phelps

by the way, the streaming is a joke...it's half an hour behind the real time...if you go to the blue piste right now, they're stull waiting to show the round of 16 in the men's sabre (which is way over...there's even the clock on the pictures, indicating 16.15 local time, meanwhile now it's 16.45, 10.45 here in Central Europe)... I hate those fuc*in' events held in China...how much I hate them...

I always fear the Estonians...for Navarria, beating Lehis wn't be so easy...our girls always fence badly against the Baltic women... however, I hope this timew Navarria can finally reach the final of a major championship...she deserves it...

I think she did burn out mentally... I don't think she has big technical issues (and I'm sure she's not injured)...

it was expected... our guys have been very inconsistent throughout the entire season... moreover, at the moment we just can't play against the Koreans...the only man who had a chance was Berrè, but he lost an apparently close match against Szatmari (who's a good fencer...you can always lose against him and it's not a shame for sure)... and, sad to be said, Montano is a former athlete...he shouldn't be anymore part of our team, but you know, in Italy is always very difficult, if not impossible, to keep a decorated veteran out unless he calls himself out... finally, I'm very surprised by Ferjani's result...congrats to him...and let's hope not to see too many Koreans on the podium... in the women's epee, instead, at least Navarria got into the top 8...let's see if she can deliver when it really matters once in her career...surprisingly, no Russians in the top 8... and I expected Fiamingo to go out against Branza-Popescu, but not with that infamous score...

and Janja strikes again! this woman is just unbelievable, unstoppable...

every day is a new day...and this time Italy played a very poor game on the mound, allowing Cuba to take their revenge from round robin play with the score of 9-5... therefore, Cuba ended up in 4th place and Italy in 5th...

only 5th place for Ghisolfi tonight... well deserved win for Megos... technically, overall not the best competition of the season, since nobody did reach the top... now the women's final is underway...with 4 out of 8 starters coming from Slovenia...

IFSC World Cup, Stage #9 (Briançon, FRA) Women's Lead 1st, Janja Garnbret (SLO) 2nd, Jessica Pilz (AUT) 3rd, Anak Verhoeven (BEL) Men's Lead 1st, Alexander Megos (GER) 2nd, Romain Desgranges (FRA) 3rd, Domen Skofic (SLO)

The Open, #147 after yesterday's weather did some damages, today it was back to (relatively) easy conditions, which helped some very low daily scores... still, we have a very tight field, with many players definitely not out of contention... the leaders after day #3 are Jordan Spieth, Kevin Kisner and Xander Schauffele...all from and all with a total of -9... another player, Kevin Chappell is 4th with -7 and Francesco "Chicco" Molinari is 5th (and 1st European) with -6, followed by a bunch of guys at -5 (among them the great Tiger Woods, who's going to play the 3rd last flight tomorrow, together with super-Chicco)... full leaderboard is here: https://www.theopen.com/Leaderboard#!/traditional

European Championships 2018 men's quarterfinals Brouwer/Meeuwsen 1 - 2 Smedins/Samoilovs Stoyanovskiy/Velichko 0 - 2 Semenov/Leshukov Mol/Sorum 2 - 1 Varenhorst/Bouter Herrera/Gavira 2 - 0 Beeler/Krattiger men's semifinals Smedins/Samoilovs vs Semenov/Leshukov Herrera/Gavira vs Mol/Sorum

European Championships 2018 women's quarterfinals Lobato/Amaranta 0 - 2 Keizer/Meppelink Ukolova/Birlova 0 - 2 Hermannova/Slukova Betschart/Hüberli 2 - 1 Bieneck/Schneider Liliana/Elsa 2 - 1 Laboureur/Sude women's semifinals Hermannova/Slukova 1 - 2 Keizer/Meppelink Betschart/Hüberli 2 - 1 Liliana/Elsa women's Bronze Medal match Hermannova/Slukova win by Walk-over women's Gold Medal match Betschart/Hüberli 0 - 2 (16-21, 24-26) Keizer/Meppelink

Silver medal for Raffaello Ivaldi in the U-23 men's C1... Gold went to Vaclav Chaloupka (CZE), Bronze to Cedric Joly (FRA)...

Tonight at 19.30 CET (men) and 21 CET (women) the Finals of the Briançon World Cup stage (Lead)... Live free here:

Quarterfinals results: ITA b. AND 6-2 FRA b. GER 5-2 ESP b. SUI 10-2 POR b. ENG 14-2 Tonight it's Semifinals time... h.20 CET, ESP vs FRA h.22 CET, POR vs ITA (remake of the 2016 Gold Medal match...2 years ago the Portuguese won the title at home...let's see if this time we can make them cry)...

almost...but not quite... exciting pitching duel between ITA and NED, with "oldie" Alessandro Maestri showing all of his class on the Italian side (7 innings, 3 hits, 1 run, 9 K's)... Italy did even take the lead in the 2nd inning thanks to a pair of mistakes of the Dutch pitcher and defence, but unfortunately our reliever Alex Bassani didn't match Maestri's effort and in the 9th gave up the winning run to the Dutch players (both NED runs entered on De Caster's hits, the 1st in the 7th, the game winner in the 9th)... in the other games, Cuba avoided the shame of ending up last thanks to an easy win against Germany (who beat them in the round robin head-to-head) meanwhile Japan earned a spot in the Gold Medal match thanks to a blowout success over Chinese Taipei...

29th Haarlem Baseball Week Yesterday's Results CUB b. GER 7-1 (GER end up the tournament in 6th place, CUB advance to the 4th-5th place match) JPN b. TPE 8-1 (JPN advance to the Gold Medal match on Sunday afternoon, TPE play the Semifinal/Bronze Medal match against the NED) NED b. ITA 2-1 (NED advance to the Semifinal/Bronze Medal match against TPE, ITA play the 4th-5th place match against CUB) Today's schedule ITA vs CUB (h.14.00, 4th-5th place match) TPE vs NED (h.19.00, Losers get the Bronze Medal, Winners advance to the Gold Medal match on Sunday afternoon against JPN)

3 failures at 1.94 (not sure if the good result was 1.90 or 1.91)... here you can watch all the Russian championships live and/or on-demand (women's HJ is in day #1, вечерняя сессия...Chicherova's attempts at 1.94 are at about 3h30mins of that video): http://eng.rusathletics.com/sor/calendar.4337.htm

European Championships 2018 Men's tournament is still at the 1st direct elimination round, but women's is already at the quarterfinal stage... and those are the pairings: Lobato/Amaranta vs Keizer/Meppelink Ukolova/Birlovavs Hermannova/Slukova Betschart/Hüberli vs Bieneck/Schneider Liliana/Elsa vs Laboureur/Sude

to be honest, I don't care about forums that much during the Olympics...I prefer to focus on the competitions (and generally in those days I have both PC and TV running pictures from the Games venues rather than writing on some forum)... there's so much time to discuss after the Games are over...just in case...

very good (and closer than expected) game between POR and FRA, with the red & green machine only able to snatch a 1-goal victory (5-4, the final score)... with this last result, we have the full quarterfinals schedule (games will be played later Today): ITA vs AND (h.17.30 CET); ESP vs SUI (h.20 CET); POR vs ENG (h.22 CET); GER vs FRA (h.12.30 CET) in the semifinals, instead, we have the following pairings: Winner GER/FRA vs Winner ESP/SUI and Winner ITA/AND vs Winner POR/ENG

29th Haarlem Baseball Week Yesterday's Results TPE b. CUB 12-2 ITA b. GER 3-1 Round Robin Final Standings JPN, 5W - 0L TPE, 4W - 1L NED, 3W - 2L ITA, 2W - 3L GER, 1W - 4L CUB, 0W - 5L Today's schedule (Playoffs Rd #1) GER vs CUB (h.11.00) TPE vs JPN (h.15.00) ITA vs NED (h.19.00)

personally, my best Olympic time window is the US East Coast time (Rio too was almost perfect)... I like taking afternoon, evening and night to watch the Games, then going to sleep around 5/6 a.m. until 10 a.m. and still having the late morning hours to manage my own affairs... meanwhile I've never liked the Far East Olympics...those times are very uncomfortable to me...

I understand your point of view...and I'd love to have them at 8 p.m. here (in Central Europe), too... the main problem is that 8 p.m. in the USA, here is something from 2 to 5 a.m. (depending on where you live, East Coast, Central US or West Coast)... so, I guess they won't be able to make both of us happy...and I don't know why? I think there are lots more chances that you'll get the best start time...

game over... Spain win 2-0 and end up in 1st place in group B...Italy are 2nd, Germany 3rd and England 4th...Netherlands (5th) and Belgium (6th) are out of the quarterfinals... in group A, waiting for the POR vs FRA clash, which is going to determine the group winners and runner-up, Andorra are 3rd and Switzerland 4th, meanwhile Austria are 5th and out of the quarters... we also know the first 2 quarterfinals pairings: ESP vs SUI and ITA vs AND...later tonight the remaining 2 quarters will also be determined by the final score of the POR vs FRA match-up...

very interesting broadcast on cerh.tv...the play-by-play is in Italian language, the color commentator is a woman speaking Spanish...I've watched a lot of sport on tv/streaming in my life, but this is the first time I hear a 2-language broadcast... by the way, Spain are leading 1-0 with 14 mins still to be played...