De_Gambassi

https://www.dw.com/en/euro-2020-uefa-takes-no-action-against-manuel-neuer-and-dfb-over-pride-armband/a-57971971
 
Well, there you go, if it's a good cause according to the UEFA, it doesn't matter that players bring political symbols to a match.
 
And what's a good cause? Apparently something that the West cares about because that's where the money is. Ukraine isn't an important market, so their issues weren't a "good cause", their political slogans were too much for UEFA and got removed.
 
To be clear, I wasn't in favor of what Ukraine intended to do with their jersey. But I am also not in favor of what the Germans are doing. I am also not in favor of Hungarians bringing pre-Trianon Greater Hungary symbols to any match, especially to those where we play against our neighbors. But if you open the door to one of these, you either open the door to all of them, or you will cause a revolt when you pick your favorite political causes for a sport that's literally played by everyone around the world. 
 
"We are striving for open football."
 
Bullshit. Football isn't an American sport. It's international and it's for everyone. The way to keep football open is to keep activism outside of the matches. What they are doing with this is the exact opposite. What UEFA is striving for is to not fall out of the graces of their most important money makers when they are fighting a war with FIFA. 

That's a mistake

Meeting Marseille
 
  Baptiste Mischler 3.34.30 (1500 M)

 
  Azeddine Habz 3.34.68 (1500 M)

 
  Benjamin Robert 1.44.53 (800 M)

 

http://www.worldskate.org/news/44-discipline/skateboarding/3353-the-list-of-future-olympic-skateboarders-is-official.html
 
And here are the official qualifiers for Tokyo....
 
 

Detail of Ukraine's shirt and yes, that includes Crimea. Russia is pissed off now, mission achieved  
 

Gam-Jeom are the penalties...
 
in the middle of course you can see the time of the match (timeout means that at that moment the clock was stopped for some reason)...
 
the icons below the flags are the type of scoring (punch, hit of the body shield, hit on the head -it's a red helmet, which I don't see in the picture)...
 
the numbers on the shields on the bottom line is the percentage of strenght of the last hits recorded (you need to hit with more than a certain strenght to have the hit recorded as a score)...

only that "Gam-Jeom" (caution) part matters from the bottom left and right. you are disqualified with 10 of them
 
those in the left (for red) and right ( for blue) is the recent actions of the match, (for example FRA scored so many back to back body kicks)
 
and those numbers in the bottom, are "probably" the number of kicks (valid or invalid) that comes handy if the score is tied in extra time.

But you can't change that now as plenty of countries have targeted this meet to qualify. They can argue that there hasn't been enough races available to improve their ranking.
 
And lets face it, relay rankings are not a great indicator at all

First stage of Archery World Cup ended today in Guatemala City.
 
A reduced field in most events, but athletes from 3 continents were present, among them most of the main contenders for the remaining team quotas at the Olympics.
 
But let's start with Compound, where the  won gold medals in women's team and men's individual, adding 3 bronzes to their count. Two other American nations obtained gold:  in women's individual, but this time through Nora Valdez instead of Sara López, while Mexico took the men's team title, and a couple of silvers in women's & mixed team events. It could have been a complete swept by the host continent, but Danes Stephan Hansen & Tanja Gellenthien hit a dozen 10's in a row to defeat the Mexicans in the final match.
 
Now, regarding recurve individual events,  Atanu Das & Deepika Kumari took the top spot in the podium, with Mexico taking both bronze medals (Ángel Alvarado & Alejandra Valencia); Daniel Castro from  earned two medals, silver in individuals and a team Gold, while Mackenzie Brown once again was the best US women also earning silver.
 
Now, talking about the men team competition, as said previously the spanish squad took the first position, and showing a good form after sending out a couple of tough rivals (India and the French, who ended in 4th) before a rather quick win against Ellison & Co, with Germany achieving the bronze. All those four, plus a few others that were either early eliminated or just absent, are to be taken seriously in contention for a chance to be in Tokyo, but I´ll wait until next stop to predict any outcome.
 
On the women's side, India's and Mexico's teams showed a better form that the rest of their competitors, and in my opinion are early frontrunners to win two of those Olympic spots; both fought a close final, if at the end, a better concentration favored the Asian side. However one should not discount  (again losing against their German neighbors in the 3rd place match).  or the  to improve on their way to the final qualification tournament in Paris.

None of the above

Great example of burying one's head in the sand 
Dunfee and Tallent => English-speaking
Diniz => Eng... hum doesn't apply => worst cheater of the universe because ... because 
Schwazer => poor victim of circumstances 

Personally I just made an example with handball because that's where the conversation is. I would say that handball has one of the best qualification systems, it's the best one can make when team sports are forced to have mandatory continental representation. 

Back in Seoul 1988, we had a good pair in canoe sprint K2.  Philippe Boccara et Pascal Boucherit were actually world champions in 1987 and from my understanding favorite to win the gold medal in South Korea.
 
All good and well, except they didn't make the semi-finals, they ... felt asleep before the start of the race and came too late...
 
Fun fact, France still has to win a gold medal in canoe sprint 32 years later
 
 

Your sport <<<<< Rugby "can you believe what you're seing ?"
 
 

Your sport <<<<< Rugby "can you believe what you're seing ?"
 
 

Sorry, but we sucked at colonialism, couldn't even enforce or own language.

so at the end of the day
 
3
2
1
 
what a pleasant surprise at the end, Khramiankou just beat Sharipov by a last second takedown. good challenge from the Belarusian coach. and Sharipov himself knew he lost the match even before the final confirmation. I think Tedeev (Russian FS head coach who was absent here) is going to kill him right at the airport he better takes refugee in Hungary
 
and Azerbaijan lost another "supposed to be" easy quota. this time to Germany, grandpa Magomedov gassed after 30-40 seconds and the German guy pushed him out of the mat like 100 times.
 
interesting point, only 1 of 12 seeded wrestlers qualified for Tokyo (Vangelov) that says enough about the seeding system.
 
 
the best wrestler of the day: Khramiankou

María Xiao was born in Barcelona and has lived her whole life between Spain and Portugal, so she is 100% Spaniard. We also have a junior girl called Sofía Xuan-Zhang who was born in Cartagena (Murcia), so writing a comment like that based exclusively in the surname of the girl without knowing her story is kind of disrespectful... 
 
It is true that we have had a few Chinese players representing Spain in the last decade (Yanfei Shen or He Zhiwen who played in London and Rio and arrived to Spain because they were paid by the clubs and the federation made them an offer to join the national team), but right now all of our players have been born and/or raised in Spain.
 

Italian rugby has a new president 
 
https://www.onrugby.it/2021/03/13/marzio-innocenti-eletto-presidente-della-federazione-italiana-rugby-per-il-quadriennio-2021-2024/
 
 
The main point here being the score of the guy who held the office so far : 3.2 %  which tell you everything you need to know about the quality of his presidency.
 
Hopefully, we will son see a decent italian side once again 

Some also big moments from 1992 Olympics
 
Linford Christie wins 100m final at the age of 32 and become the oldest person to capture 100m Olympic gold.
 
 
 
2. Alexander Popov dethrones Matt Biondi
 
 
3. Vitaly Scherbo 6 golds!! in Artistic Gymnastics
 
 
 
4. Brazil's first Olympic gold in volleyball
 
 
 

Lorette Charpy (Gymnastics)
 

Lorette Charpy (Gymnastics)
 

J'attendais une perche pour y venir  Jeu de mot avec la perche puisque c'est une des disciplines où se recyclent bon nombre de gymnastes (surtout les filles) 
Je sais qu'il existe aux USA et Canada des plateformes où plusieurs dizaines d'athlètes, de niveau et d'âge disparate, peuvent passer des batteries de tests assez larges. Ceci permet de détecter des potentiels talents dans un certain nombre de disciplines. Evidemment on ne décèlera pas un sabreur de génie avec de simples tests d'explosivité, par contre c'est assez utile dans des sports assez proches comme le cyclisme (surtout sur piste ou BMX), l'aviron ou le patinage de vitesse, mais aussi le rugby à 7 (pas la même logique de recrutement qu'en France) ou typiquement donc, le skeleton  La néo-recordwoman du monde du 200m lancé, Kelsey Mitchell (bien aidée par les 2750m de Cochabamba certes), est issue de ce programme. 
 
A l'heure où on nous bassine avec le langage du néo-management, typiquement le XV de France qui n'a que les mots "passerelle", "haute-intensité", "haute-performance" à la bouche, comment se fait il qu'il n'existe pas un tel programme qui mutualiserait les fédérations ? Certains sports individuels auraient tout intérêt à ce que des jeunes athlètes ayant fait le trajet vers les sports co, sans grande réussite, saisissent leur chance là où est leur "vrai" potentiel. Exemple assez connu, Mathilde Gros, qui aurait sans doute végété en équipe espoir de je ne sais quel club de basket moyen, si elle n'avait pas testé un Watt-bike par chance 

Je me permets de simplifier ton post 

Post qui sort de nul part mais ça me trotte dans la tête depuis un moment et je n'arrive pas à comprendre 
 
Comment est-ce possible que la France soit autant inexistante en bobsleigh/skeleton/luge ?? On est un des seuls pays à avoir une piste de bob fonctionnelle et pourtant c'est le néant absolu niveau représentation sportive. Nos rares représentants sont le fruit de la chance/détermination, un pilote originaire de la Plagne qui réussit à agréger une équipe (Costerg, Boch dont le père et le grand-père pratiquaient déjà le sport, Bessard en skeleton dont le père est directeur de la piste). Si on a encore un bob en CDM c'est parce que Romain Heinrich a fait sa transition vers le pilotage et investi à fond dedans, sinon ... Cela dit quelques jeunes pilotes semblent être en formation, et avec l'arrivée du monobob le "projet" a des chances d'aboutir (à son échelle).
Après je veux bien que le bob ne soit pas une priorité avec peu de moyens (et d'ambitions), ça coûte cher, il faut non seulement un pilote mais l'équipe autour, bref c'est long et fastidieux à développer alors que la concurrence mondiale est quasi injouable (l'Allemagne pour faire court). La luge est individuelle, mais la tradition semble donner une avance trop considérable aux grosses nations, d'autant que tout se joue sur le pilotage ... Mais en skeleton ? C'est un sport récent, on voit qu'aucun pays n'arrive à dominer la discipline, pas même l'Allemagne, donc la porte est ouverte. La spécificité du sport mélange un peu luge et bob, l'avantage étant que le coût matériel est humain est plus faible qu'en bobsleigh, mais la manière de s'élancer octroie une part très importante aux capacités physiques de l'athlète, par rapport à la luge. C'est typiquement le sport "facile d'accès", même si le nombre de médailles est faiblard pour parler de low risks, high reward. On voit bien que plusieurs pays investissent dedans, en premier lieu la GB, qui n'a pas de piste. L'Italie n'en a plus mais aligne les athlètes comme des petits pains. La Corée, inexistante, a trouvé sa pépite avant ses J.O et est allée chercher l'or. Même l'Espagne a réussi à faire descendre 6 athlètes au niveau international cet hiver ! La Russie utilise la technique du "trouve moi un sprinteur, je lui apprends à piloter", est-ce trop dur à mettre en place ? Faire de la publicité autour des tests nationaux (pas l'impression que ça attire grand monde), venir démarcher des espoirs déç(h)us, les essayer, réussir enfin à ramener une médaille pour la FFSG