Makedonas

^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.

Very true, although last year she was injured after US Open and did not play for a few months so she won't be defending points this year after the US Open at least.

They just know nothing about tennis and like to hate Maria because she dates the PM's son. They made similar comments when she lost to Pliskova in Toronto. Obviously they don't know she is a former number 1.

Yes we had a good week with athletics, rowing, swimming, gymnastics medals, also Tsitsipas in the men's final. Even our second ATP player Pervolarakis won a set against a top 50 opponent yesterday. Sadly our hyped U16 basketball team got 4th place after our best player got injured and missed most of the tournament. Our men's senior NT dominated the Acropolis Tournament (unfortunately for you the Poland game was the only one he actually played in). It's too bad Sakkari had to play Garcia in her first match, everyone in Greece was criticizing her for losing to such a "random opponent" although I knew Garcia was playing much better than her ranking. And still Sakkari hit 17 aces and was playing well in that match.

Wow, she beat Bronzetti 6-2 6-4 to win the title and moves up now from her current ranking of 239 to a new career-high of 143!

6th European gold for Petrounias

Tsitsipas just beat Medvedev in the semifinals of Cincinnati! This is his second win over a world number 1, as he also beat Djokovic in Shanghai 2019.

2022 European Athletics Championships: GOLD: Antigoni Drisbioti - Women's 35km walk Miltiadis Tentoglou - Men's long jump Antigoni Drisbioti - Women's 20km walk Elina Tzengko - Women's javelin throw SILVER: Ekaterini Stefanidi - Women's pole vault

Fun fact: We have won gold in the women's javelin three times. Anna Verouli won gold in 1982, then Manjani in 2002 and Tzengko in 2022 I have a feeling we won't have to wait 20 years for another women's javelin gold considering Tzengko's age and ability

Valentini Grammatikopoulou into the Vancouver final!

Of course being Canada 2.0, we got 4th place And Spain ended with silver, meanwhile we beat them by 28 in the group stage Lithuania won gold @Werloc

GOLD for Elina, so awesome! We won 4 gold medals here now, the first 2 on the same day (women's 35km and men's long jump), and then the second 3 on the same day (women's 20km and women's javelin). 20 years ago, Mirela Manjani won gold in the women's javelin in Munich 2002. Now, 20 years later once again in Munich, Elina Tzengko wins gold in the women's javelin. Both girls are of Albanian origins as well. Really we've only had three notable female athletes with Albanian origins, and all are javelin throwers . Of course Elina is the only one who was born in Greece, the other two were migrants. Manjani won two Olympic medals so hopefully Tzengko can also do the same. Her progress reminds me of Tentoglou's, so hopefully she can become as dominant as him over the next few years.

Wow amazing end to the women's javelin

Also sometimes we see Russians as Sofia, Sofya, Sofiya, or Anastasia, Anastasiya etc

Is it confirmed that Vuleta is retiring? I thought she was retiring after the World Indoors in Belgrade but she's still around obviously. It would be a big loss for Serbia as they don't have many top athletes in athletics, although Topic and Vilagos are big hopes for them.

In Greek "ai" together make the "e" sound. So in Greek we spell it Aikaterini but pronounce it Ekaterini. However, everyone with that name uses Katerina informally. It's one of the most common female names and you'll never hear someone being called "Ekaterini" except in a formal/legal setting. For example at the last Olympics we had "Ekaterini Stefanidi" in pole vault and "Aikaterini Divari" in sailing Stefanidi always went by "Ekaterini" and only recently I've seen her name listed as "Aikaterini." It seems each sport is different. We've had a bunch of rowers all always have their names listed as "Aikaterini" (Nikolaidou, Gkogkou, Zerva etc). Another name where we see this is Despina/Despoina. On our Fed Cup team one year we had Despina Papamichail and Despoina Vogasari. Same name but "oi" together makes the "i" sound. So Despina is the correct pronunciation but we spell it Despoina in Greek. And don't get me started with Ioannis vs Giannis or Georgios vs Giorgos

Yes, but I think Greece should do a better job at this. I hate how so many of our names are spelled in different ways in Latin letters. It bothers me as I wish we had consistent spellings for everything. It's part of my OCD I guess

Yes, the two of them have already had a big rivalry for a few years now at the U18 and U20 categories

19 yo Elina Tzengko was one of just two javelin throwers to make the qualifying standard for the final, and she has the leading throw in 2022 from all competitors here. Her results are not very consistent but I really hope she can get a medal here. Frantzeskakis finishing 6th in the men's hammer with a new PB was very good. He keeps improving year after year and he is still only 22 yo. I'm sure he will be in big finals for many years, he was also 9th in Eugene last month. Karalis not making the men's pole vault final was disappointing but not surprising. He really had a terrible year and my expectations were high again for him after he finished 4th in Tokyo. I'm glad Gusin made the high jump final after she just missed out in Eugene. Not expecting a medal of course. Karydi is really horrible this year, her SB is the lowest since 2018 yet somehow she finished 9th here. It shows how weak the women's triple jump is. This was also the first year she competed in the World Championships and European Championships at the senior level. Hopefully next year she can get back on track. Gnafaki finishing the 400 hurdles semifinals with another PB. Really good for her after her PB from 2016 stood until 2020 (she made it 58.17), then in 2021 she got to 57.00, now in 2022 down to 56.14. If she can continue this progress for just one of the next two years, she'll make it to Paris via ranking for sure. Papadopoulou 12th in 20km walk with a SB, can't complain. Anastasiou making semis in 200m close to her PB was good, it's too bad she ran slower in SF but the conditions were unfavourable. Men's 4x100 were close to the final, finishing 10th. We have a lot of good young male sprinters so hopefully next time we do better. Very disappointing 13th in the women's 4x100. Originally I thought we could make the final, then with Michailidou replacing Emmanouilidou it seemed unlikely but I still thought we would do better. 14th place for our women's 4x400. It was expected. If we had Vasiliou instead of Politi, I think we would've finished 12th or so. Our women's relay teams can never show their full potential, always at least one of them is injured and we don't have good replacements.

My nickname also means Macedonian in Greek Interesting about his grandfather. Pavlidis is a very common Greek surname btw. For example we have a footballer on our national team with that name, he scored for AZ Alkmaar in each of their last two European matches this summer. Also we have a male discus thrower with that surname, he finished 4th a couple weeks ago at the U20 World Championships.

That is correct, and she always used to be known as "Drisbioti" until last year she started being called "Ntrismpioti" I'm not sure why this happens, but sometimes it bothers me how our names are transliterated. Ntouskos is another one that should be "Douskos," and Ntountounaki should be "Doudounaki." Anyways, an amazing result for Antigoni who gets her second gold after winning in 35km, both at 38 yo! And this time she did it with a PB, only 5 seconds off from the NR. She is really incredible

Well she said based on country OR "public relations" first of all. Maybe the 'Austrians' have a really good PR team? I don't follow artistic swimming closely enough to know, but I'm sure she would not make such statements without having knowledge on this. She definitely enjoys the sport as she has already gone to the Olympics three times and it's not like she makes a lot of money doing it either (she only has so many Instagram followers because she became somewhat famous from competing in a Greek reality show a few years ago). The videos comparing her performance with 'Austria' are pretty shocking, anyone can see this. Her main concern seems to be that the scoring in the sport does not seem to be fair, with the same countries always winning medals in the same order no matter what. Interestingly enough, two of the people who liked your post made comments similar to Platanioti during last year's Olympics. I wonder what changed that they now have different views on this...