De_Gambassi

FIVB site always said: "The four pool-winning teams of the second stage will access the third stage, together with the top two of the second ranked teams." (http://italy-bulgaria2018.fivb.com/en/competition/formula,and in the picture you can read "1st place + two best 2nd advance"). For me the part that I quoted was media speculation.

France chance?   (joke of course)

As much as I'm gutted by the end of the Davis Cup, I can't say they 're no reasons why....
 
Saturday's double between France and Spain was watched by only 1.2 million in France and by no one in Spain as it was not even broadcasted live...

And as a point of reference: his slowest competitive 1500m ever was 4:36  
 
In the last 2-3 years he's not as fast on it anymore as he was early on in his career when he ran low 4:20's or even sub-4:20's, but yeah, this is gonna be a huge, huge WR if he doesn't get hit by a Segway or something before the start  
 
 

Not only in Dubai Apparerently
 
 

4x800m relay sounds like fun too, 4x400m has way too many competitive nations if you ask me.

It will be called Mar'athon. Complety different stuff.

Did you knew there was such a thing as the 'Atlantic Games' ? It runs since 1995 and it's open to youngsters from the 'Atlantic Arc' (      ) ang  in swimming this year because why not. Only water sports are contested, because you know, the Atlantic is not a volcano.
 
Don't expect any livestream, now go shine in society with your new knowledge.

Did you knew there was such a thing as the 'Atlantic Games' ? It runs since 1995 and it's open to youngsters from the 'Atlantic Arc' (      ) ang  in swimming this year because why not. Only water sports are contested, because you know, the Atlantic is not a volcano.
 
Don't expect any livestream, now go shine in society with your new knowledge.

Did you knew there was such a thing as the 'Atlantic Games' ? It runs since 1995 and it's open to youngsters from the 'Atlantic Arc' (      ) ang  in swimming this year because why not. Only water sports are contested, because you know, the Atlantic is not a volcano.
 
Don't expect any livestream, now go shine in society with your new knowledge.

This course! 

Meanwhile it's sad to read how incredibly deep Jan Ullrich has been sinking. Alcohol, drugs, more alcohol, a divorce, not seeing his children anymore, more alcohol, drugs, more alcohol, violence...he has completely lost touch with reality. According to a friend, he shoots at his TV with an air rifle when watching an action movie, because he thinks he is part of the action, resulting in him buying 2-3 new TV's per week. He was arrested after a fight with his neighbour recently and more recently he was accused of abusing a prostitute and physically assaulting her. 
 
Apparently he's going for forced rehab now or something like that, but so far he's well on his way to killing himself quickly.

The Kosmos Group seems happy enough with the vote 
 

 
 

Anyways, now that everything is done and dusted, time for some statistics.
 
In 2016 there were 139 medals won and divided by 32 nations, whilst in 2018, there were 150 medals won, but only divided by 27 nations.
 
Nations that had a medal in 2016, but didn't manage to win one in 2018:   whilst and the neutral athletes of Russia returned to the medal table.
 
Amount of medals won (changes from 2016 to 2018) - Nation Flag / Medal Difference / (Position in the medal table compared to 2016)
+2 (+2)
= (-1)
+3 (-1)
= (+4)
+3 (+5)
+4 (+9)
+4 (+5)
+2 (+5)
+6 (+8)
+2 (-4)
-4 (-4)
+1 (-7)
+6
-7 (-9)
-1 (-3)
= (+7)
-1 (-7)
+1 (+7)
-1 (-4)
= (+5)
-1 (=)
 
Outside the top 20
Bulgaria won two medals less
Hungary won one medal less
Azerbaijan, Estonia, Ireland equal their performance
Slovakia, Austria goes up 1 medal
 
Very successful championships for: Greece, Belarus, Ukraine
Unsuccessful: Portugal, Turkey
And a bit of unnecessary information: the most successful European Championships in Lithuanian history, with only a second gold after 2006 gold medal of Virgilijus Alekna and only the second time after 2012 when more than one medal is won.
 

In the Netherlands Eurosport showed a lot, as they would have done anyway.
 
The Dutch public broadcaster showed a bit less swimming and athletics than usual, as so often focussing more on talking about the sports than showing the sports ("We want to bring the stories. If a Cuban is fencing against a Hungarian, that is irrelevant for us." is a famous quote of the broadcaster boss before the Olympics). They showed some gymastics as they would do anyway (just not Epke Zonderland's final live on TV, since that was at the same time as when they have to show the Dutch football competition highlights, by law), cycling as they would do anyway and that's about it.
 
Nothing special and in the end it was basically treated as separate European championships. 
 
Personally I'm not sure what I hope for the future of this. Normally there would be several European championships in June, July, August, September, and now they're all crammed in two weeks...  

in Italy they've been a huge success...
our public TV broadcasted almost every event, with 2 tv channels covering many hours a day (and 6 streams on theur website covering evrything in full)...
and also the tv ratings were getting better and better day by day, always keeping above the average numbers of the tv channel where they were broadcasted (and despite the time of competition was definitely not the best possible for the Italian tv viewers, with swimming finals in the afternoon -in the traditional hottest holiday week of the Summer- and athletics ending always too early -our primetime nowadays is from 21.15/21.30 to 23/23.30).
of course the excellent results (except for athletics and gymnastics, even if the junior gymnasts dominated the field both among the girls and the boys, but of course those events were not shown on tv) did help a lot.
 
and because of that, now it comes the worst part of it...it's strongly believed that Italy will host the next edition in 4 years time, thanks to a strong Rome bidding (by the time, the current disaster of a Mayor, Virginia Raggi, would be gone...so, non problem because of that)...
a farce like the 2026 Winter Olympics bid wasn't enough...now we have to cope also with this one...
God (or whoever has a chance to do it), please...save us!!!

new NR for Tavernier in Hammer

Clearly, we need more facts about football based on internet memes on a athletics thread.
 

Good, then you'd had decent pétanque players by now. How these pétanque players would have helped you in european athletics is still unknow though.

Good, then you'd had decent pétanque players by now. How these pétanque players would have helped you in european athletics is still unknow though.

Good, then you'd had decent pétanque players by now. How these pétanque players would have helped you in european athletics is still unknow though.

Good, then you'd had decent pétanque players by now. How these pétanque players would have helped you in european athletics is still unknow though.