Makedonas

World U23 Championships started yesterday in Poznan, Poland. We are sending a lot of our U19 athletes, and so far they are doing quite well. 17 yo Giannoulis and 16 yo Mouselimis won their heat in the men's double sculls Of course, they easily won gold at the European U19 Championships a couple months ago but this is very impressive!

4th for Anastasia Dragomirova in the Heptathlon after 5th in the Shot Put a few days ago, a bit disappointing to not get a medal but she'll be happy with the new U23NR in Heptathlon (slightly improving her own from a few weeks ago) and new PB in Shot Put Unfortunately, her track performances are still super weak, but she is slowly improving them which is good. Her PBs in the field events are already possibly good enough to win an Olympic medal in the Heptathlon, but her track results are so, so poor. She is definitely on the right track again after several years of injuries and struggles, but she really needs to focus on cutting her times down in the track events to even have a chance of qualifying for the Olympics. I do think there is also plenty of room for improvement in long jump (her PB is from 2019 when she was 16) and high jump (her PB is from 2020 when she was 17) and she was very close to both of them this season. Lastly, she has also been gaining a lot of attention for her appearance. Personally I don't like the many tattoos, piercings, and crazy makeup but if she can continue to bring better results then she can do whatever she wants

Same with us, the top teams are generally located in the (mostly wealthy) coastal suburbs of Athens, and most of the national team players are from here, for both men and women, with a few exceptions. But even then, the rare good players from other parts of the country (usually Thessaloniki and Crete) always relocate to coastal Athens suburbs in their early teenage years...

They finished 1-2-3! Kesidis, Papanastasiou, Korakidis We still get to hear our national anthem

Wow, I'm not surprised that we beat Italy but I am surprised how easy it was, especially with some key absences in our team this summer (Zerdevas, Papanastasiou, also Fountoulis and Vlachopoulos retiring from the national team)

We had so many athletes who were top 3 this year and came nowhere close to the podium. Retsa, Mita, Franks, Stamatonikolos, now Mantzouranis! Hopefully Korakidis will not join that list, he's currently 3rd after 4 rounds. And of course some others like Pavlidis who at least came close (I think he was 5th) but still a big disappointment that they didn't win medals. We also had two returning medalists from 2023 that didn't defend their medals - Emmanouilidou in the women's 200m (though she did win a medal in the 100m this time), and Despollari in the women's 800m (she finished 4th with a U23NR so still a solid showing). We also had U23NRs in the women's 400m hurdles, women's 4x400m (three of the same girls from 2023 where the previous U23NR was set, they smashed it by 6 seconds), men's 10km walk...should've had one in the women's 3000 steeplechase but Kallimogianni fell in the last hurdle/pool in the final and still was very close to the U23NR despite that. And it looks like we will probably get a U23NR in the heptathlon but probably with 4th place instead of a medal but let's see what happens in the 800m!

Very disappointing championships for us so far! Just one bronze medal from Emmanouilidou. And now we just lost Mantzouranis in the men's hammer throw with 3 fouls in the final! He has 78.61 this year (9 meets this year over 75m), was first in qualifying and the massive favourite for gold. He did the same thing in 2023 at the European U20s where he was first in qualifying and had NM in the final. Very, very disapppointing! We still have two other Greeks in the final plus a Cypriot, all are currently in the top 4 (and were originally top 4 favourites) so a good chance to hear our national anthem played and possibly even a podium sweep but now much less likely with Mantzouranis out...

Very happy that our girls are back in the World Championships semifinals for the second time in a row! A shame we could not do this against Australia in the quarterfinals in Paris last year, but better late than never I suppose. We had a very young team in Paris with only one player over age 29 (Asimaki). Since then, we had some girls retire from the national team (Asimaki, M.Plevritou, Chydirioti) and others retired from the sport completely (Diamantopoulou-29 yo, Eleftheriadou-26 yo). I thought it would be tough for us in 2025/26 to unexpectedly lose so many players but the new/young girls have really stepped up, which we also saw in the World Cup this year where we won gold

Our game against France was probably the most embarrassing I've ever seen from any national team! 12/26 free throws, also embarrassingly low % of 3 points made and turnovers. Just really a dumb game and the way France scored the winning basket was a joke. Not to mention how many offensive rebounds we allowed France to take. It is a shame because we probably should have won the whole tournament, or at least certainly won a medal. Now Lithuania who we beat easily in the group stage is in the final and we finished in 5th place. Just very disappointing!

Her name means "many victory" so her parents knew what they were doing when she was born

43.26, best time since 2001 and very close to our NR of 43.07 from 1997! The girls are 21, 22, 25, and 31, so with the exception of 31 yo Spanoudaki, they should be around for many years!

38.91 for us in the men's 4x100 is our best time since 2000! And our athletes are aged 22, 23, 24, and 26, so maybe there is even room for improvement. NR is 38.61 from 1999, which they are not far from!

Also even though our team is out, the attendance numbers still seem to be much better than usual. Yesterday 4.121 fans watched Italy vs Belgium and 2.495 watched France vs Spain. In 2023 there were barely 1.000 fans at each semifinal, even the final had only 1.691. Also 2021, 2019, 2017, and 2015, the only semifinal that had a bigger crowds were in 2019 when Serbia played at home. I hope 5.000 or more fans can be at the final tomorrow, let's see!

Disappointing for us to go out in the group stage as hosts, but we had a tough draw and having two of our regular guards (Stamolamprou and Tsineke) miss the tournament due to injuries was a huge problem for us. We naturalised an American for the first time ever, but she was a forward anyways so it didn't help us with the guard problem. In the final game against Turkey, we had four girls playing 37+ minutes and it seemed to really catch up with us in the end. I can't help but wonder how different things would've been if we had at least one of Stamolamprou/Tsineke so other girls could get a little bit more rest. Still, I am proud of the girls for their fight. They gave everything! Unfortunately it was a big opportunity for women's basketball in our country if we made a deep run but now we won't have such chance again. Still, the public really embraced our team and we set some attendance records. Our national team's previous home attendance record was 8.100 from the 2004 Olympics quarterfinal vs. USA. Here, we got 8.860 fans vs France (which was also a Eurobasket women record despite only being a group stage match) and then 10.503 fans vs Turkey! I don't think these records will be broken for quite some time when you look at how poorly attended Eurobasket Women usually is. I also think there should have been more fans here, tickets were advertised as "almost sold out" and people didn't bother trying to go, but really they didn't use some sections of the stadium!

Kasseri 10th for Greek cheeses is a crime, it should be at least top 5 among our cheeses. I haven't even heard of a couple of our cheeses on this list!

We finished 3rd in the medal table with 9 medals, 4 of them being gold! I know there is some criticism around this event but just like the European Championships last year, it is really good for our athletes who don't normally get the chance to swim against such a high level of competition. I think it is really helpful for us and we had a lot of PBs! Our swimmers have improved a lot in recent years and I hope we see this trend continue

Avoiding relegation was always going to be an uphill battle for us, but especially after we got 0 points in the men's pole vault due to Karalis' DNS especially with no Mondo, he probably would've been expected to get 16 points. However, some of our others stepped up so far with PBs (Iosifidou, Anastasakis - especially since Spyrou isn't competing who is by far our best at 5000m this year, Gkaragkanis) so far. And of course the CR from Tentoglou for 16 points, really impressive after how poor he's been this year compared to his normal level. Maybe he's finally back?! Also disappointing showing from Korakidis in the men's hammer throw, just shows our federation made a mistake by not sending one of Mantzouranis/Zaltos who are both over 78m this year...

After the successful European Championships for our women in the new categories, we decided to change it up for the World Cup. Kontou, who last year was a big star in LW2X and this year in W2X, moved to W2- with Bourmpou and they didn't do so well, finishing 4th in the semifinal. However, I think they will stay together for 2028. They have only been together for a few weeks and Bourmpou wasn't training fully this year, and Kontou is new to sweep events. Bourmpou made A Finals at the last two Olympics, and is still only 24 yo. No reason why she can't fight for a medal in LA. That left the remaining two lightweight girls for W2X, Anastasiadou and Fitsiou, and they are in the A Final and look like they can take a medal. Really it stinks for us that the lightweight events were removed from the Olympic programme as we 95% would've medalled again in LW2X. And we have a bunch of U23/U19 world champions like Lykomitrou, Lioliou, Gkogkou, Dalidou, Asvesta etc. I'm curious to see where they'll fit into our senior squad in the next few years. We also made changes in M2X, after our Paris LM2X bronze medalists failed completely at the European Championships, but neither of the two crews we sent were close to the finals. I wonder if maybe it is time for Gkaidatzis and Papakonstantinou to fully commit to coastal rowing for 2028. I think Cholopoulos/Makrygiannis will be our best M2X in 2028. Neither of them competed here.

I find it strange that we have only mixed relays here. No men's or women's relays?

Silver for Ntouskos in M1X for the 4th year in a row. I was really hoping he could finally win gold, especially with no Zeidler here this year. Anastasiadou got 4th in W1X. She also won 3 silvers in a row, in three different events (2022 W1X, 2023 LW1X, 2024 W2-). So in the end we had 2 silver medals here. We didn't send a women's pair as Christina Bourmpou was competing in the NCAA Championships this year. I wonder who will be pairing up with her, maybe Varvara Lykomitrou as they will both be attending Yale University and Lykomitrou already has a bunch of U19 gold medals in W1X and W2X but now will be competing in sweep events at Yale.

I was surprised to see that they broke up but now it makes sense!

Fitsiou/Kontou win silver in W2X, so close to winning gold They also won silver together in 2023 and 2024, but both times in LW2X. Although the field didn't seem the strongest, to transition to W2X and still win medals is very impressive. On the other hand, our men who switched from LM2X to M2X only got 11th place.

We sent 5 boats with 8 athetes. Interesting to note that our LM2X and LW2X Olympic medal winning crews from Paris have now switched to M2X and W2X. The women even won their heat here!

2025 European Rowing U19 Championships Gold: Eleni Diavati and Nefeli Ntara (women's double sculls) Konstantinos Giannoulis and Iason Mouselimis (men's double sculls) Varvara Lykomitrou (women's single sculls) Silver: Panagiota Kalaitzi, Stella Karyoti, Paschalina Mouratidou, and Eleni Paparrizou (women's quadruple sculls)

European U19 Championships concluded today. Good showing for with 3 gold (M2X, W1X, W2X) and 1 silver (W4X). We finished second in the medal table only behind (same amount of gold but they had more total medals). Panagiotis Makrygiannis, the defending world and European champion and overwhelming favourite in M1X, had to withdraw, otherwise we likely would've won the medal table