Silver: Akiyo Noguchi Bronze: Stasa Gejo Full Competition Results here: http://www.ifsc-climbing.org/index.php/world-competition#!comp=1564&cat=5&route=-1

all the girls in this final should be in Tokyo (with possibly some exceptions in the Japanese team, since they have so many strong girls that Nonaka and Noguchi could well miss out on the internal qualification)...

I still feel my throat very dry, tbh... as usual, they've built a route that's too difficult, thus killing half of the show...

Today the Para-Rowing and the Non-Olympic Boats A-Finals were held in Plovdiv... Here you can find the links to all of today's A-Finals: http://www.worldrowing.com/news/race-for-gold-world-rowing-championships and here's the updated Medal Table (World Rowing put all Rowing and Para-Rowing classes together): http://www.worldrowing.com/events/2018-world-rowing-championships/medals

and what about Israeli athletes in all Muslim Countries?...

at 7 p.m. CET (Live on the usual channels, from Youtube to Eurosport & Eurosport Player to Totallympics TV -and ORF Sport+ on satellite, if you can watch that channel)...

no, they use only the final result, the official ranking... that table is just a preview of what would happen IF the final result was equal to the semifinal's...but those scores will eventually change after the final, when there will be an official ranking also for the combined event and the top 6 of that will compete for the medals on Sunday... looking at that table, I think that among the women the top 5 positions are locked, but Gejo could overcome Sa if she can get 1st or 2nd tonight (3rd wouldn't be enough, since she would go to 1200 negative points, which is still behind sa's 1092)...

there will be a Final event on Sunday with the 6 best athletes according to the combination of the final results of the single disciplines... here you can find the current situation (things might change from now to the end of both boulder competitions): https://wettkampf.austriaclimbing.com/kvoe/rk_ergebnis.php?idklasse=11&idbewerb=2107&rgsort=1

Today's Results Men's Individual Skeet Gold: Vincent Hancock Silver: Erik Watndal Bronze: Riccardo Filippelli Olympic Quota: United States, Norway, Italy & France Men's Team Skeet Gold: France Silver: Italy Bronze: Russia Women's Junior Individual Skeet Gold: Che Yufei Silver: Song Zhengyi Bronze: Austen Jewell Smith Women's Junior Team Skeet Gold: China Silver: United States Bronze: Russia Men's Individual 300m 3-Position Rifle Gold: Aleksi Leppa Silver: Istvan Peni Bronze: Gilles Vincent Dufaux Men's Team 300m 3-Position Rifle Gold: Austria Silver: Switzerland Bronze: France Men's Individual 25m Standard Pistol Gold: Pavlo Korostylov Silver: Gurpreet Singh Bronze: Kim Jun Hong Men's Team 25m Standard Pistol Gold: France Silver: South Korea Bronze: Ukraine Men's Junior Individual 25m Standard Pistol Gold: Vijayveer Sidhu Silver: Lee Gun Hyeok Bronze: Zhu Haojie Men's Junior Team 25m Standard Pistol Gold: India Silver: South Korea Bronze: Czech Republic Final Medal Table here: https://www.issf-sports.org/competitions/venue/schedule.ashx?cshipid=1750

and here are the results of today's Boulder semifinals: http://www.ifsc-climbing.org/index.php/world-competition#!comp=1564&cat=5&route=2 Women's Boulder, climbers qualified to the Final Miho Nonaka Stasa Gejo Jessica Pilz Akiyo Noguchi Petra Klinger Janja Garnbret

by the way, here's a quick recap of yesterday's events... Women's Speed, climbers qualified to the Knockout Stage Aleksandra Rudzinska Anouck Jaubert Mariia Krasavina Aleksandra Kalucka Anna Tsyganova Anna Brozek Yi Song Elizaveta Ivanova Patrycja Chudziak Iuliia Kaplina Victoire Andrier Natalia Kalucka Di Niu Ekaterina Barashchuk Cui Lian He Alla Marenych Men's Speed, climbers qualified to the Knockout Stage Reza Alipour Bassa Mawem Aleksandr Shikov Vladislav Deulin Stanislav Kokorin Qi Xin Zhong Ludovico Fossali Kostiantyn Pavlenko Leonardo Gontero Jan Kriz Marcin Dzienski Aleksandr Shilov Dmitrii Timofeev Peng Hui Lin Amir Maimuratov Jordan Fishman Women's Speed Gold: Aleksandra Rudzinska Silver: Anna Brozek Bronze: Mariia Krasavina Full Competition Results here: http://www.ifsc-climbing.org/index.php/world-competition#!comp=1564&cat=24 Men's Speed Gold: Reza Alipour Silver: Bassa mawem Bronze: Stanislav Kokorin Full Competition Results here: http://www.ifsc-climbing.org/index.php/world-competition#!comp=1564&cat=23

I'd say almost 0 for the men, quite slim for the girls (those who are so good in the speed event must improve a lot also in at least 1 of the other 2 disciplines to have a real shot at it)... that's because I expect from now to the next couple of years that quite a lot of lead/boulder specialist to eventually start working also on speed to consolidate their chances... and as you might have noticed from the results of these world champs, there are many girls with already a strong pedigree in both lead and boulder, which gives them a big advantage over the sprint specialists, who normally are good only in that event...

it is...but to find the 6 climbers qualified to Sunday's finals, they compile a ranking taking the results of the 3 single competitions...

https://www.nhl.com/news/san-jose-acquires-erik-karlsson-from-ottawa/c-300089330?tid=278542340 OMG! that's a bomb! and what a bomb! an atomic one! and the Sharks basically didn't give up anything significant for him...now they become by far the favourites to win the next Stanley Cup...who can cope with a Karlsson + Burns duo at the blue line? (I don't think they're gonna play together, not even in power play, by the way...it would make the entire unit too unbalanced and exposed to counters)...

it's easy to understand only the procedure...but why they should use multiplication of disciplines instead of addition it's a mistery...and it's totally unfair, it changes (and by much) the outcome of the entire competition (included the fact that they take the athletes not showing up in all 3 events from the single rankings, which causes also some more complications)... I don't think this is a good system...but still, this is what they've chosen and we have to accept it...

by the way, great Speed competition, tonight...full of surprises, upsets and great efforts... big winners of the day, surely Poland...they missed out on the medals in the men's divisions (where they had the defending champion, Marcin Dzienski), but they did make up for that with a totally dominant women's team (despite the shady absence of the Indonesian girls, who could have changed a lot the outcome of the final ranking)... big losers of the day, instead, the Russians...they came here to sweep all the medals and they only go home with 2 modest Bronze medals... and what a final in the men's event...it was so close...but Mawem just missed the touch on the final button...however, the tile goes to the strongest man in the world...so, no upset here (even if I'd would have liked to see the Indonesians at the startamong the men, too)... no comment on the shameful mistakes of the Italian guys (and the boys at least made it through to the final bracket, meanwhile Dalla Brida wasted her chances alrready in the qualification round with our usual false start)...

they should find another way of calculating those scores...this is almost impossible to understand also for people who normally follow Sport Climbing...imagine the newcomers...

I agree at 101%