Water Polo 2021 Discussion Thread

[Makedonas 2,155]

Should be a walk in the park for our women's team. I wonder if we will send the real national team or some young girls to give them a chance to play.

[phelps 7,688]

@Makedonas@maestro and all the Greek users...

 

that's quite a story...

 

Carolina Ioannou (Greek father and Italian mother), raised and trained in Italy (where she played also for our youth/junior National teams) has chosen to switch her sports nationality and from now on she's committed to play for the Greek National team, after coming to play club Waterpolo in Greece last Summer (at the Ethnikos Piraeus club)...

 

my bad, but I only found this article in Italian...

 

https://www.oasport.it/2021/12/pallanuoto-la-storia-di-carolina-ioannou-cambio-di-cittadinanza-sportiva-convocata-dalla-grecia/?refresh_ce

[Makedonas 2,155]

Very interesting. I was surprised to see her name in the callups yesterday, though I'm not sure how good she is. Still, it doesn't change the fact that her Ethnikos Piraeus teammate Stephanie Haralabidis (who was born and raised in Greece and is one of the best players in the world) plays for USA instead of Greece . Though she got an Olympic gold medal so I guess it was the right choice for her.

 

Italy had a half Greek on their Olympic softball team in Tokyo, so I guess we're even now 

 

And our two best female marathon runners are half Italian, Alexi Pappas (from USA) and Gloria Privileggio (from Greece).

 

EDIT-We actually had the Valcareggi siblings in alpine skiing, they were born in Italy but their mother is Greek and they switched to Greece, one of them actually represented Greece in Sochi even.