Makedonas

Another NR, this time it's in a much more important event, Emmanouil Karalis 5.86 in the men's pole vault! His PB was 5.83 from a few weeks ago and the NR was 5.85 from 2017 (Konstantinos Filippidis). The outdoor NR is 5.91 from 2015 (also Filippidis), so now he is trying to pass that too. So far he missed his first attempt at 5.92.

GREECE Amanda Tenfjord, Evangelia - AMAN

Less than one week later, another NR for her, this time in the 3000m indoor race walk at the National Championships. With 12:18.26, she broke her own NR from 2021 (12:21.43) and is also WL in this event.

The draw sizes in Linz and Lyon for example were 32 for singles and 16 for doubles, but they played both finals on the same day.

Thanks for explaining, but why would they play the doubles final the same day as the singles semifinals? It should be played the same day as the singles final in my opinion. Also what if the singles final is a quick match, then these fans bought tickets just to watch less than an hour of tennis? Should have both finals on the same day. That's how it normally is at WTA events anyways.

Well to begin with it seems difficult because she plays an early match in SF even though she finished after midnight local time. Meanwhile Kudermetova vs Swiatek is later even though one played the first match of QF and the other didn't even play... Reminds me of Guadalajara where Maria had to play SF and F in one day, while her opponent in the final (ironically also Pegula) did not have to.

Today in Doha, Azarenka wasted a 6-1 4-1 lead against Bencic (lost 6-1 6-7 4-6) and Ostapenko wasted a 5-2 lead in the third set against Pegula (lost 5-7)

He had a lot to say about this: And then a few hours later after writing "I don't care about an 8.40 jump...I can jump it whenever the fuck I want," he jumps 8.41 Also a lot of big names in the sport commented agreeing with him.

She won in the end although Zheng hit the shot of the year in the second set. The article just says that she added Tillstrom to her team in addition to Tom Hill, and that Hill will still be the main coach. I understand why she wants to keep him, he made her top 3 from a top 50 player and even though her results lately are more up and down, her highs are still very high and her level is generally much higher than it was in 2018 when they started working together for example.

Very special for Greece that the Chiefs won, as one of their players (George Karlaftis) was born and raised in Athens! He moved to the United States when he was in high school and started playing American football. Before that, he was a water polo player on our junior national teams! It's crazy to see Greeks doing well lately in "popular global" sports which were not big in our country like tennis (Tsitsipas and Sakkari), alpine skiing (Ginnis), American football (Karlaftis), NBA (Antetokounmpo, okay we were always good at basketball but didn't have an NBA star, only Euroleague stars or NBA bench players). What is next? F1? Golf? Figure skating?

After an amazing end to their campaign, winning 3 games in a row, Poland still failed to qualify @Monzanator @rafalgorka @Adriano @rybak

Your girls beat Slovenia!

For many years she didn't schedule properly, she would almost never play 250s when she was ranked in the 20s and 30s, she scheduled like a top 10 player for years before she was one. Then once she suddenly became top 10 she had only one title to her name, and it became somewhat of a mental thing. Had she played more 250s in 2019, 2020, 2021 etc., I wonder if she would've won more of them.

Athletics (1) Antigoni Drisbioti (women's 20km walk)

Antigoni Drisbioti qualifies for Paris 2024! New NR in the women's 20km walk of 1:28:12! The previous NR of 1:28:58 was from 2004! Drisbioti's previous PB was 1:29:03 from 2022, and the Olympic standard was 1:29:20. Really incredible for her to be doing this at her age, she will be 39 next month! And she'll be 40 in Paris!

Not that it matters, but these were the National Championships, not "One Day Race Walking Match"

Also I don't know if this is the right place to say it, but the Greek media is really shameful. Some Greek media outlets barely acknowledge the matches she wins, but then love to publicize the matches she loses and exaggerate them in some way. She has 8 wins and 3 losses this year, but most people in Greece who are brainwashed by the media will think she has lost most of the matches she's played this year...it's really shameful! Of course it is not a coincidence that they treat her this way when she is dating the Prime Minister's son.

In the end some of these WCs were wrong (I saw on Wikipedia so forgive me), however, they are still making Pliskova play qualifying. So ridiculous. I saw the match, I don't think she played poorly, Martic was really good and served brilliantly. Maria gets a lot of criticism for her SF record although last year she won 4 semifinals and lost 3, so I think she has overcome that now. Now she needs to fix the problem of finals, where she has 1 win and 6 losses. The only bad loss she had in a final was against Sherif in Parma. The St. Petersburg loss stung because she was up 5-2 (one break) in the third set but Kontaveit played well indoors at that time and was winning every tournament on the surface. When she won in Rabat 2019, which people always make jokes about, she was not even expected to win and actually had a really tough draw (defending champion and top seed Mertens in QF, and then Konta in F, who went on to make the Rome F and Roland Garros SF that year). I think if she keeps putting herself into these positions she will win more titles, but WTA has stupid rules that limits top 10 players from playing many 250s in a season, whereas on the ATP for example guys like Ruud and Sinner are able to play endless 250s and inflate their trophy cabinets...

I just hope that they can keep this up once the ranking points start counting for OG qualification. Georgiadou has a real shot at a medal in Paris, which is crazy because she was a nobody until the last 1.5 years or so, now she is a top fencer in her 30s! Of course the other alternative is to qualify in the team event, which will be difficult but we keep improving so you never know.

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).