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.

Another big tournament without This format of having qualifiers throughout the year definitely resulted in a lot of surprising results as many teams with big players are missing them, but I don't think anyone has suffered as much in recent years as Croatia! Perhaps it is a lack of depth? Obviously with Bogdanovic, Saric, and Zubac, they would not struggle in qualifiers. Still, other teams have the same issues (especially in weeks when EuroLeague players could not play), but are able to manage to qualify with their B/C teams. Of course they were also unlucky to be in the group with Cyprus, a weak host/automatic qualifier!

Teltsidou moved up to 78kg and won bronze (in Baku I mean)

update: Not the best start to the year for Tentoglou, but I guess it can only get better from here Karalis seems to be getting consistent in jumps over 5.90m, and proving that 2024 was no fluke and he is hopefully here to stay (and I guess to win more silver and bronze medals because there is some Swedish guy who is apparently too good ) No news on Stefanidi and she hasn't been very active on social media. She may have quietly retired, but I have a feeling she is pregnant and will try to come back for LA 2028. Meanwhile, we have some other hopes in the women's pole vault and I think we'll still qualify 3 girls for LA even without Polak (suspended), Kyriakopoulou (retired), and Stefanidi. Two 16 yos are doing well this indoor season, Bouboulidi (4.21) and Mirtsiou (4.15). We also have 21 yo Retsa, who seemed very promising a number of years ago with 4.14 as a 16 yo and then had some injuries and her progress kind of stalled. Now she is improving a lot this year and has a SB (and obviously PR) of 4.41 New U18NR in the men's long jump from 17 yo Tzelepis with 7.46. It will be interesting to track his progress over the next few years vs Tentoglou when he was that young. There are another two teenagers who seem promising, both from Grevena (Tentoglou's hometown) - Samaras and Isaakidis. Also 19 yo Mita in the men's high jump with a new PB of 2.26

Our entry: We had a national final for the first time in many years, it was mainly between Klavdia and Evangelia (see below), but here are some other songs I also liked:

Kecmanovic is also into the final in ATP Delray Beach, and Djere is currently in a third set of the semifinals in ATP Buenos Aires. Definitely a good week for the "lesser" Serbian players!

Sharapova was caught with a substance that was only banned for a few weeks at the time, which she did not know about, and she almost immediately accepted responsibility. She never played the victim or complained, and accepted a much longer ban than other tennis players at the time (Strycova, Cilic). I wouldn't say she was caught "intentionally and consciously." In Sinner's case, his failed tests were swept under the rug for several months and the media and ATP (with their Italian head) did everything possible to act like it did not happen. He did not fire the member of his team who he blamed until after it became public knowledge, more than 5 months after they knew of the positive tests. We can argue all day but the fact is Sinner had two positive tests and is very very lucky that he won't miss any slams because of it. If I were an Italian, I would be celebrating this decision today. The problem is there is zero consistency in tennis and some players get harsher penalties than others.

Since when can you "reach an agreement" regarding a doping suspension? What a joke. Djokovic suffered more for not taking the vaccine than Sinner for failing two doping tests. There is no justice in this sport. A big shame. I don't believe it was intentional but when others like Halep, Sharapova, Jarry were suspended for much longer and even Ymer for not even failing any tests, this seems so ridiculous in comparison.

I don't have the time to host unfortunately, I barely even have time to participate So at this time I'd like to thank everyone who has ever hosted one of these competitions, very much appreciated!

Georgios Roubanis - bronze medalist in the men's pole vault at the 1956 Olympics, died at age 95

Katerina Divari (sailing) She is only 24 yo but has retired and will now be coaching instead. She competed at Tokyo 2020 but did not qualify for Paris 2024. I wonder if she would've continued if she made it to Paris... https://www.instagram.com/p/DE-i1u9ujXS/?img_index=1