Makedonas

Εκτός τελικού και η Τζένγκο στον ακοντισμό...

We will know after Thursday who the Olympic qualifiers are for individuals or after Saturday's final?

Well we lost 0-3 but we did quite well. We lost the first set 24-26, second set wasn't so close (16-25), and then in the third set we really battled (without Anthouli for most of it) but lost 26-28 after having two set points. It was nice to see some other girls step up today and I am really optimistic about the future of this team. Let's not forget (how can we when I keep mentioning it ) that we were at this tournament without arguably our best player Vasilantonaki. Also I am proud of our team for fighting and being authentic, unlike the United Nations All-Star team of Azerbaijan which we faced yesterday, or Turkey today with the Cuban mercenary Vargas as their best player...I would rather lose this way than win with fake naturalized players, and I know I'm not the only one who thinks this. Lastly the live comments feed on European Volleyball today was absolutely disgusting, these things should be monitored, it was even worse than the FIBA ones. The amount of Turks making "swimming" jokes about how their ancestors killed Greeks in the sea 100 years ago was extremely disgusting, and quite shocking to be honest that so many people still think this way in 2023...

Magdalena Lobnig is also entered in the women's single sculls

All the entries are now listed on the World Rowing website. The Greek team is exactly as I predicted it to be.

Tough loss for us 2-3 against the United Nations All-Star team aka "Azerbaijan" We had leads (6-2, 11-10) in the 5th set but lost it 12-15 We need a miracle now to advance, it's too bad, we will be lucky to win a set against Turkey... Our girls fought hard though and we will have many chances in the future. Our oldest player is 30 yo and our best player is 19 yo, so we will be back (and hopefully with Vasilantonaki back in the team because we currently only have two "elite" players and she would be the third and make a big improvement to our squad)

We haven't announced our team yet, but based on the teams we've sent to the European Championships and World Cup III, plus the U23 athletes missing from the European U23 Championships this weekend, I think our team will be as follows: Women's Pair: Evangelia Anastasiadou / Christina Bourmpou Women's Double Sculls: Sofia Dalidou / Evangelia Fragkou Women's Lightweight Double Sculls: Zoi Fitsiou / Dimitra Kontou Men's Single Sculls: Stefanos Ntouskos Men's Double Sculls: Ioannis Kalandaridis / Athanasios Palaiopanos Men's Lightweight Double Sculls: Petros Gkaidatzis / Antonios Papakonstantinou The only new crew is W2X. Aside from them and the M2X, the other four crews have won medals this year either at the European Championships, World Cup III, or both. So one would think those crews are safe bets to qualify for Paris 2024 M2X last year made the A Final at the World Championships, then this year only competed at the World Cup III and finished 11th overall which is not great, but I think one of them had injury problems so hopefully they are back to their 2022 form and can qualify. W2X is a young team, but both girls have a lot of U23 and U19 medals (especially gold) so hopefully they can do well together. We have a lot of unused rowers and I wish we would try to enter a four-person boat, especially for the women. After the World Cup fiasco this year, I don't think the Kyridou sisters will be here unless there is a last minute surprise. It's a real shame if they can't be used, same with Tsamopoulou. I hope next year we can see some other crews try to qualify. We had 5 girls last year win medals at both the U19 World and Euros in the main events (W1X, W2-, W2X). Of those, only Dalidou is here. Gkogkou is going to be rowing at Yale University with Bourmpou, and Asvesta has not competed in any regatta this year but will be at the European U23s this weekend. Natsioula (who won three gold medals last year in U23 and U19) is nowhere to be found, and same with Argyraki. Also our two biggest talents in recent years, Asoumanaki and Christodoulidis, do not seem to be rowing anymore. They won the NCAA Championships and then stopped rowing it seems... And for the men Stergiakas came back, won the World and European U23 titles in 2021 in M2X with different partners (after not competing since 2018 when he won gold in both of those regattas as well), then disappeared again...

Czech team with Greek coach too strong for us, now we need to beat Azerbaijan to have a chance to advance.

We are making so many ridiculous mistakes, our inexperience is showing. We have a new, young team, only 4 out of the 14 players from 2021 returned. Anthouli is a big talent though and we are blessed to have Strantzali as well. We need a few more years I think to become better, and also with Vasilantonaki back in the team we will be much, much stronger.

3-1 win for us over Sweden

We also got silver in the men's team skeet, so now we have 4 medals so far at these World Championships! Also we have 4 Olympic quotas already, the most for us since 2004 when we hosted, and I think we will still add 1-3 more.

Decent results in recent friendlies, for example we played 4 sets vs Bulgaria just a couple weeks ago and won all four of them (whereas they beat us 3-0 at the European Championships in both 2019 and 2021). In general our team seems to have improved over the past few years, mainly due to our teenage star Martha Anthouli (2.02 cm) leading the way now.

Bad result for us today, 0-3 against the hosts Germany. We had some set points in the third set but could not do it. I thought we had a good chance to win going into the match. Also, I'm not sure why Vasilantonaki isn't on the team this year

Really shocking that we are not on this list considering our history in the sport. Even in Tokyo we had 8 quotas (6 boat classes) which was considered low for us. I still think we will qualify some others in the next regattas, but we will probably send something like 3-5 sailors to Paris. 470 being reduced to two quotas from four really hurt us, and none of our mixed combinations are anywhere near as good as we were when they had separate genders. We also seemed to do way better in RS:X compared to iQFoil. Finn getting removed also cost us a spot, as did Karachaliou switching to Portugal in the women's laser radial. I still think we'll qualify in the men's laser, men's kite, men's iQFoil and possibly one of the two-person boats or women's iQFoil...

2023 U23 European Championships: GOLD: Stergios Bilas - Men's 50m butterfly Stergios Bilas - Men's 50m freestyle Dimitrios Markos - Men's 200m freestyle SILVER: Evangelos Makrygiannis - Men's 50m backstroke BRONZE: Evangelos Makrygiannis - Men's 100m backstroke Dimitrios Markos - Men's 400m freestyle

Final: 9 - 8 Επιτέλους, ένα χρυσό μετάλλιο!

LEN Men's European U17 Water Polo Championships 2023: Group B: 12 - 10 11 - 9 12 - 12 Quarterfinals: 13 - 8 Semifinals: 14 - 13 Final: vs.

I agree, it's really such a shame! We have two of the current top 4 in the FIE world rankings in the women's sabre. Well, it wouldn't be the first time that a rule was changed because of us, it happened in women's water polo when our girls were 2011 world champions and 2012 European silver medalists but still did not manage to qualify for London 2012. Now, the world champion is always automatically qualified for the Olympics It's very unfortunate that Vougiouka retired after Rio 2016, she was only 30 yo which in this sport is not too old. She was ranked in the top 5 in this weapon and with her on the team, I think she would give a big boost to our team, and I'm surprised there wasn't more of a push to bring her back to the sport after Georgiadou didn't get the chance to qualify for Tokyo due to this rule.

2023 European Athletics U20 Championships: Bronze: Dimitrios Antonatos - men's shot put Vasiliki Kallimogianni - women's 3000m steeplechase

Pretty disappointing for us to end with just 2 bronze. We had higher hopes for sure. Kallimogianni bronze in the women's 3000 SC with a huge U20NR was a nice surprise, and in an event we don't typically do well in. Antonatos in the shot put winning bronze was also good, and he'll have another chance at this level in 2025 to win gold. We also had good showings in the triple jump events. For the men, 2006-born Gkartsios was 5th and for the women, 2007-born Zaragka was 8th. In 2025, both should do very well considering most athletes here were born in 2004 and 2005. The three events where I expected medals were the women's pole vault (Triantafyllou was 5th), men's high jump (Mita was a disappointing 11th), and men's hammer throw (Mantzouranis NM in final and Papanastasiou was 7th).

Nice for us to have 2-1-1 so far, plus a new Olympic quota! I hope Markos can also get an Olympic quota today in the 800 free. However, I'm not sure how important this event is. Unlike athletics or rowing, U23 athletes in swimming are often already doing extremely well at the senior level, so this new competition seems somewhat pointless.

Extremely disappointing to see the reaction from Dinamo Zagreb and especially their fans. They are totally downplaying this tragedy and not only (also some even celebrating/mocking it on social media), and blaming everyone but themselves. Meanwhile, no away fans were allowed which makes you wonder, what were they doing in Athens to begin with?!