phelps

actually he only needs to stay ahead of the Chinese to beat him (he's ahead after 2 events)... however, also the Korean Dong is just third last and basically out of everything... it's gonna be quite a messy finish with many overtakings at the last move...

and in the first men's semifinal of the men's sppedskating the Korean guy (clearly the fastest on paper in the sprint distance) did suicide himself with a false start... Vincenzo Maiorca and the guy (don't ask me to write his name) say "thanks"...

and Schenk...actually, he should be the favourite for the Lead segment...but looking at his boulder performance I guess he's not in his best shape (we already knew that in the speed section he wasn't good at all)... p.s. the Ukranian is already second last, so he's mathematically out...

I think they will look at the best single result and so on, before giving out 2 medals of the same color...

one day I'd really like to see an Olympic edition in La Paz... maybe they finally win a medal...

and Axel wins against Bad Matty in the Breakdance event... so, both our guys are out at the quarterfinal stage (not that I really care about that, but still I feel sorry for them)...

she's a 13 years young girl...people can't say how her body is going to grow up in the next few years...maybe she gets too big and heavy for the sport and all the hopes will be gone in a flash... you can never know with such young kids...

and Shuta Tanaka replies immediately...and with a quicker time... with this, I think the Chinese guy can say goodbye to the final (he was already well behind in the overall ranking)...

Pan Yufei reached the Top in the Lead quali of the men's Climbing...

very close race for second place (the last good for the final) in the first semifinal of the women's inline speedskating (with the French girl beating the girl from Ecuador by just 14 thousends of a second)...

well, in a few minutes there's the B-Boys Breakdance quarterfinal between Axel and Bad Matty... always if you consider that a sport, of course...

fencing Gold Medal finals... women's Foil vs men's Sabre vs

naaaa...they had no chance here...they're pure sprinters... and this format favors clearly the lead & boulder specialists... on the other hand, here we have a lot of the youth & junior lead & boulder world medallists from last august...the Slovenians, the Austrians, the French girl Nolwenn Arc (and not to mention Laura Rogora, who won the youth world championship in Boulder and was into the final of the senior world champs in Lead...but still failed to make the final here )... I'd say that we have 5 of the 6 favorites in the final (just replace the German girl with Rogora and basically it would be the "perfect" top 6, according to the pre-competition preview)...

sure...

I'm not so keen on compromise...better nothing than a farce competition...

yeah, but not with this stupid combined format...I want the sprint, points, elimination, madison relay and marathon standalone races...

fencing semis... women's Foil vs & vs men's Sabre vs & vs to be noticed...in the women's foil Martina Favaretto (ITA) and Yuka Ueno (JPN) already battled each other in the cadets world championship final and in the junior world championship semifinal earlier this year...and the Japanese won both matches...

this is a CET schedule, but it's in Italian language... https://www.oasport.it/2018/09/olimpiadi-giovanili-2018-il-calendario-e-le-date-programma-orari-e-tv-giorno-per-giorno-a-buenos-aires/

well, he's basically a former player... I mean, he's still competing on the major tour, but all of his good results are from 8 or more years ago... in Golf you can never exclude a "one-hit wonder", but it's reasonably fair to say that his chances to win an important tournament (and/or an Olympic medal) are nowadays very, very slim... p.s. and in any case he's not elegible to take part in the Ryder Cup, since he's not registered as a European Tour "regular" nor he did begin his pro career first in the European Tour (and only then going in the US)... and you need to fulfill at least one of those 2 requirements to become elegible for the Ryder Cup...

US West Coast time... just add 9 hours and you get CET times...

are they crazy? they gave 930 points to the winner of a continental championship and have those who won a K1PL stage at the 20th place or even worse... to me, there's something strange (and in any case out of this world) in those rankings... I still think that at the end they should look more close to the actual full world ranking and right now they don't mean anything... we'll see when all continents will have their continental scores and when more global events will be completed...

it's still not really updated...we already had Berlin's K1PL and Santiago's K1SA and they didn't add those results yet... therefore, those rankings are not reliable at all...

I was just thinking about that... with boxing out of the Games, we're gonna have around 300 quotas to be spread all around... and imho the sports that need most of them are Karate (enlarging the field in any category to 16 and adding the 2 Kumite classes "killed" so far), Sport Climbing (give up that silly combined event in favor of Lead and Speed as proper Olympic disciplines, with at least 30 starters each one and for each gender), Rowing (enlarging the starting field of the longer boats to at least 12 men and 10 women's Eights and maybe also a pair of Fours/Quadruple Sculls more than today), Baseball & Softball (increasing the number of teams of those tournaments at least to 8)... and I'd like also to add a 5th weight class in Taekwondo... then a few more quotas here and there in the sports (and/or events) where we have a very small field, too (I'm thinking for instance about the Synchronized Diving, where they could go from 8 to 10/12 pairs...but not only, of course)... and if IOC gets rid of Weightlifting too, maybe there's a small margin for adding 1 (Squash) or 2 (Squash + Inline Speedskating) more sports with selected events... but I guess that now I'm just going too far & beyond...

I hope our girls wouldn't eventually end up like our men...so strong too early, just boiled when it did really matter...

hopefully... but I don't trust them until I see a official statement (and even after that, I'd always fear they make up their minds, sooner or later)... by the way, some sad news from the world of non-Olympic boxing... former Pro World Champion Graciano Rocchigiani died yesterday in Sicily after being hit by a car... https://fightnews.com/graciano-rocchigiani-killed-in-car-accident/31291 R.I.P.