phelps

a robbery of the worst type, I'd say... in general, I've been watching a few matches earlier and these semifinals...and I've seen many bouts with controversial (just not to say shameful) refereeing... FILA changed their name to UWW, but their attitude and politics are always the same...

I just wrote too early, there's still one match to go...and I don't know why, but Turkish tv is not showing it...they have a still picture of the hall (probably this semifinals are not included in the international tv feed )... if this is their way to promote wrestling and give more attention also to earlier rounds...

streaming on wrestrus is not perfect...to say the least... luckily now I can watch the finals on the Turkish Tv in HD via satellite... p.s. if the official stream has troubles, try the Turkish TV one... http://www.trt.net.tr/anasayfa/canli.aspx?y=tv&k=trtspor

the semis have just been completed...the finals are starting right now...

Today's Afternoon program Finals 55kg Gold: EST vs AZE Bronze: GEO vs RUS & BUL vs TUR 63kg Gold: NOR vs ROU Bronze: CRO vs MDA & BUL vs RUS 77kg Gold: RUS vs SRB Bronze: GEO vs AZE & HUN vs SWE 87kg Gold: GEO vs RUS Bronze: SWE vs BLR & GER vs AZE 130kg Gold: TUR vs RUS Bronze: HUN vs ROU & BUL vs GEO Semifinals 60kg ITA vs AZE RUS vs GEO 67kg RUS vs POL GEO vs DEN 72kg POL vs RUS AZE vs GEO 82kg ARM vs HUN BLR vs AZE 97kg FIN vs ARM GER vs SRB

that's a huge, huge surprise! a wonderful surprise! p.s. Evloev out in round #1 against a Finninsh guy in the -97kg! that's another big, big upset...so, no re-match against Aleksanyan (not in the Gold medal final at least, since it's still possible that they face each other in the Bronze final, if they get there)...

if the UWW website has troubles with the streaming, this could help (they have a live view of the empty hall even right now, with the tournament pausing...and they go up until 1080p with the picture quality )... http://www.wrestrus.ru/news/Novosti_turnirov/chempionat_evropi_2018/on_line_videotransljacija_chempionata_evropi_po_bor_be_v_kaspijske_obnovleno

in Latin letters... semifinals (from 6 p.m. local time, it should be 5 p.m. CET, if I'm not wrong )... 55kg RUS vs AZE TUR vs EST 63kg RUS vs ROU NOR vs MDA 77kg RUS vs AZE SRB vs SWE 87kg RUS vs AZE GEO vs BLR 130kg RUS vs GEO TUR vs ROU

wow! what a game (and what a tournament) by the Finns... they were lethal in both the power play and, above all, the penalty killing, where they scored the game winner while being shorthanded... but Wahlstrom made such a mistake in the very last second of the game...it could even have some consequences through his entire career (I hope not, of course)... but really, how can you miss a goal from less than half a meter from the net and without the netminder? p.s. Niklas Nordgren is gonna be a great goal scorer...I guess he will jump up a lot of positions in the next NHL draft after this week... meanwhile today I've not been so impressed by Jack Hughes...I know it's just 1 match and he's not even 17 yet (his 17th birthday is coming in 2 weeks), but still I expected more from him in such an important game...

Sailing World Cup, Hyeres Sailing Week (Hyeres, FRA) Final Results Mixed Nacra 17 Ruggero Tita/Caterina Banti (ITA), 47 Pts Ben Saxton/Nicola Boniface (GBR), 79 Pts Iker Martinez de Lizarduy/Olga Maslivets (ESP), 89 Pts Men's RS:X Pierre le Coq (FRA), 88 Pts Louis Giard (FRA), 92 Pts Thomas Goyard (FRA), 110 Pts Women's RS:X Zofia Noceti-Klepacka (POL), 61 Pts Pei Na Chen (CHN), 64 Pts Malgorzata Bialecka (POL), 75 Pts Men's 49er Dominik Bursak/Szymon Wierzbicki (POL), 49 Pts Logan Dunning Beck/Oscar Gunn (NZL), 60 Pts Josh Porebski/Trent Rippey (NZL), 62 Pts Women's 49er FX Alexandra Maloney/Molly Meech (NZL), 76 Pts Ida Marie Baad Nielsen/Marie Thugaard Olsen (DEN), 77 Pts Victoria Travascio/Maria Branz (ARG), 96 Pts Men's 470 Anton Dahlberg/Fredrik Bergstroem (SWE), 28 Pts Mathew Belcher/William Ryan (AUS), 49 Pts Paul Snow-Hansen/Daniel Wilcox (NZL), 62 Pts Women's 470 Camille Lecointre/Aloise Retornaz (FRA), 62 Pts Hannah Mills/Eilidh McIntyre (GBR), 67 Pts Ai Kondo Yoshida/Miho Yoshioka (JPN), 78 Pts Men's Laser Jean-Baptiste Bernaz (FRA), 84 Pts Sam Meech (NZL), 101 Pts Tom Burton (AUS), 109 Pts Women's Laser Radial Marit Bouwmeester (NED), 53 Pts Monika Mikkola (FIN), 109 Pts Paige Railey (USA), 120 Pts Finn Jorge Zarif (BRA), 38 Pts Nicholas Heiner (NED), 46 Pts Alican Kaynar (TUR), 50 Pts

well, when it comes to team sports it's quite different, because there you have some club teams that try and get some players naturalized to make their team stronger and more competitive against the richer teams that can buy all the best native players (or to try to win games in the european competitions)... so, it explains the light of the Molinas, Echeniques getting the Italian passport (just to talk about waterpolo)... but you also have to consider that in many cases Italy is the heritage Country of those guys, the place where their ancestors come from...so it's quite normal if they want to get back to their origins... on the other hand, we laso had situations like the great Tibor Benedek's..he used to play in Italy, he got married here in Italy with an Italian woman, but continued to play for his native Hungary all of his life... p.s. in the volleyball case, don't get fooled by the names...the only actually naturalized player in our National team is Juantorena (and as you might know, Cuban are very used to escape from their Country and go play for a Western one...at least for now...maybe after the end of the Castro family dictatorship something will change, but it will take a lot of years, I guess)... people like Zytsev, Kovac, Travica and many others are sons of old foreign players who did play in the Italian championship many years ago, but they were born here or just came to Italy when they were 5 or 6 years young kids and then lived all of their life here (therefore they were formed by the Italian volleyball system and it's perfectly normal if they play for our team)...

Women's Team Foil ( Tauberbischofsheim, GER ) Final Results: Gold: Russia Silver: Italy Bronze: France Semifinals: Russia b. USA 45-37 Italy b. France 45-34 Bronze Medal Match: France b. USA 45-36 Gold Medal Match: Russia b. Italy 45-36 Here is the Full Final Ranking (and Results) from Today's competition: http://fie.org/competitions/2018/201/results/rank

it depends on how relevant is the discipline and how "famous" are those athletes... here in Italy Wrestling almost doesn't exists for the sports media...and doesn't exists at all for the "common" people...so, basically nobody knows anything about the sport, the athletes and doesn't care where they come from... in general, naturalized athletes are welcome in all the sports (mainly because most sports are almost forgotten except for those 15 days once every 4 years) but football (you know, football is always something special and different here in Italy...it's not just a sport), especially if they win and show a true feeling for their new Country (in this sense, Fiona May was one of the most beloved athletes in the last 25 years, since she was truly committed with Italy -she still lives here and doesn't have any intention to eave- she's nice and gentle, well educated...I mean, someone to be proud of in any form)... more in general, it's not that we go around the world asking people from other Countries to represent Italy (I don't remember a single time it happened)... the fact is that many foreign athletes come to Italy to train and live throughout their career...and sometimes it happens that they find a husband/wife and establish here to live their everyday life... and in some cases thay also ask Italy if they can compete for us because our team is better organized and our life standard (even in sports career) is better than what they had in their previous Nation... but this doesn't always happen...there are quite a few world class athletes who train in Italy or have Italian husbands/wives/boyfriends/girfriends and still represent their Native Land... just to name one, Kim Polling, who won the European title in Judo a couple of days ago, lives in Turin and her boyfriend (almost husband) is Italian, but she still starts for the Netherlands (and always will do it, especially now that she has fixed her relationship with the Dutch federation)...

però non è così matematico... la cittadinanza Italiana la potrebbero ottenere anche solo per meriti sportivi (tipo Stefanie Horn nella canoa) in caso di buoni risultati con la maglia azzurra a queste competizioni nelle quali sono autorizzati a gareggiare, a seconda anche da quanto tempo (e quanto stabilmente) sono residenti in Italia (in questo caso, credo che Conyedo abbia molte più chance del Ceceno)... di certo, le "normali" vie per la cittadinanza non si possono applicare ai 2 in breve tempo...ergo, conterà molto la volontà e la capacità di fare lobby di CONI e FIJLKAM, oltre alla disponibilità eventuale di Mattarella (tutt'altro che scontata)... boh? vedremo...di sicuro, io sarei felicissimo se avessimo un paio di potenziali lottatori olimpionici in più (anche se preferirei fossero dei "nativi" Italiani)...

last day in Changwon...and it was a great battle between the 2 superstars of the men's skeet, Vincent Hancock vs Gabriele Rossetti... this time the American won the contest, equalling also the finals world record with 59 hits out of 60 targets. Rossetti was second with "only" 55 hits, meanwhile the bronze medal went to Juan Josè Aramburu of Spain. with this result, China won the medal table with 4 gold medals ahead of Russia with 3 and the USA with 2. Italy (not a good week for us, looking at the overall performance), Australia, South Korea, Belarus and Finland followed the top 3 Nations with just 1 Gold medal each. the full ranking of this Korean WC stage is available here: http://www.issf-sports.org/news.ashx?newsid=3032

I know the Italian team (it's been already posted in the Italian National Thread)... however, as I said, I fixed the problem (at least with Chrome, so I can surf that website)...

quindi i 2 "nuovi acquisti" sono già da ora utilizzabili anche nelle manifestazioni internazionali...bene, molto bene (anche se ho ancora seri dubbi che siano eleggibili per la qualificazione Olimpica...speriamo venga chiarita al più presto anche questa situazione)... p.s. Abbrescia è uno specialista della Greco-Romana...

now it works with Chrome, meanwhile it's still off with Firefox... boh???

then, it should be a problem with my browser... I'm gonna try and check out what's wrong with me...

if only it worked... no teams, no participants, no results page...and the .pdf file gives "Error 404" back as a result... the usual great job in communication by UWW...

sure, my friend! p.s. by the way, it could have gone the opposite way, with Italy helping SLO if you had been able to score first in our empty net...

don't worry...you just missed out on the best years of our hockey, before FISG and the teams from the valleys between the Alps literally destroyed it... I could write pages and pages about that, but I don't think this is the right place...I can only tell you that we were among the top 8 teams in the world in the early Nineties (of course thanks to the US and Canadian born Italians...at that time our team was only made with that kind of players, with 2/3 exceptions every year) and we had a very competitive championship with 3/4 clubs among the best in Europe...but that's history (and won't come back for sure in the next many years)...

I'd rather say "despite FISG"...at least for what concerns hockey, especially the men's game...

OK...now I can switch to Boston @ Tampa Bay (with an eye on Inter-Juventus of the Italian serie A...Soccer, of course)...

no, even if they lose now it doesn't mind anymore...ITA and GBR are promoted... so, next year we'll be destroyed once again by the big guns, but still we fly to Bratislava (or Kosice)...and that's enough for me...