phelps

and here's (part of) a post about this tournament I wrote in the general thread a few days ago: (...) I'm really curious to see how the combined (olympic) event is going to develop... for this year's champs I expect Ondra, Schubert, McColl and the Japanese guys (maybe also someone from France) to dominate the men's field, meanwhile I think the women's event is gonna be more open to some surprising winner (even though a battle between JPN and SLO is more likely than any other option)... my 2 cents (more a preview than a prediction)... Women's Lead: the medallists will be among this girls: Garnbret (SLO), Pilz (AUT), Nonaka (JPN), Noguchi (JPN), Verhoeven (BEL)...anybody else would be a major upset Men's Lead: Ondra (CZE), Ghisolfi (ITA), Megos (GER), Schubert (AUT), Desgranges (FRA), the entire Slovenian team Women's Boulder: Nonaka (JPN), Noguchi (JPN), Gejo (SRB), Garnbret (SLO), Coxey (GBR), Gibert (FRA)...with the US girls as very dangerous outsiders Men's Boulder: it's gonna be a SLO vs JPN vs Ondra (CZE) question, but Hojer (GER) and Rubtsov (RUS) must not be underestimated Women's Speed: RUS vs POL vs INA (if they are not done after their home Asian Games) with Joubert (FRA) as the only other option Men's Speed: Boldyrev (UKR), Mawem (FRA), Alipourshenadzandifar (IRI), the Indonesians and the Russians (hoping for some Italian surprise, too...especially by Fossali)

the Championships start Tomorrow... here you can find the competition schedule: https://www.innsbruck2018.com/en/sport/competition-schedule.html meanwhile you can find a small but very useful recap of the main rules of the game...for all those who're not so "in touch" with Sport Climbing: https://www.innsbruck2018.com/en/detail/artikel/a-laymans-introduction-to-ifsc-rules.html

this weekend the Polish Open (part of the UWW Ranking Series) will be on stage... and it looks that Italy have gone shopping once again...in the Greco-Roman -97kg class, in fact, we're going to start a guy named Nikoloz Kakhelashvili, which is not a typical Italian name (and it's the 1st time I read about him)... probably his status is the same of Conyedo and Kudiiamagomedov (not yet eligible for our team at the Olympic qualifications/Olympic Games), but still... p.s. I just noticed that he was Junior World Champion in 2015! so, he could be a very nice addition to our team, if we really get him into our squad...

Today's Results Women's Individual 50m Prone Rifle Gold: Seonaid McIntosh Silver: Isabella Straub Bronze: Daniela Demjen Peskova Men's Individual 50m Prone Rifle Gold: Steffen Olsen Silver: Stian Bogar Bronze: Thomas Mathis Men's Individual 50m Running Target Fast Run Gold: Mikhail Azarenko Silver: Lukasz Czapla Bronze: Tomi-Pekka Heikkila Men's Team 50m Running Target Fast Run Gold: Russia Silver: Sweden Bronze: South Korea Men's Junior Individual 50m Running Target Fast Run Gold: Nicolas Tranchant Silver: Danylo Danilenko Bronze: Espen Teppdalen Nordsveen Women's Junior Individual Air Pistol Gold: Sevval Ilayda Tarhan Silver: Choo Ga Eun Bronze: Lizi Kiladze Women's Junior Team Air Pistol Gold: South Korea Silver: Mongolia Bronze: Russia Junior Mixed Team Air Rifle Gold: Italy 1 (Sofia Benetti & Marco Suppini) Silver: Iran 1 (Sadeghian Armina & Amir Mohammad Nekounam) Bronze: India 2 (Shreya Agrawal & Divyansh Singh Panwar) Updated Medal Table here: https://www.issf-sports.org/competitions/venue/schedule.ashx?cshipid=1750

wow! very surprising win for Italy in the Junior Mixed Air Rifle competition! that really came out of nowhere... good...once every while we can get an unexpected success, too... meanwhile I really don't understand why Petra Zublasing didn't start in the women's Prone Rifle...I know that's just a training for the 3-position Rifle event (the only one that really matters, right now), but once she took part in the elimination round (and scored the 3rd most points), why give up the actual competition (and probably a world medal, too)???

unfortunately it looks they will show only Saturday and Sunday races (at least for the Italian viewers)... https://www.redbull.com/int-en/tv/live/AP-1WNUU4YX92111/uci-mtb-world-championship however, as I wrote, tomorrow's relay and friday's sub-23 CC races will be broadcasted live by the Swiss TV (the German speaking channel, SF-2)... maybe you can find a stream for that (with a good VPN you can easily use their online portal)...

tomorrow's the day... first in action, the Team Relay event (@ 5.30 p.m. CET) this is the full program of the championships... https://lenzerheide2018.ch/en/race-programme p.s. and I'm so happy that almost every important race will be live on the Swiss TV (in HD), so I can give up the average streaming of Red Bull TV (and their special "crowded podium" commentator* )... * @dcro & @heywoodu helloooo!

Nate Schmidt (Vegas Golden Knights) suspended 20 games for violating the NHL's PED policy (which means he was tested positive to a banned substance)... https://www.nhl.com/news/vegas-golden-knights-nate-schmidt-suspended-for-performance-enhancing-substances/c-299924770

Today's Results Women's Individual Air Pistol Gold: Anna Korakaki Silver: Zorana Arunovic Bronze: Kim Bo Mi Olympic Quota: Greece, Serbia, South Korea & China Women's Team Air Pistol Gold: China Silver: South Korea Bronze: Russia Women's Team Prone Rifle Gold: Germany Silver: Denmark Bronze: Great Britain Men's Team Prone Rifle Gold: Germany Silver: United States Bronze: China Junior Mixed Team Air Pistol Gold: South Korea 1 (Choo Ga Eun & Sung Yun Ho) Silver: South Korea 2 (Yoo Hyun Young & Lim Ho Jin) Bronze: India 1 (Abhidnya Ashok Patil & Chaudhary Saurabh) Updated Medal Table here: https://www.issf-sports.org/competitions/venue/schedule.ashx?cshipid=1750

great win for Anna Korakaki (GRE) in the women's Air Pistol... Korea once again with 2 girls in the final, but this time they won "only" the bronze medal (and the subsequent Olympic spot)... however, after a poor world cup season, as expected, they're on fire at the home soil world champs... and many people still say that there's no home factor in shooting...

p.s. I think that also these posts should go into the World Champs thread...

I think he doesn't have many chances...he's a pure sprint specialist, meanwhile the combined event normally is good for those who have both lead and boulder as their strongest events (and it's such a farce that it doesn't have any real specialist among the already established athletes)... however, I'm really curious to see how the olympic event is going to develop... for this year's champs I expect Ondra, Schubert, McColl and the Japanese guys (maybe also someone from France) to dominate the men's field, meanwhile I think the women's event is gonna be more open to some surprising winner (even though a battle between JPN and SLO is more likely than any other option)... my 2 cents (more a preview than a prediction)... Women's Lead: the medallists will be among this girls: Garnbret (SLO), Pilz (AUT), Nonaka (JPN), Noguchi (JPN), Verhoeven (BEL)...anybody else would be a major upset Men's Lead: Ondra (CZE), Ghisolfi (ITA), Megos (GER), Schubert (AUT), Desgranges (FRA), the entire Slovenian team Women's Boulder: Nonaka (JPN), Noguchi (JPN), Gejo (SRB), Garnbret (SLO), Coxey (GBR), Gibert (FRA)...with the US girls as very dangerous outsiders Men's Boulder: it's gonna be a SLO vs JPN vs Ondra (CZE) question, but Hojer (GER) and Rubtsov (RUS) must not be underestimated Women's Speed: RUS vs POL vs INA (if they are not done after their home Asian Games) with Joubert (FRA) as the only other option Men's Speed: Boldyrev (UKR), Mawem (FRA), Alipourshenadzandifar (IRI), the Indonesians and the Russians (hoping for some Italian surprise, too...especially by Fossali)

Today's Results Women's Individual Air Rifle Gold: Im Ha Na Silver: Anjum Noudgil Bronze: Jung Eun Jea Olympic Quota: South Korea, India, South Korea & India Men's Individual Air Rifle Gold: Sergey Kamenskiy Silver: Petar Gorsa Bronze: Miran Marincic Olympic Quota: Russia, Croatia, Croatia & China Women's Team Air Rifle Gold: South Korea Silver: India Bronze: Germany Men's Team Air Rifle Gold: China Silver: Russia Bronze: South Korea Men's Individual Trap Gold: Alberto Fernandez Silver: Erik Varga Bronze: Abdulrahman Al Faihan Olympic Quota: Spain, Slovakia, Kuwait & Australia Men's Team Trap Gold: Kuwait Silver: United States Bronze: Italy Women's Individual Junior Trap Gold: Erica Sessa Silver: Manisha Keer Bronze: Daria Semianova Women's Team Junior Trap Gold: Italy Silver: China Bronze: United States Updated Medal Standings here: https://www.issf-sports.org/competitions/venue/schedule.ashx?cshipid=1750

we're just at the beginning, but this World Championship is already a total disaster for Italy... Zublasing losing her Air Rifle World Title without even getting at least an Olympic spot and...the Men's Trap...what a shame of a competition for us! I expected our guys to dominate the field and take home 2 medals and 2 Olympic quota (De Filippis won the World Cup event in this same range in April and Pellielo...well, he simply is Giovanni Pellielo...no need for anything alse to be written about him)...and instead...nothing! bleah! I'm really disgusted...

and the Foxies do it again!!! after Skelleftea, also HIFK Helsinki must go back home from their trip in South Tyrol with a loss in their bag... Bolzano/Bozen let the Finns do the most of the job, but were just unstoppable in counter attacks and once again did benefit from an excellent job between the pipes by Leland Irving... I must admit I didn't expect them to have such kind of success at this stage of the season...generally, they were used to letargic start of their season, but this time they've built a very interesting team that could be able to play for the higher ranks in the EBEL regular season and should even reach the KO stages of the Champions League (which would be a premiere for them)... p.s. and hopefully, the newcomers Daniel Catenacci and Andrew Crescenzi (they were considered even as NHL prospects until a few years ago) will be also an interesting boost for our National Team, provided they're going to play in Bolzano enough time to become eligible for the Blue Team)...

Today's Results Mixed Team Air Pistol Gold: Russia 1 (Vitalina Batsarashkina & Artem Chernousov) Silver: China 2 (Wang Qian & Wang Meng Yi) Bronze: Ukraine 2 (Olena Kostevych & Oleh Omelchuk) Olympic Quota: Russia & China Mixed Team Air Rifle Gold: China 2 (Zhao Ruozhu & Yang Haoran) Silver: China 1 (Wu Mingyang & Song Buhan) Bronze: Russia 1 (Anastasiia Galashina & Vladimir Maslennikov) Olympic Quota: China & Russia Men's Individual 50m Junior Pistol Gold: Arjun Singh Cheema Silver: Kim Woo Jong Bronze: Gaurav Rana Men's Team 50m Junior Pistol Gold: India Silver: South Korea Bronze: China Updated Medal Standings here: https://www.issf-sports.org/competitions/venue/schedule.ashx?cshipid=1750

Mack basically traded himself when decided to boycott the training camp and the pre-season waiting for a new (crazy) contract that never came... p.s. I'm a Raider fan since 1983...I really hate losing Mack, but now there are no other chances (and better send him to the fu**in' Bears than feeding any division rival)... p.p.s. for sure, given the player he is, I'd have paid him all the money he wanted... but I'm not the man running the show...

Final Medal Table TUR, 3 / 1 / 1 RUS, 2 / 0 / 1 ITA, 1 / 4 / 1 FRA, 1 / 2 / 1 NED, 1 / 1 / 0 GBR, 1 / 0 / 0 ESP, 1 / 0 / 0 DEN, 0 / 1 / 1 MDA, 0 / 1 / 0 CRO, 0 / 0 / 2 GER, 0 / 0 / 2 LUX, 0 / 0 / 1

results from this afternoon's final matches women's team recurve Gold Medal match: Turkey b. Italy 6-2 men's team recurve Gold Medal match: Russia b. Italy 5-4 (shoot-off: 28-25) mixed team recurve Gold Medal match: Italy b. France 6-0 women's individual recurve Bronze Medal match: Gulnaz Coskun b. Melanie Gaubil 6-5 (shoot-off: 9*-9) women's individual recurve Gold Medal match: Yasemin Anagoz b. Maja Jager 6-5 (shoot-off: 10-9) men's individual recurve Bronze Medal match: Jean-Charles Valladont b. Heorhiy Ivanytskyy 6-2 men's individual recurve Gold Medal match: Steve Wijler b. Dan Olaru 6-5 (shoot-off: 10-9)

2018 Individual European Championships Men's Finals Results Bronze Medal Match: Raphael Kandra b. Lucas Serme 3-1 (10-12, 11-3, 11-9, 11-4) Gold Medal Match: Borja Golàn b. George Parker 3-2 (8-11, 11-4, 10-12, 13-11, 11-6) Women's Finals Results Bronze Medal Match: Nele Gilis b. Tinne Gilis 3-0 (11-5, 11-4, 11-4) Gold Medal Match: Millie Tomlinson b. Coline Aumard 3-1 (11-9, 12-10, 4-11, 11-7)

fingers crossed...we just can't waste also this one from 4-0 up... and finally at least 1 gold for us...after 3 bitter losses (actually, 4...if we count the men's individual compound)...

now also the WA streaming is back... and Landi just started to make damages again...

and also the live stream went off for the final end and the shoot-off...really a bad day in any sense, not just because of the final results...

just as if I didn't write anything... also our "boys" wasted a big chance and finally lost the gold medal match in the men's team recurve against Russia at the shoot-off (after having given away the 4th end to a team that only scored 53 points)...

my only cents are on the men's recurve team...if we're lucky, that's gonna be our only gold... the girls are just too weak in the mental part of the game...they're always unwatchable in the individual events and there's always at least one of them flopping badly in the team... they must work hard on that if they want to have a chance to qualify for Tokyo (and then have a decent competition in Japan)...