Makedonas

Us Greeks eat watermelon in the summer, often you can get watermelon as a free dessert in taverns, we even have an island where they make watermelon pies!

Such a shame we got Vasilantonaki to rejoin the national team again after so many years only for her to miss the World Championships due to injury I'm glad though that the 17 yo Tikmanidou gets the chance to be on the team, her and Anthouli are the future EDIT-She's actually still 16!

Wow we won a silver medal in the Men's C1-1000m

Paralia is very popular but not really because of beauty, but more for convenience reasons. It is close to Thessaloniki and of course Katerini so a lot of Greeks go there, but mainly it is populated in the summer months with people from Balkan countries as it is an easy drive and they go for cheap holidays. In my opinion Paralia is kind of a "tourist trap." Some other towns of the Olympic Riviera are nicer in my opinion, like Platamonas and Neoi Poroi.

Definitely not enough Greek beaches on the list, and even the two that were chosen are very questionable and not even top 50 in Greece in my opinion, let alone in the world! I've never been to Plakias Beach but it's on Crete and there are better beaches on Crete such as Balos, Elafonisi, Falasarna, Preveli, Kedrodasos, Voulisma, Stavros, Marathi, Karavostasi/Bali, Vai, Matala, etc. The fact that I've been to Crete but never been to Plakias says it all I've been to Tsambika Beach (on Rhodes) and it is nice but in my opinion not even the best beach of Rhodes. I am surprised that some of our world-famous beaches were not chosen! Even if some may be "overrated" like Simos on Elafonissos, Navagio-Zakynthos, Porto Katsiki-Lefkada, Myrtos-Kefalonia, some Antipaxos and Halkidiki beaches, Sarakiniko-Milos... Also interesting that Ksamil in Albania is number 3, there was/is a large indigenous Greek population in that area, and it was briefly part of Greece like 100 years ago, but if it was still part of Greece I don't think it would be our number one beach.

Sad that we didn't even send a team for the women's foil when we sent multiple individuals and some did quite well for our standards. Chaldaiou is now top 50, Kontochristopoulou is back in the top 100, and the young Garyfallou was top 100 last year.

She got a new PB in the 800! 2:28.79! Her previous PB was 2:30.50 from last year and her SB was 2:30.76 from last week. She still has a long way to go, but hopefully she can continue to shave off time from her 800m PB over the next few years. She ends with 6163 points, another new U23NR for her (previous one was 6054 from last week). A big, big improvement and now moves up to 2nd all-time on the Greek women's list. NR is 6235 so hopefully she can get it next season

Stamatia Scarvelis so close to a NR in the women's hammer throw. She's wanted it for years (record is 72.10 from Stella Papadopoulou in 2008). Her PB was 71.43 from 2022, now she just went 71.95 on her fourth throw for a new PB! I hope she can get the NR on one of her last two throws. She is also in first place currently. Big shame on our federation that there is a stream for U18 decathlon/heptathlon track events but not for women's hammer throw

No finals for us today, but some good showings. Pavlopoulou reclaimed the NR in the women's 200 IM from Vasilaki. Bilas with two new NRs in the men's 50 butterfly and finished 11th overall. Ntountounaki very close to her own NR in the women's 100 butterfly, 3rd best time of her long career and 10th overall.

What's wrong with Ilieva?

Not that I'm complaining, as it is one less "rivalry" for my country, but it is crazy that are so poor in sport (with very few exceptions) compared to some other ex-Yugo countries. Their population isn't that small compared to some of the others either.

I think it is exaggerated to be honest, the photo above which our federation posted doesn't show the full stadium. Everyone was crowded around the long jump pit to watch Tentoglou. On the other side the seats were mostly empty. I imagine it may be similar today for Karalis. Still, even if it was only 5.000 or 8.000 that is impressive for a Balkan championship indeed! I hope we host more often. This was our first time since 2010 and first ever in Volos. Maybe in the future we can host in other cities with decent sized stadiums, particularly in the central/north so they are more "Balkan" and closer to the other nations, like Thessaloniki, Ioannina, Kavala, Larissa, Serres, Trikala etc. Those cities have some good stadiums for athletics and can get a chance to watch our stars compete for the national team.

Well yes, we got gold in W2X and LW2X, and silver in W1X 4th in M1X and 6th in M2-. They will have many more chances in the future and the M2- have the World U19 Championships in a few weeks to look forward to

Dragomirova 6.42 long jump (her PB is 6.44 from 2019) and 47.61 javelin. She has 5455 points after six events. Unfortunately the 800 is her weakest event by far but she should still get enough points for a new U23NR. Last week, she had 5371 points at this stage and then got only 683 from the 800m for a U23NR of 6054. Also our federation is saying 10.000 people attended yesterday

Georgiadou and Gkountoura both lost in the round of 64

I thought she was already retired

25.36 in 200m, new PB after her previous PB of 25.42 from last week Disappointing that thousands of people came to watch Tentoglou and he stopped after two jumps, but it is understandable. At least they got to see him compete at the same time as Tzengko, and got to celebrate both gold medals. Also it's good for a lot of our other athletes that they get the chance to compete in front of large crowds which they normally don't get to do, especially to have the crowd cheering for them specifically. I was hoping for a NR for the women's 4x100 team after they came close at the European Team Championships, but it didn't happen. They were basically running by themselves due to the low level of the other teams, which didn't help. The first exchange between Kamperidou and Spanoudaki also wasn't great and Spanoudaki won the 100m like an hour before so she wasn't well rested. Still, good to win an easy relay gold and be 11th on Greece's all-time list. I guess we will now have to wait until 2026 for the NR EDIT-Same thing for our men's 4x100 team, they were close to the NR in Madrid, now couldn't do it but still won gold with our 8th best time ever, and second best since 2000!

15.94 shot put, second best throw of her career after last week's PB, and best throw of her career in the heptathlon shot put, so she's really on the path to smash her U23NR but I'm concerned about the track events as always with her...

Balkan Championships this weekend in Volos Heptathlon only has three participants (two Greeks and one Montenegrin) plus one OOC athlete (Greek). It's a shame that all of these non-Balkan countries like Ukraine and Austria participate but can't come up with athletes for some events. I wanted to see Dragomirova get another U23NR (would be her third in the last 5 weeks), but without much competition it will be tough. Her 100H time was nothing special but she now got a new PB of 1.79 in the high jump, so let's see...

Overall some good results for us, we sent 7 boats and made 5 finals! The only two boats that didn't make A Finals were M2X and M4X, probably because the athletes doubled up there. 17 yo Giannoulis and 16 yo Mouselimis won their heat but then started doing M4X races (with 18 yo Kamaledakis and 17 yo Alexiou) and ended up 9th in M2X and in the B Final for M4X. Really we have other athletes that are actually U23s so I don't know why we mostly used our U19 team here. Athletes born 2003 and later are eligible and we have no one from 2003 or 2004, one from 2005, two from 2006, and the rest are U19s... In the A Finals we have: 18 yo Cholopoulos in M1X 18 yo Diavati in W1X 18 yo Bourkas and 18 yo Chatziavgoustidis in M2- 19 yo Kontou and 18 yo Lykomitrou in W2X 19 yo Lioliou and 16 yo Mouratidou in LW2X It would be shocking if we don't take gold in W2X and LW2X, and I'd like at least one more medal from the other finals, so I'll say 3 medals will be good for us here. Really we shouldn't have had Giannoulis/Mouselimis double up and maybe they could've won a medal in M2X, and if we used some of our actual U23 rowers and sent crews for M4-, W4-, W4X then we could've had more chances for medals but clearly that's not a priority for our federation

Easy win over Serbia, this is the third World Championships in a row where we comfortably beat them, which makes it even more upsetting that we lost to them in the quarterfinals of the Olympics last year

So disappointing the game against Spain, I didn't see it but heard people complain about referees, and we conceded the equaliser with 1 second left and lost on penalties... Anyways I hope we can bounce back and win bronze against Serbia today!

So great for us to win our second world title! We had such a young team in Paris, and after a few shocking retirements it seemed like our future maybe wasn't as bright as we hoped (though we knew we had a lot of young talent in the Tricha/Santa/Siouti/Tornarou generation that would join the national team). Then we brought in coach Pavlidis and won the World Cup and now World Championships too! It's funny because he said when they did the first practice in the pool in Singapore, the technicians were testing the electronic boards and had a test graphic saying Greece were world champions. The girls wanted to take photos of it and Pavlidis said they will only take photos when it becomes a reality that we are world champions Tricha being on the all-tournament team and being the top scorer of the tournament is very good because she was not even selected for our team for Paris 2024 and now one year later at 20 yo she became such a star! Stamatopoulou also played so well in goal throughout the tournament. In a way I think Diamantopoulou's unexpected retirement helped her. They are both very strong goalkeepers and would take turns in goal for the national team. Now that Stamatopoulou has become the main goalkeeper, she has become more consistent and reliable. (Also our backup goalkeeper, Tzourka, is also impressive because she is 28 yo and was never on this national team or any national team at the youth levels until now, which is crazy because we had such strong youth national teams in the last 15 or so years and she emerged as the strongest goalkeeper after Stamatopoulou) In addition to Tricha and Santa, and the usual suspects like Xenaki, Myriokefalitaki, E.Plevritou, I want to add that Giannopoulou and V.Plevritou have also really stepped up the last couple of years. V.Plevritou seemed for so long to be in the shadows of her sisters and wouldn't even get called up to the national team, and now she has become one of our most important players! And yes, they are only "sisters" and not as the world feed commentator calls them "the triplets from Thessaloniki" because they are not triplets or twins and they were all born in different years Also, two of our girls had their birthday yesterday on the day of the final, Tzourka and Sofia Tornarou! So in the end, we are looking much more promising than anticipated with an even younger and stronger team than last year. Our oldest players are 28, and we have an average age of 23!

They just lost by 13 to Japan...

Your girls did okay at the 2013 Worlds in a tough group but never built on that momentum or really did anything again for a while. I guess maybe some of those girls only stayed active as they were pre-qualified for the Worlds as Olympic hosts and then retired?