Makedonas

At Athens 2004, our baseball and softball teams did quite well! They won some games, although most of the athletes were Greeks from the United States and Canada of course.

Greece in 2004 was not granted field hockey teams...

Nice to see our girls into the European Championships final for the 4th time in our history! Unfortunately we got silver the other three times (2010, 2012, 2018) and I don't think it will be different this time but I hope to be wrong. Our national teams won 6 medals in 2021 and now 6 in 2022. So far all have been silver and bronze, no gold since the 2019 Men's Junior World Championships. It would be nice to finally win gold again

No surprise we lost to Spain in QF. We are missing too many important players here to do something special. Quite a pity after medals at the last two major events (Olympics and World Championships) but oh well.

I couldn't tell if you were joking or not at first, so I did some research and could not find any articles about this No. What happened? He has Greek citizenship and had the option to play for us and contend for medals, but he chose to play for Bulgaria instead. You should be proud of him. He is clearly very loyal to his roots despite never living in Bulgaria

As a Sakkari fan, I feel attacked by this I like Berrettini, but he always gets weak draws in slams. Also he has an embarrassing record vs top 10 opponents. He's only got one win vs top 10 opponents in the last 3 years, and none in slams in his entire career. Just look at his performance vs Ruud yesterday...

Η εθνική γυναικών νίκησε την Ιταλία με 12-9 και πέρασε στον τελικό!

Easy win for us over Great Britain. The decision by Itoudis to rest Giannis today proved to be the correct one The graphics on screen this tournament are tragic. So many times the score is not updated, it is a joke.

Ο Βασίλης Σοφικίτης μετά το ευρωπαϊκό πρωτάθλημα εφήβων στο Οτεπένι της Ρουμανίας, κατέκτησε το χάλκινο μετάλλιο στα 400μ. μικτή ατομική και στο παγκόσμιο εφηβικό πρωτάθλημα στη Λίμα.

Also I wanted to say it was a great year for Greek women's rowing so far, 10 gold medals and 3 silver medals And this is without the Kyridou sisters and Tsamopoulou who have issues with the national federation and aren't competing these days, and also without Nikolaidou who was our best female rower over the last decade who recently retired. If we play our cards right (which we never do), I think we can qualify in 4 or 5 of the 7 women's boat classes for Paris 2024 (which would also include the Kyridou sisters and Tsamopoulou coming back to the national team, which as of now they plan to do). Before Tokyo we never qualified more than one women's boat to any Olympics, then we had two in Tokyo. Great to see these young girls do so well, hopefully in Paris we can qualify a lot of boats and then in Los Angeles win a lot of medals (as most will probably be too young in Paris).

We finished with 3 gold and 1 silver GOLD for Bourmpou/Fragkou in W2- which was obviously expected as they dominated the World U23 Championships this year with a world record. GOLD for Gkaidatzis in LM1X. He hadn't competed with the national team since 2019, so it was nice to see him come back and win another medal. Hopefully he can reunite with his old partner Papakonstantinou and try to qualify for Paris together in LM2X (Papakonstantinou won gold this year at the European Championships in LM1X and gold at last year's World U23 Championships in LM1X). GOLD for Kontou/Natsioula in W2X. They are really impressive, Kontou is 16yo and Natsioula is 17yo, so for them to both win a U23 gold medal in such a challenging boat class is really special. Natsioula has won 4 gold medals in her last 4 regattas, all in W2X (2022 European U23, 2022 World U19, 2022 European U19, 2021 European U19). And for Kontou this is her first medal as she did not compete at the U19 level this year, and instead was focusing on U23 Worlds (in W1X) and the World Cup. I think it will be the first of many gold medals for her... SILVER for Anastasiadou in LW1X. Really shocking and disappointing. Did not expect this at all, she has been winning gold at the European U23s since she was 18, and this year won gold at the World U23s with a world record and silver in W1X as a lightweight (!!!) at the European Championships. Not sure what happened but at least she won another medal. 4th places for Angou/Varelopoulou (LW2X) and the Boukouvalas brothers (M2-). Both missed the podium by less than one second. As I've said, we are really Canada 2.0 here...also not sure why we sent Angou who is only 17 yo and has never won a medal at anything before, I think we had better options for Varelopoulou to have a partner to reach the podium. 5th out of 5 boats for our W2-. They are all U19s so it's not a big deal, and two of them (Argyraki and Asvesta) won gold in W2- this year at both the World and European U19s. The Papaioannou sisters were clearly too inexperienced to do better at this level. 6th for our M2X. Not much to say. We had Iasonas Exarchou last year win silver in this event as a U19, not sure why he wasn't selected again this year. 11th for Papazoglou in M1X. He is only 17 yo so I didn't expect much, he won medals at both the World and European U19s this year and probably will do the same next year.

2022 European U23 Rowing Championships Gold: Christina Bourmpou and Evangelia Fragkou (women's pair) Petros Gkaidatzis (men's lightweight single sculls) Dimitra Kontou and Styliani Natsioula (women's double sculls) Silver: Evangelia Anastasiadou (women's lightweight single sculls)

Well we beat Croatia and Italy, both games were closer than they should have been but as long as we win I guess I shouldn't complain. Those are by far the two toughest opponents we will have to face in our group so now we really should win the group and then we will see. We have a history of doing well in the group stage and choking in knockout rounds so I won't get too excited, although it is really hard to see us not making the podium this year...

2022 US Open Men's singles: First round: (Q) Daniel Elahi Galan COL d. (4) Stefanos Tsitsipas GRE 6-0 6-1 3-6 7-5 Women's singles: First round: (3) Maria Sakkari GRE d. Tatjana Maria GER 6-4 3-6 6-0 Second round: Xiyu Wang CHN d. (3) Maria Sakkari GRE 3-6 7-5 7-5 Women's singles qualifying: First round: Mai Hontama JPN d. Despina Papamichail GRE 6-2 6-2 Men's doubles: First round: (WC) Eubanks/Shelton USA d. (A) Tsitsipas/Tsitsipas GRE 3-6 7-6(8) 6-2

Well in the end of the 11 players I predicted, 10 were correct. Mitoglou's doping suspension obviously prevents him from playing, but I did not expect Lountzis to make the team. Agravanis is very good and I can't believe I forgot to mention him in this post back in November. Personally I would have chosen Kalaitzakis over Lountzis but I am not the coach

Good win for us yesterday over Croatia although I didn't have the chance to watch it. We are still not at full strength with several players just coming back from injury (Papagiannis, Papapetrou, Sloukas) and hopefully playing their way into form throughout this tournament. I think if we beat Italy today, then it's almost impossible for us to not finish first place in the group. We have our two most difficult opponents first, I don't see us struggling against the other three teams in the group...

In other rowing news, the European U23 Championships are currently underway in Belgium

This tournament is very boring. 12 teams are too many. Wake me up when the semifinals start

This is clearly the worst Grand Slam for us ever. Women's singles qualifying 0 wins, 1 loss Women's singles main draw 1 win, 1 loss Men's singles main draw 0 wins, 1 loss Men's doubles main draw 0 wins, 1 loss Also our junior Michaela Laki will not be participating despite being ranked high enough to get into the draw. So yeah, this is very disappointing for us. I know some years we had 0 wins across all categories, but this time expectations were higher as we have two top 5 players...

Our team is really not good, we are missing several key players due to injury so I don't expect a medal unfortunately. Although the 5-5 score against Croatia actually isn't so bad. Kind of crazy that we have 1 Olympic medal and 3 World Championship medals, but have never won a European Championship medal in our history. Although really all three competitions are about the same level since Europeans dominate men's water polo.

^Now number 80 in the live rankings. I still don't understand how Sakkari lost to that fluke last year in the semifinals

29 yo Katerina Nikolaidou (rowing) She hasn't competed since 2019 due to injury so it's not surprising, although last year she was trying to get healthy in time for Tokyo, then after she was saying she was focusing on Paris but now she has "former rower" in her Instagram bio. She was a big hope for us, in 2010 won bronze in the single sculls at the World Junior Championships and after that won a silver at the 2012 World U23 Championships in the double sculls. Then she switched to lightweight category in 2013 where she had a fantastic year, gold at the European Championships and World U23 Championships and silver at the World Championships. She had a similar year in 2014 with the only difference being silver at the World U23s instead of gold. Then she switched back to the double sculls and won silver at the World Championships in 2015 with Sofia Asoumanaki. They were a very young team and finished 4th at the 2016 Olympics (we expected a medal from them there really) at ages 23 and 19. Nikolaidou never made it back to the Olympics ever since...

U16 World Championships: beat in both finals to win gold for boys and girls Our national teams won 6 medals in 2021 and so far 5 in 2022. None of them gold...

You were right, we did beat you. However, you beat us yesterday at the finals of both the U16 Men's and Women's World Championships. So congrats, you got two gold medals against our young teams and we got two silver.