Makedonas

That is not true, our team is very weak without Stefanos, only his brother is good at doubles but that's it, everyone else is ITF level (although the young Sakellaridis seems good and is moving up the rankings a lot, he needs more time to be at a top level). Davis Cup will be between the US Open and Laver Cup (in Canada), so I'm not sure if Tsitsipas will go back and forth to North America from Europe, but he will face a lot of criticism in Greece if he does not play so for his image he will probably do it. Also it was announced today that the Panathenaic Stadium is a potential venue for this.

Probably it will come down to doubles, Tsitsipas brothers would be slight favourites to win I guess.

Sasa Zivoulovic (handball) died yesterday at age 50 in Athens. He competed on the Greek team at Athens 2004 which got 6th place. In case you were wondering about his name, he was born in Serbia but lived in Greece for many years and still did until his death and was involved in Greek handball. He coached the women's team of Nea Ionia, and just on Sunday they won the Greek Cup and now a few days later he is dead...

2023 Davis Cup World Group I: Greece 3 - 1 Ecuador Stefanos Tsitsipas GRE d. Alvaro Guillen Meza ECU 7-5 6-2 Aristotelis Thanos GRE d. Andres Andrade ECU 7-6(4) 6-4 Gonzalo Escobar ECU/Diego Hidalgo ECU d. Alexandros Skorilas GRE/Petros Tsitsipas GRE 7-6(4) 6-4 Stefanos Tsitsipas GRE d. Andres Andrade ECU 7-6(1) 6-1

Konstantinos Mitoglou (basketball) finally after 11 months there is a decision, he will be banned until November 2024. So he will miss the 2024 Olympics if we qualify (he was very likely to be in the squad if allowed to play).

Bolivia in men's tennis definitely does not have a "decent shot" at winning a medal, sorry. Also, Albania got 4th place in men's weightlifting in Tokyo, I'm surprised no one mentioned that for Paris? Or maybe one of the medal winners will get caught doping and the Albanian guy will get promoted to bronze, that honestly might be the most likely first medal for Albania knowing how the sport of weightlifting goes

So Pliskova has to play qualifying in Doha but Mattek-Sands, Sherif, and Zvonareva got wildcards? This is an absolute joke! Wildcards were also previously announced for Krejcikova, Rybakina, and Muguruza but they all either got in after withdrawals or withdrew themselves. And Azarenka got a wildcard too. Some of these choices are fair but some are completely ridiculous! Pliskova is a former world number one and her ranking fell because of injury, I'd like to know, what is the reason to give Muguruza one? She was healthy all year as far as I know and her ranking fell due to bad results.

12.000 fans came on Day 1 and 14.000 on Day 2 to see Greece beat Ecuador. We will now play Slovakia in September at home again. Hopefully it will be another win for us against @hckošice as we will then have beaten both of his countries, Ecuador and Slovakia Also this was the most fans ever to a tennis match in Greece. The 2004 Olympics only had a capacity of 8.000. I think we can hopefully keep breaking the record, this arena seats about 19.000 although in September we will probably play outdoors at the 8.000 seat tennis stadium (the weather will be better, it was snowing during the matches with Ecuador so good thing we played indoors). This was very important because for most people it was the first chance to see Tsitsipas, he has only played in Greece once since 2016 and that was Davis Cup at a very small venue with expensive tickets in 2019. This time tickets were easily available and very cheap, ranging from 10 euros to 30 euros.

Tentoglou's jump is also WL

Well our girls qualified but it was far from convincing, Spanou was horrible with so many turnovers, but Fasoula was incredible. She had 27 points, I think that might be a new record for her with the senior national team although I'm too lazy to look it up. I still don't understand why Nikolopoulou and Spyridopoulou aren't in the team anymore, I mean they are 31 and 34 respectively but we have two 38 year olds in the team for example. Especially for these qualifiers we need more bench players, for the final tournament we will be okay with some of our NCAA players.

I'm in!

Okay, but perhaps she shouldn't have waited until 2016 to try and play, when there were chances in 2013, 2014, and 2015? Tsitsipas already played last year for us and now he played again yesterday and today, less than one week after playing a Grand Slam final on the other side of the world...

This all applies to Wozniacki yet they still allowed her to play in 2016 and she was talking about Tokyo but retired in January 2020. Since 2011, she only played Fed Cup once (2015)

How do the Davis Cup/Fed Cup requirements factor in here? I know they have bent the rules for some 'stars' in the past. Princess Wozniacki for example, meanwhile Tsitsipas had to drag his *ss to the Philippines in the middle of the season to play Davis Cup to be eligible for the Olympics. Osaka will probably have a protected ranking when she comes back so I guess she won't need this quota.

17 yo Apostolos Siskos swam yesterday 1:56.79 in the 200m backstroke. The Olympic standard is 1:57.50, so it seems that he will have no problems achieving that once the qualification period starts. It's really nice to see that we have another young swimmer on the rise and his progression so far is very impressive: 2018: 2:13.89 2019: 2:08.59 2020: 2:04.56 2021: 2:00.45 2022: 1:58.66 2023: 1:56.79 and still plenty of time to keep improving this... He is committed to begin at Harvard University later this year, so I am not sure what we can expect from him in Paris. A lot of times when promising Greek athletes go to American universities, their progression stalls for a few years so I am not sure if it is the right decision.

2023 Australian Open: Men's Singles: Final: (4) Novak Djokovic SRB d. (3) Stefanos Tsitsipas GRE 6-3 7-6(4) 7-6(5)

It's too bad that Ginnis had to miss the Olympics last year due to injury, but I'm excited to see what he can do in 2026. Our best ever placing at the Winter Olympics (in any sport) was 13th, so I hope he can break that record

Great to see Sabalenka finally win her first Grand Slam title. She is a worthy winner for sure! I hope to be able to say the same about my countryman Tsitsipas although I am not so sure, it will be very difficult against the GOAT. It's too bad he had to face Djokovic in both of his slam finals while others had to play against the likes of Casper Ruud...anyways it is great to have a Greek player in the final and even if he doesn't win the title, I think he will win one in the near future

Emmanouil Karalis 5.83 =WL PB in pole vault yesterday in Germany. Perhaps this is the year he will finally reach his potential?

2023 Australian Open: Men's Singles: Semifinals: (3) Stefanos Tsitsipas GRE d. (18) Karen Khachanov RUS 7-6(2) 6-4 6-7(6) 6-3 Final: (3) Stefanos Tsitsipas GRE vs. (4) Novak Djokovic SRB

2023 Australian Open: Men's Singles: Quarterfinals: (3) Stefanos Tsitsipas GRE d. Jiri Lehecka CZE 6-3 7-6(2) 6-4 Semifinals: (3) Stefanos Tsitsipas GRE vs. (18) Karen Khachanov RUS

2023 Australian Open: Men's Singles: Round 4: (3) Stefanos Tsitsipas GRE d. (15) Jannik Sinner ITA 6-4 6-4 3-6 4-6 6-3 Quarterfinals: (3) Stefanos Tsitsipas GRE vs. Jiri Lehecka CZE