Makedonas

A solid evening session for us. Gkolomeev into the men's 50 free final for the 6th consecutive World Championships Ntountounaki after finally making a final is now back to her typical 9th places as she lost a swim-off in the women's 50 butterfly Siskos equaled his NR from the heats to finish 6th in the men's 200 backstroke, not bad for an 18 year old! And another NR for our men's 4 x 200 freestyle relay, and 6th place in the final

Congrats to our Canadian friends! It's great to have a competitive team like Canada going to Paris instead of South Africa (in my opinion, it's better for the sport). Although of course now that Greece finally qualified again, South Africa decides to decline the quota. Why couldn't they do that for Tokyo when we were the first alternates?

Craziest ending to a game you will ever see. Very sad and a lot of our fans feel robbed by referees this tournament (both with the men's and women's teams, I barely watched so I can't comment). However our girls did really well and I think this looks good for Paris, I believe we are capable of winning a medal, we played well the games we lost and even USA has shown they are not unbeatable despite winning gold.

Honestly I am happier to finish 4th with actual Greek girls than win a medal with the United Nations team

Bronze for our Maria Prevolaraki in the 53kg. This is now her 8th European Championships medal, and she also has 3 World Championships medals. Unfortunately none of these medals have been gold! She said after Tokyo that she would go until Paris, so hopefully she can at least win an Olympic medal if she is going to end her career this year (would be her first Olympic medal).

After 5 years for Tsitsipas, and 2.5 years for Sakkari, both will exit the top 10 on Monday Sakkari has been losing early in a lot of the big events, and this week she lost to Noskova in Doha after having a match point on return and then serving for the match. Had she won she would still be top 10. However, she will likely return after Dubai because others are losing a lot of points and she isn't. Tsitsipas has not played much lately due to injury, but he seems to be finally healthy again and will playing the Mexican tournaments before Indian Wells and Miami. With basically no points to defend for the next two months, he should be back in the top 10 soon. It's just crazy that it feels like both have been in the top 10 for so long, and now they are both dropping out on the same exact day! But they will be back, I am sure!

Swimming +2 Konstantinos Englezakis (men's 4 x 200 m freestyle relay) Konstantinos Stamou (men's 4 x 200 m freestyle relay)

See you in the final and also see you in Paris! I honestly thought Hungary was safe, and that the last Olympic spot would be between Greece, Bulgaria, or Poland. I completely forgot about Lithuania and then after the Lithuanian performance in the first semifinal I thought there is no chance for us to improve our NR by 5 seconds to beat Hungary, and somehow we did it and passed not only Hungary, but several other teams

That is 17 teams, so I think Hungary are out!

7:09.90 NR for our relay! Our previous NR was 7:16.39 from 2009! Can someone confirm that we got the quota for Paris? I think we did!

take an Olympic quota in the men's 4 x 200 freestyle relay!

Gkolomeev 3rd overall in the heats with 21.70, his fastest time since Tokyo 2021

Ο Χαραλαμπόπουλος είναι πλέον 27...θυμάμαι στις ηλικιακές κατηγορίες τον είχα για ΝΒΑ. Κρίμα...

They have until the end of the qualification period to get 2 athletes with OQT? This is a problem we might have with the men's 4 x 200 free and women's 4 x 100 medley, if we qualify in these. We currently have just 1 swimmer in each relay with OQT, though some of them are in other relays but I guess that doesn't count...

Well Drakou got 5th, it seems to be our favourite position in Doha, so maybe 4th is for Canada what 5th is for Greece Siskos was 1st overall in the heats with a new NR, then 6th in the semifinal so the goal of reaching a final has been achieved. A medal seems unlikely but it would be nice for him to at least get a new NR in the final. Our women's 4 x 200 relay got 17th place with a not so great time, but it was still a new NR (barely). The girls said they expected more but that it was still a good experience for them.

Georgopoulou 202 kg, just not enough and she not improved at all in the last two years it seems. She was our last hope to send a weightlifter to Paris. Now it is 95% certain that Greek weightlifting will not be represented at the Olympics for the first time since 1956 Weightlifting is our second-best sport in our Olympic history. 5 gold, 5 silver, and 2 bronze between Barcelona and Athens and now we can't even qualify anyone. The sport has major issues but it is still sad to see how far we've fallen...

I'm glad we qualified in the mixed medley relay, and 5th in the final is pretty good for our standards regardless of it being a weak year Great also for Drakou to not only be apart of that team and secure a quota for her 4th Olympics, but also to make the final in the 50m backstroke. She hadn't made a World Championships final since 2015, so to make two (even if one is a relay) this year is nice to see, especially since this will likely be her last World Championships. Looking forward to tomorrow to see how our 18 yo talent Siskos does (men's 200 backstroke), after he was 12th last year, this can be a good chance for a final! Also looking forward to our women's 4x200 freestyle relay. They are really young and I expect a new NR. Two of the girls are 16 and one is 17 (the other is 21), and I'm glad our federation is supporting these girls so much and giving them this chance. I hope this support will continue and that they will continue to improve in the next years. They won't make it to Paris but I think we are really aiming for Los Angeles 2028 with this team (3 of them set our women's NR in this event at the World Junior Championships last year). It will also be good for Greek women's swimming, because Drakou and Ntountounaki aren't getting any younger. They won't be around forever and we need others to step up. I mentioned that Greek swimming is really improving but it's mostly on the men's side...

Well this is very disappointing! We wasted multiple leads and then towards the end of the game we could not take our chances with the exclusions and in the end Hungary equalised. I knew it was over at that point. You can always count on our girls to lose if it is decided by penalties. The last time we won with penalties was in 2018 against Russia at the European Championships. Outside of the European Championships, we have not won since 2015. Since then, we have lost all 5 of our penalty shootouts in World Championships, and 1 in the Olympic Qualifying Tournament as well. I think part of the problem is that we have two good goalkeepers (Diamantopoulou and Stamatopoulou) but neither is really the "main" player on our team, and they both kind of swap with each other. For example, Diamantopoulou played the full game today, but Stamatopoulou came in for the penalties only, after not playing a single second of the game. So of course she didn't save any as she was "cold." But in the quarterfinals, Stamatopoulou played the whole game and Diamantopoulou didn't play at all, yet she gets to play the entire semifinal. I get that we want to use both girls since we have them, and give the other one rest, but we really need one to be the priority keeper. Also it's great to see Ninou living up to her potential. She is 21 yo now, has been always with the senior national team since age 16, little by little she became more of an important player. Now she's been our top scorer for all games here except against France where she had "only" 2 goals. 2 against Spain (tied with E.Plevritou and Xenaki), 4 against China, 4 against Kazakhstan, 5 against Italy, and 4 against Hungary I must add that it is disappointing losing when it's so close, but especially against this Hungarian team which has several naturalised players who are not Hungarian, knowing that without them we would've 99% had the win and be in the final against USA , but I'm proud that we have an authentic team!

Swimming +2 Arkadios Aspougalis (mixed 4 x 100 m medey relay) Theodora Drakou (mixed 4 x 100 m medey relay)

2024 Women's Water Polo World Championship: Quarterfinals: 14 - 12 2024 Men's Water Polo World Championship: Quarterfinals: 10 - 11

Sakkari loses in the second round of Doha to Noskova, 6-3 6-7 5-7. She had a match point on return at 6-3 5-3 and then had 6-3 5-4 30-15 on serve but hit an unforced error followed by two consecutive double faults... She will now exit the top 10 for the first time since joining the top 10 2.5 years ago. However, she will probably be back in after next week as Muchova will be dropping a lot of points. Of course the typical reaction in Greece is that she is "done" and "should retire from tennis." Meanwhile she is 28 yo and even 5 years ago no one expected that she would spend half of the next 5 years in top 10

Nice to see Christou winning bronze in the men's 100 backstroke. Sure it's a weak year, but in 2022 he had the CR in the semifinals and then was a disappointing 5th in the final, so it's nice he finally got his medal Also good for Makrygiannis finishing 4th with another PR! His progress stalled the last few years, but now he seems to be on the right path again

What a collapse from us at the end

Swimming +1 Dimitrios Markos (men's 800m freestyle)

With NR as well