phelps

as far as I know, A = yes, B = no...but I'm gonna try and check out deeper in the rulebook if there's something about that...
 
Edit: I just read the entire rulebook, and there's no reference to the medals not being awarded in competitions with less than 3 entries...therefore, I suppose that also in the women's LW Pairs USA and Italy will get their honors, despite this event is definitely a farce (well, not that the 3-crew races are really a serious thing)...

as expected, the final was ruined by a damn crazy (basically impossible) route...
 
OK...this is the World Championship and things must be complicated, but this was definitely too much also for this kind of event...
when nobody can even get close to the Top of the wall, it's obvious that the technical commission made a big mistake in building the route...
 
having said that, we still have a "dream" podium, with 3 of the 4/5 main pre-competition favourites...so, at least we can't say that we had a "roulette" final, but a competition where the best climbers did show why they are the best (climbers)...
 
and also tonight we had to use a tie-breaker to decide the 2018 world champion, but this time, since Schubert and Ondra were not tied in the semifinals, we only went back to the "classic" countback (the best in the previous round has the advantage), without the need to go further and use the cruel climbing time tie-breaker (as t happened yesterday in the women's final)...
 
and finally it was Austria once again to come up with the top honor, making the host the absolute dominator of the Lead competitions thanks to both Gold Medals in this particular disciplines...
 
tomorrow's rest day...from Tuesday, the Boulder competitions will be on stage...and despite Austria still have some chances, I expect the music to change drastically...
 
p.s. just another thing about the lead finals (and semis)...call me a conservative, but I don't think that all that disco music and strobo lights in the arena during the climbs did help the athletes through their efforts...

they are on redbull TV
https://www.redbull.com/int-en/tv/video/AP-1WNSQN6UW1W11/womens-mens-dh-finals-en-lenzerheide

yeah, they are definitely going too much further...
I wonder what's gonna happen tonight?
meh...
they're just killing the show...difficult doesn't mean impossible...
not having a single "Top" in the semifinal round, normally is just unthinkable...
 
by the way, thanks to this kind of routes, we're gonna have a 10-man final also in the men's division...
 
Men's Lead, climbers qualified to the Final
 
Tomoaki Takata
Adam Ondra
Sascha Lehmann
Jakub Konecny
Kai Harada
Marcello Bombardi
Meichi Narasaki
Alexander Megos
Jakob Schubert
Domen Skofic
 
 

because Rogora, Schubert and the 2 Japanese girls were all tied for 7th place (44+ their score) and, since the qualification event was held in 2 separate heats, they couldn't go to countback from the qualification round...
so, the jury decided that 10 was still a reasonable number of climbers (not impacting too much the lenght of the TV broadcast) and enlarged the field of starters of the final, rather than going through a complicated (and unfair) tie-breaker...

just another day to forget for Italy...
this time it really looks we can only win some medals in Junior and/or "abandoned" events...
 
meanwhile, in the events that really matter, amazing final in the women's 25m pistol, where Batsarashkina first wasted a 5-shot advantage midway through the final and then lost to Kostevych after an endless shoot-off...
 
for neutral spectators, these champs are showing so many exciting and really entertaining competitions...almost every day there's at least 1 final to be remembered for the ages, with a lot of drama and turnarounds...

just another day to forget for Italy...
this time it really looks we can only win some medals in Junior and/or "abandoned" events...
 
meanwhile, in the events that really matter, amazing final in the women's 25m pistol, where Batsarashkina first wasted a 5-shot advantage midway through the final and then lost to Kostevych after an endless shoot-off...
 
for neutral spectators, these champs are showing so many exciting and really entertaining competitions...almost every day there's at least 1 final to be remembered for the ages, with a lot of drama and turnarounds...

watching the race on the Swiss TV...it looks like they're broadcasting a State Funeral...

Quick, make vaulting Olympic
 

surely there will be a lot of those games...especially in the group stage, blowouts will be the normal rule...close games the exception...

to me, this whole qualification procedure is unfair (and a mess)...
they should just have X individual events awarding x*2 quota pro-Nation...and the mixed team events -if they just can't get rid of them- should be open to 1 team from all those Countries having at least 1 male and 1 female individually qualified (no way they should have 2 pairs per Nation in those mixed competitions...if a Country then has 2 athletes in the corrspective individual event, the only privilege should be the chance to choose whoever they want between them for the team event)...
as simple as it looks...no switches, no swaps, no multiple pathways and so on...
 
p.s. and I also think that they should award a lot more quota at the world champs...at such kind of event, at least all the 8 (or 6, depending on the rules of each competition) finalists should get an Olympic berth, imho (with spots reallocated to the following qualification events in case someone makes the final twice...or more than twice...not going deeper into the rankings among those who missed the final)...
 
I'm for simplifying things, not for complications...but this is just my opinion...

I'd be happy about removing the mixed 4x400m anyway, no matter if they replace it with a 50k walk  

@phelps
 
Someone revealed a video of the arrest of Richard Pánik !
 
lol "I´m playing for the Coyotes !"   dude, Rišo ! what a shame !   hopefully this season he´ll recover and find back his striking form, we need him and his goals at the Worlds in Košice next May
 

naaa, we still have a lot of young talents (and a very wide field of shooters where to choose from) also in Trap...
and I'm pretty sure we're gonna get the full set of Olympic spots even if we miss out here in Changwon...
Shotgun Shooting is "our" sport (like Fencing)...we can have a bad day, a bad year...even a bad decade...but we always gonna be the team to beat in all of our opponents' mind...

wow! what a pair of finals, today!!!
 
in the men's air pistol, I feel so sorry for Chernousov, who led throughout the entire competition and still had a 4-point margin before the last 4 shots...
but Jin's comeback was also something you don't see very often...
and the perfect ending was the final shoot-off, even if the momentum was so clearly addressed that it took most of the climax for the last shot away even before the shooters did take it...
p.s. no comment on the Italian disaster, which is becoming an annoying refrain to all the pistol & rifle shooting competitions...
 
in the women's Trap, we just had the chance to watch the best competion of the year, which did reach the climax with the really dramatic last shot of regulation, with Stefecekova and Wang fighting for the Gold medal...
first an unbelievable and unexpected miss by the Slovak, then the "no bird" on the following target (the last shot for Wang), which probably annoyed her enough to cause her mistake on the successive valid final target...
and therefore we went to the shoot-off also in this event, where the advantage of shooting first paid off in favor of Zuzana, who won her 2nd world title...
p.p.s. for Italy it was another disappointing day, but at least here we got the consolation prize of a Bronze Medal and of an Olympic spot (hoping that this time, after Rio's shameful behavior, our coaches won't deny Stanco the Olympic dream she deserves after earning her place in the Tokyo competiiton)...

If they could remove the mixed 4x400m relay and replace it by the women’s 50km walk I would be pretty happy...

naaa...this time Slovan was very unlucky...they lost just at the last second of OT (after tying the game with less than a minute to go)...
but at least they got their 1st point in the standings...better than nothing...

well, looking at the qualification rules, I think Japan (they only have 1 host Nation quota) will easily earn their 2nd spot at the 2019 World Champs (which will be held in Tokyo)...
then "timing" could play a decisive game for some Countries (Iran included)...because if the Continental Champs will be held before the global qualification tournament (towards the end of 2019, but not yet officially scheduled right now), then we could have 1 if not 2 Koreans competing for a single spot, which could prove a problem for your climbers...
meanwhile if we have let's say at least 1 Korean qualified through the World Champs and/or the World Cup and the World qualifier held before the Continental Champs, then the chances for athletes from Countries other than KOR and JPN would increase a lot...
all this, provided that the Chinese don't start taking Olympic Climbing seriously and, above all, someone from Russia doesn't change his/her Nationality to any of the Asian former Soviet Republics (something like that could change the entire Olympic qualification perspective for the Asian Continent...apart for Japan, of course)...
 
p.s. I just gave a look at the Olympic format...in the final (with 6 climbers), the speed part of the event will be contested with the format: Quarterfinals (#1 vs #6 seed, #2 vs #5 and #3 vs #4), then Semifinals (the 3 winners and the "lucky -best time- loser" of the 3 QTF heats) and 3rd place + 1st place Finals...
therefore, I think they will use the same format also in the upcoming Worlds...

Live stream on Youtube! 
 
 

his name is just Alipour. obviously someone forgot to add a "space" between two parts of his surname. the 2nd part of surnames are often (99% cases) to be ignored for Iranian names. nobody in Iran knows him by anything but Reza Alipour. it happens a lot with Iranian names. that's why sometimes you see crazy long names.
 
the Asian Games was the first time I was watching a combined competition (maybe the first combined event ever in an official competition ?!) and surprisingly for me they multiply the scores (which I wasn't aware of) ! so there is a huge difference if you win one of those 3 events instead of finishing 2nd. for example if you win something and finish 10th in another one you will get 10 negative points. but if you finish 2nd and 9th you will have 18 neg points ! huge difference. and in the final round "speed event" was a kind of knockout system. not a "qualification system".
 
we had a 7th place finish in Jakarta in combined event and she lost the final by the narrowest possible margin ! I wonder if it means there is a chance (even slim) for Olympic qualification . how good are Asian climbers in this combined event ?!

tomorrow's the day...
first in action, the Team Relay event (@ 5.30 p.m. CET)
 
this is the full program of the championships...
https://lenzerheide2018.ch/en/race-programme
 
p.s. and I'm so happy that almost every important race will be live on the Swiss TV (in HD), so I can give up the average streaming of Red Bull TV (and their special "crowded podium" commentator* )...
 
* @dcro & @heywoodu helloooo!

we're just at the beginning, but this World Championship  is already a total disaster for Italy...
Zublasing losing her Air Rifle World Title without even getting at least an Olympic spot and...the Men's Trap...what a shame of a competition for us!
I expected our guys to dominate the field and take home 2 medals and 2 Olympic quota (De Filippis won the World Cup event in this same range in April and Pellielo...well, he simply is Giovanni Pellielo...no need for anything alse to be written about him)...and instead...nothing! bleah! I'm really disgusted...

Today's Results
 
 
Mixed Team Air Pistol
Gold: Russia 1 (Vitalina Batsarashkina & Artem Chernousov)
Silver: China 2 (Wang Qian & Wang Meng Yi)
Bronze: Ukraine 2 (Olena Kostevych & Oleh Omelchuk)
Olympic Quota: Russia & China
 
Mixed Team Air Rifle
Gold: China 2 (Zhao Ruozhu & Yang Haoran)
Silver: China 1 (Wu Mingyang & Song Buhan)
Bronze: Russia 1 (Anastasiia Galashina & Vladimir Maslennikov)
Olympic Quota: China & Russia
 
 
Men's Individual 50m Junior Pistol
Gold: Arjun Singh Cheema
Silver: Kim Woo Jong
Bronze: Gaurav Rana
 
Men's Team 50m Junior Pistol
Gold: India
Silver: South Korea
Bronze: China
 
 
Updated Medal Standings here:
https://www.issf-sports.org/competitions/venue/schedule.ashx?cshipid=1750

Shooting mixed events are probably the saddest example of mixed events forced into the Olympic program.
 
Absolutely ridiculous, especially the part about nations being allowed to enter two mixed teams... But who cares, as long as big nations can still earn 2 medals per event at the Olympics.

2018 Individual European Championships
 
 
Men's Finals (Today @ 2 & 4 p.m. CET)
 
Bronze Medal Match: Raphael Kandra vs Lucas Serme
Gold Medal Match: Borja Golàn vs George Parker
 
 
Women's Finals (Today @ 1 & 3 p.m. CET)
 
Bronze Medal Match: Nele Gilis vs Tinne Gilis
Gold Medal Match: Coline Aumard vs Millie Tomlinson