Makedonas

Kristian Gkolomeev (swimming) He specialised in the men's 50 freestyle, was 5th in both Tokyo and Paris, won a world silver in 2019 and many European medals including gold last year. He went to the Olympics 4 times. He is still only 31 years old but hinted at Paris being the end for him so I guess it should not be surprising, though he is still in his top form and given how close he was to winning an Olympic medal the last two times, I was hoping he would try again in 2028...

People are judging her but the truth is she has no points to defend after Wimbledon. She only played the Olympics where she lost in the third round and got injured, then withdrew from the North American swing (including two 1000s) except she tried to play the US Open and retired in her first round match, then missed the rest of the season (another two 1000s plus Guadalajara which was her best tournament regardless of it being the WTA Finals, 1000, or 500 as it is now). She could've extended her injury break to be exactly 6 months as many players do to get a protected ranking, but she came back and risked missing big tournaments and having to play qualifying possibly. If anything she should be applauded for that. It looks like she'll have to play qualifying in Rome and possibly Wimbledon for example, which she wouldn't have had to do if she abused the protected ranking system as many others do. EDIT-Also she was still in the top 10 during both the Olympics and the US Open, so people writing that her ranking was already dropping are incorrect!

So 5 of Australia's top 6 current WTA players were not born in Australia. Only Gadecki was. At least Birrell lived most of her life there and Joint has an Australian parent. Even Saville at least eventually married an Aussie even though when she first got citizenship it was a total joke. Tomljanovic and Kasatkina playing for Australia is so weird. Also it's quite pathetic a country like Australia, with so many resources for tennis, has to keep naturalizing players because they can't produce their own talents...

Our small team: Men: Emmanouil Karalis - Pole vault Miltiadis Tentoglou - Long jump Women: Polyniki Emmanouilidou - 60m Dimitra Tsoukala - 60m Sofia Iosifidou - 60m hurdles

Not the way I wanted Karalis to win his first major gold medal, and winning with only 5.90m is a bit disappointing but I guess I shouldn't complain It seems the pressure of being the favourite with Mondo not competing here got the best of him, but in the end the goal was achieved.

Nice for Emmanouilidou to get a new PB today in 60m. She had 7.24 from 2024, which was also her SB, and improved to 7.18 today I was concerned about her lack of progress and I'm happy she finally got a better time. Hopefully she can improve it a little more in Nanjing!

Late post, but here is the team of 19 athletes: Men: Sotirios Gkaragkanis - 60m Vasileios Myrianthopoulos - 60m Nikolaos Panagiotopoulos - 60m Christos Roumtsios - 60m hurdles Antonios Merlos - High jump Emmanouil Karalis - Pole vault Ioannis Rizos - Pole vault Dimitrios Tsiamis - Triple jump Anastasios Latifllari - Shot put Odysseas Mouzenidis - Shot put Women: Polyniki Emmanouilidou - 60m Rafailia Spanoudaki - 60m Dimitra Tsoukala - 60m Georgia Despollari - 800m Anthi Kyriakopoulou - 1500m Elisavet Pesiridou - 60m hurdles Tatiana Gusin - High jump Ariadni Adamopoulou - Pole vault Andriana Gkogka - Long jump Three of our athletes withdrew: Miltiadis Tentoglou (Men's long jump - illness), Andrea Mita (Men's high jump - studying in US, Katerina Stefanidi (Women's pole vault - pregnancy).

He was European champion (indoor or outdoor) every year from 2018 on. So there will be a new champion!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_g4A_4KodaM

She announced her pregnancy today

The very talented 17 yo Konstantinos Karetsas announced he will play for his parents' country instead of his birth country The Belgians do not seem happy but as a Greek, we have been in that position many times with dual citizens so it is nice for it to work in our favour sometimes too I mean in basketball we could have Vezenkov but instead he chooses to play for his parents' country , despite never living there, when with Greece he would qualify for major tournaments and be one of our starting players, and for Bulgaria they rarely qualify for anything...

Our silver medalist, Vasiliki Chaitidou, had one jump at 4.71m so that was probably almost a foul too or something for it to be so low. So really the top 3 only had 5 "real" jumps out of 18

Our women's long jump final was such a joke, the top 3 had a combined 12 fouls and only 6 valid jumps

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEZQrA2ZnS0 Nice to see a decent sized crowd for this! Also I spot Nikoleta Kyriakopoulou in the crowd

Karalis just cleared 5.95 (new indoor NR) and 6.01 (new overall NR), both on his first attempts! EDIT-He missed his first attempt at 6.08 and is not going to attempt any more jumps.