Makedonas

Well we are now into the semifinals, and so are Luxembourg, so I guess it wasn't such a bad loss after all

I even saw an advertisement for Wimbledon a few days ago, I don't remember if it was from Eurosport or ESPN or what, and they had just Djokovic and Gauff on it... I mean Swiatek, Sabalenka, Rybakina, even Venus Williams I would understand. Gauff though?

Άλλο ένα αργυρό μετάλλιο...

2023 Wimbledon: Women's Singles Qualifying: Round 1: Natalija Stevanovic SRB d. Valentini Grammatikopoulou GRE 6-2 6-1 Round 1: Despina Papamichail GRE d. Zeynep Sonmez TUR 6-3 3-6 6-4 Round 2: Despina Papamichail GRE d. (10) Oceane Dodin FRA 7-6(8) 7-6(3) Round 3: (29) Viktorija Golubic SUI d. Despina Papamichail GRE 6-2 7-6(5) Men's Singles: Round 1: (5) Stefanos Tsitsipas GRE vs. Dominic Thiem AUT Women's Singles: Round 1: (8) Maria Sakkari GRE vs. Marta Kostyuk UKR Men's Doubles: Round 1: Tsitsipas/Tsitsipas GRE/GRE vs. Fils FRA/van Assche FRA

Now she won a W25 in Serbia from qualifying without dropping a set (Emma Raducanu who?), so this result doesn't seem out of the ordinary and she will be ranked around 360 after Wimbledon (and potentially higher depending on how she does this week in Spain).

I'm not at all surprised that Kenin beat Gauff. They even had Gauff on all of the tournament posters. They really need to calm down with all this hype. She's just not that good (at the moment, at least).

Our girls U18 team lost 62-63 to Luxembourg at the European Championships Division B the other day. I do not know much about this competition, but surely losing to Luxembourg is not a good sign for the future...

Anastasiadou/Bourmpou will represent Greece in the women's pair at the upcoming World Cup. Anastasiadou is only 21 yo yet has competed in W1X, LW1X, W2X, LW2X and now W2- She usually wins medals when she shows up to international regattas, but it would really be nice if she can just find one boat/crew and stick to it. There was also a ton of drama (which I won't bore everyone with) with the Kyridou sisters not getting selected for this event...

Pretty big results in the women's pole vault at the U18 Greek Championships this past weekend: 14 yo Ariadni Mirtsiou won with 4.10, 17 yo Evgenia Panagiotou got silver with 4.05, and 15 yo Anastasia Bouboulidi took bronze with 4.00 I don't know any other country that had all three medalists at their U18 National Championships clear 4m, it definitely didn't happen anywhere else this year.

Our two best fencers are ranked in the top 4 of the world

Well, she will choose to focus on football unfortunately. She got called up to the women's national team so I guess it makes sense for her. She will compete at the upcoming National Championships and European U23 Championships (with the third best time), and then focus on football again.

I'm pleasantly surprised that we avoided relegation Without a doubt, our 19 yo sprinter Polyniki Emmanouilidou was the star for us. Got 3rd place in 200m with a U23NR of 22.85 Also she was 7th in 100m with 11.30 which is her second best time ever. Another 19 yo, Georgia Despollari, also impressed a lot. She finished 10th in the 800m with a new PB of 2:02.31 (her PB before this season was 2:12.32). She is a footballer for Panathinaikos' women's team and suddenly it seems that she might have to change her career. If she actually focuses on track, she could potentially do really big things. Especially for our standards as we are historically poor in middle and long distance events, as evidenced by our results here. Our women's 4x100 team got 7th with a time of 43.81 which is the best they've done in several years, and this is without Spanoudaki who is injured (who was our best sprinter until this year when Emmanouilidou surpassed her). They can make it to Paris if healthy, which would be incredible, as we have not had any athletics relay team at an Olympics since our men's 4x400 team made it in Beijing 2008... We had a lot of good results from men in field events. Tentoglou 1st, Karalis 2nd, Anastasakis and Tsiamis 3rd, Kyriazis 5th...Nyfantopoulos 6th in 100m was also good. We needed some results like this since we are horrible at the middle and long distance events. I will say I am disappointed in some of our women. Tzengko 5th and Stefanidi 8th, these are the types of athletes we expect better from...also Karydi 10th and hasn't even jumped over 13m this year, it's crazy to see how much she has regressed when a few years ago she was one of the most promising jumpers in the world. Apparently she isn't training much anymore because she is focusing on dental school. Stamatia Scarvelis 11th was also very disappointing, she's been generally poor this year. As for Vasiliou finishing 16th in 400m with 53.90, no words... However, the most disappointing of all was Pavlidis in the men's discus. He's our men's NR holder (64.90) at only 19 yo and he only registered one valid attempt today which was 45.79 for a last place finish. Also special thanks to European Athletics for making it almost impossible to follow these events as we cannot even see live results without registering for their stupid website. World Athletics did the same thing last year I believe. These people really want to make their sport as inaccessible as possible, huh?

2023 European Cadets (U17) Wrestling Championships: BRONZE Vasileios Papageorgiou (Men's Greco-Roman 55 kg) Maria-Louiza Gkika (Women's Freestyle 43 kg)

I'm late on this but really a heartbreaking loss for our girls against Czechia. Still, I am optimistic about our future and think we will have an even better chance to make it to 2028. All six of our main players will be back as long as they are injury free, plus the young talents like Bosgana, Chatzileonti, Krimili will be older and hopefully become a part of our main players (so instead of having 6 girls the whole game we can have 8 or 9 )

Dorka Juhasz from WNBA

I really think the ATP and WTA need to work together to plan out finals scheduling. It is ridiculous that every week we have multiple finals from different tournaments going on at the same time. It would be better for all if they were somewhat spaced out...

EuroBasket Women 2023 Group A: 69 - 74 73 - 65 60 - 76 Qualification for Quarterfinals: 76 - 79 Δυστυχώς, με αυτό το αποτέλεσμα δε θα είμαστε στους Ολυμπιακούς του 2024...

Semifinals: 8 - 14 Bronze medal match: 6 - 11

2023 European Championships Bronze - Theodora Gkountoura (women's sabre)

Swimming +1 Anna Ntountounaki (women's 100m butterfly)

For the first time ever, I am glad we lost We played close against Spain for most of the game, which was a good test for our team, and then at the end we gave up and played the bench players. I'm glad our main players can rest up a bit, because we have a big battle tomorrow against Czechia.

This game is too close, I really hope we lose I would much rather face the Czech Republic than Italy, especially since we lost by 53 (!!!) points to Italy in a preparation game a few weeks ago...

Bronze for Theodora!