phelps

no, because you need a lot of pitchers* to make a team... *pitchers can't throw/play every game/every day...once you've thrown a certain number of pitches, then you need a few days rest before you're able to start a game once again... and also relief pitchers, who normally throw a few pitches a game, once every 2/3 days of work they need a day off... you just can't pitch when you're gassed out (and, moreover, it's very dangerous...the more workload you carry, the higher is the risk of injury...and especially for pitchers, elbow and shoulder injuries are lethal)...

Women's Individual Epee (Budapest, HUN) Final Results: Gold: Mara Navarria (ITA) Silver: Lin Sheng (CHN) Bronze: Marie-Florence Candassamy (FRA) & Ewa Nelip (POL) Semifinals: Navarria b. Candassamy 14-13 Lin b. Nelip 15-8 Gold Medal Match: Navarria b. Lin 5-4 Here is the Full Final Ranking (and Results) from Today's competition: http://www.engarde-service.com/files/hunfencing/2018_westend_gp/swe-in/

Men's Individual Epee (Budapest, HUN) Final Results: Gold: Max Heinzer (SUI) Silver: Alex Fava (FRA) Bronze: Jonathan Bonnaire (FRA) & Sergey Khodos (RUS) Semifinals: Heinzer b. Khodos 15-10 Fava b. Bonnaire 15-14 Gold Medal Match: Heinzer b. Fava 15-13 Here is the Full Final Ranking (and Results) from Today's competition: http://fie.org/competitions/2018/112/results/rank

Israel will not even take part into the qualification process, since most of the MLB players who started for them in the last WBC are not eligible for International play under the IOC rules... and in any case, without their best MLB/Triple A players (they won't be able to show up at the final OQT because it will be held when the US leagues are already playing their season), they don't even exist on the Baseball chart... the Euro/African spot would eventually go to the Netherlands...they won't even have to bother of Italy, since the new boss of our federation is trying to destroy our National team by not calling anymore the US and/or South American born Italians...so, we won't be competitive at all also in that tournament...

Attendance Stats for the 2017/2018 Season (Numbers @ March 20th) Switzerland lead again; SC Bern on top of the European Clubs Swiss giant SC Bern leads the European attendance study for the 17th consecutive year with an average of 16,371 fans in the regular season. The club from the Swiss capital has led the European ranking since overtaking Kolner Haie from the German city of Cologne in 2001/2002 despite a marginal drop by 28 spectators this year. Switzerland also leads the European national leagues in league attendance with an average of 6,833 spectators. Second comes the KHL that claims second and third spot in the club rankings but this year with SKA St. Petersburg moving from fifth to second place. Arguably the strongest team in Europe with many Russian home comers from the NHL and the highest budget, the club averaged 11,847 fans and is followed by another KHL team, Dynamo Minsk from Belarus with 11,738 fans. The two KHL teams are followed by two German clubs. Eisbaren Berlin stays in fourth place with 11,384 fans while Kolner Haie dropped to fifth with 11,222 spectators in average. Finnish KHL team Jokerit Helsinki and Adler Mannheim from Germany are the other clubs over the 10,000 mark. Frolunda Gothenburg (Sweden), the ZSC Lions Zurich (Switzerland) and Sparta Prague (Czech Republic) complete the top-10 in Europe. The top-100 club teams come from 14 different countries across the continent from Great Britain in the west to Kazakhstan in the east. Some of them perform in a second-tier league led by Czech club HC Ceske Budejovice with 5,869 fans. In the league ranking the Russian-based cross-border league KHL moved to second place with 6,234 fans. The strategy to decrease the number of the teams paid off. While the current 27 teams had less spectators in average, the league average increased by losing Metallurg Novokuznetsk (relegated) and Medvescak Zagreb (tops the Austrian-based cross-border league EBEL in attendance). The German DEL had a decrease in attendance of over 3 per cent and dropped to third place with an average of 5,996 fans followed by the Swedish Hockey League (5,669), the Czech Extraliga (5,455) and the Finnish Liiga (4,254). With Medvescak Zagreb replacing Olimpija Ljubljana in the EBEL, the Austrian-based league increased its attendance to 3,216 fans and moved to seventh place ahead of the leagues from Great Britain, Slovakia and Norway. The NHL with 17,414 is by far the most attended league world wide and is followed by Switzerland, Russia and Germany in terms of attendance before the second-most visited league in North America, the AHL with 5,817 fans. The Chicago Blackhawks (21,635) and the Montreal Canadiens (21,299) are the clubs with the highest attendance and the only hockey teams that average more than 20,000 fans. Full Stats HERE

still...amateurs! they're no way near to the overall record... last year in the Norwegian top league a game (Sparta Sarpsborg vs Storhamar) went to the 8th OT (157:14 mins + the 60-min regulation, of course)... however, this is a great series...apart from game #1 (which was basically a blowout in CSKA's favor), all matches are a lot closer than expected and played at a very high overall level... frankly, it's a lot more enjoyable than many NHL games of this final stretch before the playoffs start...

Fencing FIE Cadet & Junior World Championships 2018 Verona (ITA) - 1 April 2018 - 9 April 2018 Totallympics Results Thread

Kata is the most boring activity ever... it should have never been included in the Olympic program...

I also posted a more specific document in the specific thread... you can cross-post it here, too (if you want)... by the way, Karate qualification pathway is gonna be one of the most difficult (I hope not also controversial...but never trust WKF) of any sport... to give an idea, just think that in some Kumite classes at the last World Champs there were more than 150 starters (with the 1 per NOC rule) and at the Olympics we're going to have only 10 starters per class (and in Kumite in 4 out of 6 chances, an Olympic class is made up of 2 "normal" weight categories)... good luck to all the Karate players in the World...

Diego Occhiuzzi (ITA, Fencing, Sabre) announced he's going to retire at the end of this season... his most remarkable success was surely the Olympic Individual Silver medal he won in London 2012 (he also won the Bronze medal in the Team event in both Beijing 2008 and London 2012)... among others, he also won 3 Gold, 1 Silver and 2 Bronze medals between World and European Championships, always with the Italian team...

Qualification Criteria (Draft version) https://www.google.it/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=6&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwi47d_jofnZAhUFjqQKHTmnAFAQFghUMAU&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.karatecanada.org%2Fpdf%2FTOKYO%202020_Provisional_Information.pdf&usg=AOvVaw1k97iooOnwghFfSjb5BhCE

I agree however, it wouldn't be a problem to reach that number even without a dedicated qualification pathway, considered the previous Games...

well, this is the procedure used in each and every world cup, continental and world champs event... for the mixed team events, they just add the best man and woman for each Country and make the rankings...the top 16 go through to the elimination round stage... I don't see anything wrong... I understand that many of you are used to the Olympic format for team events, where no teams are normally eliminated after the ranking round, but that's the abnormal situation...in any other circumstance, we always have more than 16 teams at the start of any event and only the top 16 going through to the final stages... p.s. that document is written very, very poorly, but it's clear that all the NOCs with at least 1 man and 1 woman qualified to the Games will start also in the Mixed Team event (and they all will start from 0, from the same point...so, there's nothing unfair)

Women's Individual Foil (Anaheim, California, USA) Final Results: Gold: Inna Deriglazova (RUS) Silver: Anne Sauer (GER) Bronze: Leonie Ebert (GER) & Lee Kiefer (USA) Semifinals: Deriglazova b. Kiefer 15-14 Sauer b. Ebert 15-14 Gold Medal Match: Deriglazova b. Sauer 15-3 Here is the Full Final Ranking (and Results) from Yesterday's competition: http://fie.org/competitions/2018/121/results/rank

Men's Individual Foil (Anaheim, California, USA) Final Results: Gold: Race Imboden (USA) Silver: Andrea Cassarà (ITA) Bronze: Damiano Rosatelli (ITA) & Nicholas Edward Choi (HKG) Semifinals: Cassarà b. Choi 15-9 Imboden b. Rosatelli 15-10 Gold Medal Match: Imboden b. Cassarà 15-10 Here is the Full Final Ranking (and Results) from Yesterday's competition: http://fie.org/competitions/2018/140/results/rank

Finn Open European Championships 2018 (Cadiz, ESP) Gold: Ed Wright (GBR), 57 Pts Silver: Nicholas Heiner (NED), 60 Pts Bronze: Max Salminen (SWE), 71 Pts News here: http://2018.finneuropeans.org/ Full Results here: http://regatas.fav.es/es/default/races/race-resultsall/text/2018-open-finn-european-and-u23-open-finn-european-championship-es

Karate1 Premier League, Stage #3 (Rotterdam, NED) overall, Japan got back on top of the operations with 4 Gold medals... they were followed closely by Turkey, who won 3 Gold medals... Germany came out as the 3rd best force with a couple of Gold medals, meanwhile France, Spain and Chinese Taipei completed the "serious" stuff by winning 1 Gold medal each one... Italy (men) and Spain (women) also got some satisfaction in the senseless team Kata competitions... looking at the Olympic classes, the 2 Kata events this time were spread between Japan (men) and Spain (women)... in the Kumite disciplines, instead, JPN & TPE shared the honors in the lower female division (by winning respectively the -50kg & -55kg), with FRA taking the -61kg and GER & JPN sharing the heavier class (by winning respectively the -68kg and +68kg)... on the men's side, TUR won the lower weight division (they took both -60kg and -67kg classes), with JPN topping the middle weights (-75kg) and TUR, once again, & GER sharing the heavy & super-heavyweights (-84kg and +84kg respectively)... Full Results of the entire stage #3 of the K1PL can be found here: https://www.sportdata.org/wkf/set-online/popup_main.php?popup_action=results&vernr=165&active_menu=calendar

after a day off...back to business for our sabre girls... fully focused, they dominated all day long and left no space to anybody... well done, volks!

Women's Team Sabre (Athens, GRE) Final Results: Gold: Italy Silver: South Korea Bronze: France Semifinals: South Korea b. France 45-43 Italy b. USA 45-39 Bronze Medal Match: France b. USA 45-41 Gold Medal Match: Italy b. South Korea 45-31 Here is the Full Final Ranking (and Results) from Today's competition: http://fie.org/competitions/2018/756/results/rank

Yesterday the Swimming Marathon World Cup started in Doha (QAT) and it was quite a Dutch show, with both wins going to Sharon Van Rouwendaal among the women and Ferry Weertman among the men (where 1500m Freestyle Olympic Champion Gregorio Paltrinieri made his world cup debut...and it was a quite encouraging one)... here are the Full Results: Women http://www.fina.org/competition-detailed-results/fina-marathon-swim-world-series-2018-women-10km/event Men http://www.fina.org/competition-detailed-results/fina-marathon-swim-world-series-2018-men-10km/event

still feeling very, very bad... so, basically, I spent the last 3/4 days on the couch in front of my TV watching a lot of things without well defined criteria... mostly, it was about the Winter Sports last stretch of the season... then some Football (Soccer) European Cups, a lot of Hockey (NHL, but also many other European leagues like KHL, Extraliga from CZE and SVK, Swiss NLA and German DEL) and earlier today, the last 20km or so of the Milano-San Remo Road Cycling "Spring Classic"... right now, I'm alternating some Golf (US PGA Tour, Arnold Palmer Invitational) and some live NHL Hockey (Edmonton @ Florida, later at 10 p.m. CET New Jersey @ Los Angeles Kings)...

awful comeback to the usual world cup activity for Italy... not a single girl in the top 8 (and only 1 in the top 16), with Errigo losing this time just in her first round assault... on the overall side, there have been some quite surprising results, too...especially Pascu's win (well deserved, to be honest...she defeated, among others, world no.1 Olga Kharlan in the quarterfinals) and Pusztai's silver (this girl just came out of last week's junior europeans, but she's already good among the senior ranks...and this is not her first good placing in the top class)...

Women's Individual Sabre (Athens, GRE) Final Results: Gold: Bianca Pascu (ROU) Silver: Liza Pusztai (HUN) Bronze: Anna Marton (HUN) & Manon Brunet (FRA) Semifinals: Pascu b. Marton 15-12 Pusztai b. Brunet 15-9 Gold Medal Match: Pascu b. Pusztai 15-11 Here is the Full Final Ranking (and Results) from Today's competition: http://fie.org/competitions/2018/151/results/rank

when I read things like these, I can only feel a sense of sadness...

Korean freestyle skiers (Choi Jae-Woo, 24, and Kim Ji-Hyun, 23) banned for life after sex abuse claim https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/korean-skiers-banned-for-life-after-sex-abuse-claim-tlq6wspfb http://www.euronews.com/2018/03/15/freestyle-skiing-korean-moguls-skiers-banned-for-sexual-harassment