phelps

the Olympic Games are underway, but that's not the only sport event running in this weekend... Fencing doesn't stop... Men's Individual Foil (Bonn, GER) Final Results: Gold: Alexey Cheremisinov (RUS) Silver: Alexander Massialas (USA) Bronze: Guillaume Bianchi (ITA) & Jeremy Cadot (FRA) Semifinals: Cheremisinov b. Bianchi 15-8 Massialas b. Cadot 15-11 Gold Medal Match: Cheremisinov b. Massialas 15-8 Here is the Full Final Ranking (and Results) from Today's competition: http://fie.org/competitions/2018/138/results/rank

scheduling...scheduling...scheduling... the worst ever...and by far... p.s. here in Italy also the broadcasting question is a real scandal...but I think that this would have some more to be written in the next future...

actually Dominik and Kevin Fischnaller are cousins... apart from that, I guess the Gold has gone (who wrote that Loch is out of shape and above all that he can't handle this track? )... then I think there are still 7 men who could win a medal (even if 3 of them have a good advantage over the others)... and imho, Kindl is today's big loser (no way he can make up half a second in tomorrow's runs)...

day 1... to me, overall it was a pretty average one... as an Italian fan, well...the word "disaster" doesn't even give the idea (if this is the preview, I guess there's a chance to improve all of Sochi 2014 negative records)... what I enjoyed the most: for sure, the Kalla vs Bjorgen duel in Cross Country Skiing... what I didn't like at all: the Ski Jumping competition...boring...and with the wrong winner (at least to my taste)...give us the ski flying!!! and, of course, all the Italian flops here and there around the tracks... also the Luge and Biathlon events left me with a strange feeling (and I'm talking of the general feeling, nothing to share with my biased Italian eyes)...I didn't feel excited enough watching them, it was almost as if they were just another anonymous world cup race... the Short Track competion, instead, technically was just ruined by the judges (you can't advance 9 skaters to the final...c'mon, men!!!) and by an idiot as the ice master...it could have been a great show, but it ended up in a mess... and I don't even write about the TV production, the Italian broadcasting troubles and the awful scheduling of the entire Olympics (for this last item, there's a more appropriate thread)... I hope tomorrow's gonna get better for me and I hope we can watch a few more entertaing competitions...

sure...I can't wait to watch it...

sure, but still... I always have this thing in my mind when I watch a CC race...

women's game is not hockey...they use the same name, but it's just another sport... the only games that's worth watching are the USA vs CAN clashes... p.s. of course I'm still watching this game...but trust me, don't take people like me and @hckosice as an example...we're just addicted to anything looks like a game with sticks and pucks (we don't even need it to be played on ice, though we prefer that)... p.p.s. I'm also a bit surprised by the difficult period the Swedes are going through...I expected a definitely better game from them... but until they take the win home...

maybe I'm a little biased...but what if Belmondo didn't have to fight throughout her entire career against the likes of Egorova, Lazutina, Danilova, Nageijkina, Kuitunen and other people like those ones?

Jansrud, too...he and the Swiss today looked well in front of the rest of the field... and behind them there's a bunch of hungry wolves (Svindal, Paris, the Austrians -maybe except for Franz, who looks a bit slower than his teammates- and also a few other outsiders, like the Frenchmen and even Innerhofer, who was still in full contention until the intermediate #4, when the real effort ended -most athletes just had a touristic attitude in the last 30 seconds of the race)... I think tomorrow it's gonna be quite an open race, with some room for huge upsets (even if at the end the winner will not be the classic one-hit wonder kind of guy)...

I still go with X-Games winner, Markus Kleveland... today he didn't do anything more than he needed, but to have an idea of what he could do, just look at his X-Games performance... quali results from different heats shouldn't be compared (different conditions, different mindset and above all, different jury panel)...

tomorrow I hope to be able to watch all the most relevant events... but my "must" are for sure Cross Country Skiing, Biathlon, Short Track, Speedskating and Luge...

but very, very long... I hope they can fix the problems before the start of tomorrow's competitions, otherwise it's a nightmare follow the Games without the official site's support...

My pick is Wust winning the Gold medal, with Blondin and Takagi fighting up to the last skate for Silver and Bronze... and I pick Pechstein as my "luxus outsider"... for the Italian concerns, I hope Lollobrigida can make at least the 15th place, but I wouldn't be surprised if she just shows up and ends up last (and by miles), since she's only been talking about the Mass Start in the last 2 years or so...

[hide] Event & Date Athletes Gold Silver Bronze Men's Downhill Day 1 February 11th, 2018 Max Franz Vincent Kriechmayr Matthias Mayer X Hannes Reichelt Adrien Theaux Thomas Dressen Peter Fill Dominik Paris Kjetil Jansrud Aksel Lund Svindal X Beat Feuz X Gilles Roulin Any Athlete from North America Any Other Athlete Women's Giant Slalom Day 2 February 12th, 2018 Any Athlete from Austria Tessa Worley X Victoria Rebensburg X Federica Brignone X Sofia Goggia Manuela Moelgg Ragnhild Mowinckel Tina Robnik Estelle Alphand Sara Hector Lara Gut Mikaela Shiffrin Any Other Athlete Men's Super-Combined Day 3 February 13th, 2018 Romed Baumann Marcel Hirscher X Matthias Mayer Victor Muffat-Jeandet Alexis Pinturault X Peter Fill Dominik Paris Kjetil Jansrud Luca Aerni Mauro Caviezel X Pavel Tirkhichev Any Other Athlete Women's Slalom Day 4 February 14th, 2018 Bernadette Schild Any Athlete from Germany Any Athlete from Italy Nina Haver-Loeseth Petra Vlhova Estelle Alphand Frida Hansdotter X Anna Swenn-Larsson Wendy Holdener X Melanie Meillard Mikaela Shiffrin X Any Other Athlete Men's Super-G Day 5 February 15th, 2018 Max Franz Vincent Kriechmayr X Matthias Mayer Hannes Reichelt X Any Athlete from Canada Adrien Theaux Thomas Dressen Josef Ferstl Peter Fill Dominik Paris Aleksander Aamodt Kilde X Kjetil Jansrud Aksel Lund Svindal Beat Feuz Any Other Athlete Women's Super-G Day 6 February 17th, 2018 Nicole Schmidhofer Anna Veith Any Athlete from France Victoria Rebensburg Federica Brignone Sofia Goggia Johanna Schnarff Tina Weirather Ragnhild Mowinckel X Michelle Gissin Lara Gut X Any Other Athlete X Men's Giant Slalom Day 7 February 18th, 2018 Manuel Feller Marcel Hirscher X Alexis Pinturault Luca De Aliprandini Henrik Kristoffersen X Leif Kristian Nestvold-Haugen Zan Kranjec Matts Olsson Justin Murisier Ted Ligety X Any Other Athlete Women's Downhill Day 8 February 21st, 2018 Cornelia Hutter Nicole Schmidhofer Ramona Sieberhofen Any Athlete from France Sofia Goggia X Tina Weirather X Ragnhild Mowinckel Michelle Gisin Lara Gut Mikaela Shiffrin Lindsey Vonn X Jacqueline Wiles Any Other Athlete Men's Slalom Day 9 February 22nd, 2018 Manuel Feller X Marcel Hirscher X Michael Matt Alexis Pinturault Dave Ryding Stefano Gross Sebastian Foss-Solevaag Henrik Kristoffersen X Andre Myhrer Luca Aerni Daniel Yule Any Other Athlete Women's Super-Combined Day 10 February 23rd, 2018 Ricarda Haaser Anne-Sophie Barthet Federica Brignone X Sofia Goggia Marusa Ferk Denise Feierabend Michelle Gisin Wendy Holdener X Mikaela Shiffrin X Any Athlete from North America Any Other Athlete Team Event Day 11 February 24th, 2018 Austria Canada France X Germany Italy Norway Slovakia Sweden X Switzerland X United States Any Other Athlete [/hide]

I guess they're already so experienced that they don't need so many runs to "read" the track perfectly (especially when the training runs are not in the same conditions as the competition's ones)...

they're just settin'it up for another Shaun White's undeserved gold... that's definitely a NBC's plot (I guess thay called Mr.Reddington himself to write the Blacklist of Shaun's rivals and getting them off the Games)... it's a joke, of course...

probably your TV is better than mine (it doesn't take that much...my TV is a old cheap model...I'm just waiting the big offer on the 2018 models later in the year to get a new 4K one ) and adjusts the pictures more effectively...

to me, they only used their competition's sleds in runs 3 (when Loch destroyed the field) and today in the first of the 2 runs (and Loch was still there among the best...trying to hide himself as much as he can, though)... however, I hope that the night competition runs (with colder and dryer track than in the morning/afternoon training runs) won't give them theur usual technological advantage... looking at the Italians, now I'm really afraid that we're going to have some huge disappointment...K-Fisch is starting to feel the pressure and raising his times, D-Fisch is too inconsistent, Rieder just ain't got the talent... I guess it's gonna be Loch vs Kindl vs Repilov for the medals...

I think it's more about personal feeling... the ES Player here works as good as in the rest of Europe (provided you have a good internet connection), but to me a 720p/5000kbps/25fps stream is not good enough...as I wrote before, I'm used to MLB.tv, NHL.tv, NFL GamePass, Amazon and Netflix streams...1080i/p and 60fps for sports streams are a "must" for me (I'm OK with lower fps rate only in movies and tv series, since they were born with that features)... and I guess they also have some encoding problems, because the difference in the viewing experience between ES Player and the other services I mentioned above it's really too big (and not in favor of the ESP)... about being cheap...there's no doubt about it...I got a 12-month offer for only 15€ (and here in Italy they also have our National Basketball Championship and the Euroleague as exclusive rights -actually our BB league also has a 1-game slot on our FTA public channel Raisport+, but that's just a marginal part of the whole tournament)...

I just want to let you know the unbelievable farce going on in Italy... in our Country, as in almost any European Nation, Discovery Media (Eurosport) has bought the main set of TV rights of the Olympic Games... normally, we have 3 ways to follow Eurosport...on the Digital Terrestrial TV as part of the Mediaset Premium Pay-TV offer (less than 2 million subscribers), on satellite TV (main package of Sky Italia Pay-TV, 4.7 million subs) or online (their Eurosport Player, just a few subs, slightly over 100,000)... well, last night, when the Games were to start, we all discovered that sky ITA's sat channels were not to broadcast the Games...and only today in the afternoon came out that there won't be any sat broadcast of the Games because Discovery asked for more money to show the "Olympic package"... so, in the year 2018, in Italy we won't be able to watch the most part of the Olympic Games in high definition (on Mediaset Premium the Eurosport 1 & 2 channels are only in SD...their Player you all know how poor in terms of picture quality is)... now many people are going crazy because of that, especially because nobody expected anything similar (and nobody - not sky ITA nor Eurosport - did announce anything in the past days)... and so, most Italians have to be satisfied with the very limited offer of our public broadcaster (RAI), which, among other things, can't even show a single second of Ice Hockey, Curling, Nordic Combined and Skeleton events because of the agreement with Discovery Group... sometimes I'm really ashamed of being Italian, of living in this fuc*in' place...

tomorrow I'm just going to watch the Moguls quali, the men's downhill 2nd training run and possibly some curling on demand, during the day (of course)... as usual...and this time more than ever, I don't have absolutely any interest in the Opening Ceremony... by the way, today, other than some Olympic action, I already watched the 1st Futsal Euro 2018 semifinal (POR vs RUS, with a very controversial ending)...and right now it's time for the 2nd one (ESP vs BRA...ops...I mean, KAZ )...

[hide] Sporting Rivalries and Medals (15) 1- On Day 1, the first 5 Gold Medals will be awarded to athletes from 5 different countries. [NO - 1] 2- At least 27 countries will win a Medal, surpassing the Sochi 2014 Games' total. [NO - 1] 3- At least 2 events will not result in the common 1 Gold, 1 Silver, 1 Bronze Medal Podium finish. [NO - 1] 4- South Korea will finish in the top five on the medal table. [NO - 5] 5- Canada will finish ahead of the USA in the medal table. [NO - 6] 6- By total medals won, Norway & Germany will win more than Canada & the United States, who in turn will win more than Japan & South Korea. [YES - 10] 7- At least one nation will win their first ever Gold Medal at a Winter Olympics. [NO - 1] 8- Excluding DNFs, at least one irish athlete will finish ahead of a briton. [NO - 1] 9- A nation will win six or more medals without winning gold. [YES - 1] 10- Austria will finish ahead of Switzerland in the medal table. [NO - 1] 11- We will have at least 5 Gold Medal winners being less than 18 years young on that given day. [NO - 1] 12- At least 3 Torino 2006 medalists will win a Medal in PyeongChang. [YES - 5] 13- At least one medal event will be postponed to another day. [NO - 1] 14- More women than men will win medals for the nation that will rank 1st on the medal table. [NO - 1] 15- At least 3 nations will win 10 or more gold medals. [YES - 5] Alpine Skiing (5) 16- Mikaela Shiffrin (USA) will win at least 3 Gold Medals. [NO - 1] 17- Norway will win the most medals on the Men's side. [NO - 10] 18- At least 33% of the starters in Men's Slalom will not reach the finish on the first run. [NO - 1] 19- Naoki Yuasa (JPN) will finish both legs in the Men's Slalom. [NO - 3] 20- The podium of at least one event will feature only countries associated with the Alpine Region (Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Liechtenstein, Monaco, Slovenia and/or Switzerland). [YES - 10] Biathlon (5) 21- Johannes Thingnes Boe (NOR) will win more medals than Martin Fourcade (FRA) during the whole 2018 Winter Olympics. [NO - 1] 22- Anastasiya Kuzmina (SVK) will win her third olympic Sprint title in a row. [NO - 2] 23- An athlete who finished 21st or worst in the Sprint will win a Pursuit medal. [NO - 10] 24- There will be a Gold Medalist in the individual races with 1 or more misses on the shooting range. [YES - 2] 25- The Ukrainian team will win more total medals than Italy. [NO - 10] Bobsleigh (2) 26- Germany will win at least 6 medals between all events. [NO - 3] 27- Humphries (CAN) will win her third gold medal in two-women's bobsleigh. [NO - 2] Cross-country Skiing (5) 28- On the Women's side, all 6 Gold Medals will go to Norway. [YES - 1] 29- Overall, medals will not go to more than 6 nations. [NO - 1] 30- Swiss athletes will win more total medals than Olympic Athletes from Russia. [YES - 2] 31- The Men's Sprint will see a medalist who finished 21st-30th in the Qualification. [NO - 10] 32- The athlete leading the Men's Skiathlon at half-point will eventually win it. [NO - 3] Curling (3) 33- Canada will defend its Gold Medals in both the Men's and Women's events. [NO - 2] 34- A team from Asia will medal in any Curling event. [YES - 1] 35- The italian men's team will win at least 2 games. [NO - 1] Figure Skating (3) 36- The north korean pair will finish ahead of their south korean counterpart. [NO - 5] 37- Spain will win its first ever medal in Figure Skating. [YES - 1] 38- No nation will win medals in both Men's and Women's Singles. [YES - 10] Freestyle Skiing (5) 39- Devin Logan (USA) will win both the Women's Slopestyle and the Women's Halfpipe. [NO - 10] 40- Dominique Ohaco (CHI) will achieve Chile's best ever Winter Olympic result - bettering 11th place in Men's Alpine Combined from 1998. [NO - 1] 41- Sweden will be represented in the Women's Ski Cross Final by at least 2 athletes. [NO - 5] 42- No athlete who was victorious at the 2018 Winter X Games will win a Gold Medal in Pyeongchang. [NO - 2] 43- South Korea will win at least 1 medal, while Australia will win at least 3. [NO - 3] Ice Hockey (5) 44- A team from Group B will defeat a team from Group A in the Quarterfinals of the Women's Tournament. [YES - 5] 45- At least one match in the Men's Tournament will finish scoreless in regular time (60 Minutes). [NO - 1] 46- The Women's Unified Korean Team will win a match. [NO - 10] 47- Russia will win the Gold Medal in the Men's Tournament. [YES - 1] 48- Sweden will finish ahead of Finland in the Men's Tournament. [YES - 3] Luge (2) 49- Germany will win all 4 Gold Medals. [NO - 1] 50- In at least one event the eventual winner won't be in first place after the first run. [YES - 1] Nordic Combined (2) 51- In both Individual events, the first-placed Athlete(s) after Ski Jumping will not win a Medal. [NO - 2] 52- Germany will sweep (win Gold, Silver and Bronze) at least one of the individual events. [NO - 10] Skeleton (2) 53- The margin of the Men's and Women's winners to the Silver Medalists combined will add up to at least 1 second. [YES - 1] 54- South Korea will win its first ever Gold Medal in Skeleton. [YES - 5] Ski Jumping (3) 55- Poland will win at least one gold medal. [YES - 2] 56- At least two athletes will win medals in both men's individual events. [YES - 1] 57- The podium in the Women's Normal Hill will feature at least 2 of the following athletes: Katharina Althaus (GER), Sara Takanashi (JPN), Maren Lundby (NOR). [YES - 10] Short Track Speed Skating (3) 58- In all individual events, at least 3 participants will be relegated or disqualified in the A-Finals. [YES - 1] 59- South Korea will win all 8 Gold Medals. [NO - 10] 60- Two different athletes will win a medal for Hungary. [NO - 1] Snowboarding (5) 61- Czech Republic will win at least one Gold Medal. [YES - 1] 62- There will be an athlete who will win at least 2 Gold Medals. [NO - 10] 63- The winner in the Men's Halfpipe will receive a higher score than the winner of the same event at the 2014 Winter Olympics (higher than 94,75). [YES - 1] 64- Both Snowboard Cross events (Men + Women) will be won by european athletes. [YES - 5] 65- In his sixth consecutive Winter Olympics, Jasey-Jay Anderson (CAN) will win a Medal. [NO - 5] Speed Skating (5) 66- There will be a clean sweep (to win Gold, Silver and Bronze) by the dutch in at least one event. [YES - 1] 67- At least 5 men will clock under 13 minutes in the Men's 10,000m. [YES - 5] 68- The Bronze Medal winning team in any Team Pursuit will clock a faster time than either of the Finalists. [NO - 1] 69- Four continents will win a medal. [NO - 1] 70- At least 2 athletes will win 2 or more individual Gold Medals. [YES - 1] [/hide]

yes, it's on Eurosport Player and also on Eurosport1 on TV (with many replays during the day on both channels, Eusp1 and Eusp2)...

I'd say CHN vs SUI in the night session and USA vs CAN at noon (Italian times, of course)...

I know... and this will hurt me mainly for the Summer Olympics... however, I can watch Eurosport1 & 2 on TV (Sky ITA) and I have also a 12-month Eusp Player subscription (I agreed to a special offer when they acquired the Italian and Euroleague basketball media rights...15€ for a full year, which is pretty cheap, I guess)...