phelps

Russia (4-1 vs Azerbaijan) and Unified Korean Team (4-0 vs Germany) have won the Bronze Medals in the Mixed Team Event... and are still fighting for Gold, with Japan leading 1-0 after Harasawa defeated Maret in the men's +90kg match...

senza "pare"... Vianello ha preso la sua decisione e ha firmato un contratto con Bob Arum per diventare professionista (con base negli USA)... https://www.oasport.it/2018/09/boxe-guido-vianello-lascia-la-nazionale-passera-da-pro-negli-stati-uniti/#comment-251871 tecnicamente questo non lo escluderebbe dalla possibilità di tentare di qualificarsi per le Olimpiadi (ed eventualmente poi prendervi parte...vedi Mangiacapre, che, pur passato tra i Pro, ha già confermato che non rinuncerà ad inseguire una medaglia a Tokyo, CIO permettendo), però lui stesso si è chiamato fuori dal "sistema" Olimpico accettando quel contratto che per sua natura non prevede un suo ulteriore impegno a quel livello... p.s. aggiungo io che Vianello tanto alle Olimpiadi non ci sarebbe andato comunque, visto che il talento è quello che è e che per ora l'Azzurro è un colore politicamente così inviso a chi manovra la carretta dell'AIBA che le speranze dei nostri sono destinate a infrangersi contro il proverbiale muro di gomma in qualunque circostanza...

yeah, but Stigger has already done it......meanwhile he's still to get it... let's talk about it when the men's Junior race is over (since there ahs been many riders that did try the double, but I don't know how many got it -if any, very few...I guess)...

Mixed Team World Championship Japan and France will fight for the Gold medal after beating respectively the Unified Korean team and Russia in the semifinals... the Bronze Medal contests will see Russia facing Azerbaijan and the Unified Korean team facing Germany...

by the way, Laura Stigger has just completed a prestigious double...MTB Cross-Country and Road Race World titles in less than a month...chapeau!

and what's more remarkable, it's that the Gold medal came always with the same 3 guys...

by the way, for those who like that farce, Tomorrow there will be the Mixed Team Event... Preliminaries are scheduled for 7 a.m. CET and Finals are set to start at 2 p.m. CET 19 teams have submitted their entry... and this is the Draw: https://live.ijf.org/wc_sen_teams2018/brackets

so, the individual competitions are over... and we have 23 Nations winning at least a medal, 7 of them winning at least 1 Gold (medal)... Japan dominated the field thanks to 7 God medals, mainly because of their women (the men won 2 Golds in the lowest weights and 2 Silvers in the middle weights, meanwhile they didn't even make the final in the 3 heaviest classes...the girls, instead, won 5 Gold medals and still managed to get at least Silver in thoise 2 weights where they couldn't jump on the top of the podium)... South Korea were the only other Country winning more than 1 Gold... on the losing side, apart from the individual upsets, as a team Russia, Mongolia & the Netherlands (each one won 3 medals and no Gold), Germany & Brazil (only 1 Bronze each) and Italy (not even a single athlete in the top 7) were the most disappointing squads... Judo World Championships 2018 Final Medal Table JPN, 7 / 5 / 4 KOR, 2 / 0 / 1 FRA, 1 / 1 / 2 GEO, 1 / 1 / 1 IRI, 1 / 0 / 1 UKR, 1 / 0 / 1 ESP, 1 / 0 / 0 CUB, 0 / 2 / 0 NED, 0 / 1 / 2 RUS, 0 / 1 / 2 AZE, 0 / 1 / 1 KAZ, 0 / 1 / 1 GBR, 0 / 1 / 0 MGL, 0 / 0 / 3 TUR, 0 / 0 / 2 ARG, 0 / 0 / 1 BIH, 0 / 0 / 1 BRA, 0 / 0 / 1 CAN, 0 / 0 / 1 COL, 0 / 0 / 1 GER, 0 / 0 / 1 SLO, 0 / 0 / 1

women's +78kg Gold: Sarah Asahina Silver: Idalys Ortiz Bronze: Kara Sayit & Larisa Ceric men's +100kg Gold: Guram Tushishvili Silver: Ushangi Kokauri Bronze: Hisayoshi Harasawa & Duurenbayar Ulziibayar

to me, the only reasonable format with 24 teams is 4 groups of 6, with the top 4 advancing to a direct elimination table draw from round of 16 to the final... those intermediate round robin rounds are just senseless...and when you have to go to a repechage between teams that didn't play against each other, it's really unfair, too... moreover, I don't know why Japan (hosting the women's worlds in a few days) could say to the FIVB "no, we'll never use that fuc*in' format", meanwhile Italy and Bugaria had to accept that sh*t...

p.s. as we already explained yesterday, Sherazadishvili never competed for Georgia...he was formed by the Spanish Judo system and represented them since the youth classes... therefore, we can't put him in the same list of the other guys mentioned in these last days...

is it so difficult to understand? obviously I mean getting on the map of a sport thanks to athletes grown up, raised and trained in another Country/sport system (who normally have already won medals for another Country), like those 3 mentioned above...

p.s. just 1 week to go...

Seattle still pushing for their NHL team...and it looks that they have support from City Council... https://www.nhl.com/news/seattle-approves-nhl-expansion-group-building/c-300374068

and also today we can't say that we didn't have any surprising result in the preliminary stages... actually, especially in the men's +100kg we don't have almost any of the favourite still in the competition (and the 2 absolute favourites are "only" in the repechage round, which means that they can still win a bronze medal, but no more than that)... p.s. today it's also "shopping day" in Baku, since we still have in the afternoon session the Azeri guys (Kindzerska used to compete for Ukraine until not many seasons ago and Kokauri is a newly acquired Georgian born man) and Kara Sayit from Turkey, who was known until 3 years ago as Ketty Mathe and she used to represent her native France)... ooops...I wrote that Turkey and Azerbaijan went for some shopping? no...that's really something I've never thought it was possible...

by the way, today we had the quickest morning session of them all... and since it's already over, let's see what happened in the last couple of hours... women's +78kg semifinals Idalys Ortiz vs Maria Suelem Altheman Sarah Asahina vs Larisa Ceric repechage Sarah Adlington vs Ivana Maranic (winner to the Bronze Medal match vs loser of Asahina / Ceric) Irina Kindzerska vs Kara Sayit (winner to the Bronze Medal match vs loser of Ortiz / Altheman) men's +100kg semifinals Guram Tushishvili vs Duurenbayar Ulziibayar Bekmurod Ultiboev vs Ushangi Kokauri repechage Roy Meyer vs Hisayoshi Harasawa (winner to the Bronze Medal match vs loser of Ultiboev / Kokauri) Temur Rakhimov vs Lukas Krpalek (winner to the Bronze Medal match vs loser of Tushishvili / Ulziibayar)

I was referring to the upsets and big throws we've watched in the preliminary stages (actualy, there have been some upsets also in the finals session, but nothing compared to the morning)... the big weights are often as you described...so, when something different happens, it should be underlined...

because of shameful and biased refereeing...

naaa...Packers are just one dirty "roughin' the passer" away from the nightmare getting true...

just one word about today's competitions...wow!

women's -78kg Gold: Shori Hamada Silver: Guusje Steenhuis Bronze: Marhinde Verkerk & Aleksandra Babintseva men's -100kg Gold: Cho Gu Ham Silver: Varlam Liparteliani Bronze: Niyaz Ilyasov & Otgonbaatar Lkhagvasuren

so, the first part of the day is already over... and this is our usual quick recap of today's early action... women's -78kg semifinals Guusje Steenhuis vs Ma Zhenzhao Shori Hamada vs Marhinde Verkerk repechage Katie Jemima Yates-Brown vs Madeleine Malonga (winner to the Bronze Medal match vs loser of Hamada / Verkerk) Klara Apotekar vs Aleksandra Babintseva (winner to the Bronze Medal match vs loser of Steenhuis / Ma) men's -100kg semifinals Varlam Liparteliani vs Otgonbaatar Lkhagvasuren Cho Gu Ham vs Niyaz Ilyasov repechage Ramadan Darwish vs Jorge Fonseca (winner to the Bronze Medal match vs loser of Cho / Ilyasov) Michael Korrel vs Aaron Wolf (winner to the Bronze Medal match vs loser of Liparteliani / Lkhagvasuren)

and Marhinde Verkerk is the 4th girl in the semifinals, after beating Aleksandra Babintseva in pool D final of the women's -78kg class... it was expected to be a French day in this weight category...but it didn't work out at all for them... can now become a Dutch fest? well, with 2 girls in the semifinals it could really be...

Guusje Steenhuis is also through to the semifinals of the women's -78kg, after beating Katie Jemima Yates-Brown in the final of pool A... meanwhile, the last man through to the semifinals in the -100kg class is Otgonbaatar Lkhagvasuren, who's really on fire and destriyed Jorge Fonseca in pool C final with another very spectacular ippon...

and the day of upsets continues... Ma Zhenzhao giving a judo lesson to Madeleine Malonga...and France who were hoping for a clean sweep of the -78kg class would be lucky to end up with just a little bronze medal...