Makedonas

This is the best we've done in a while, I can't remember the last time we had 3 Olympic boats in A Finals, maybe 2011 (but I'm too lazy to search if we've done it since then). And that is without Bourmpou and the Kyridou sisters, with a combination of the two of them in the women's pair I'm sure that would've been another final. All of this applies to Greece as well, so you can imagine how disappointing it was that Sofia Asoumanaki who is 193cm (very rare for Greek women) hasn't competed for the national team since age 21, after getting silver in W2X at the World Championships as an 18yo and 4th at the Rio Olympics as a 19 yo. Ntouskos was going to retire after Tokyo but the gold medal changed his life with some sponsors. Otherwise, we rarely have rowers past the age of 22/23 in our national teams...

We beat Croatia 8-7 to make the semifinals of the Men's U19 European Championships. We will now play Spain. After 12 medals from our national teams, but none of them gold, in the last two years, maybe this time we will finally win gold? Lucky number 13?!

Do you mean U23? Because junior = U19 And yeah, I'd like to think Fragkou/Natsioula not peaking here is part of that as well. Natsioula won gold at the European U19s, World U19s and European U23s all this year. Missed the European seniors due to covid, and Fragkou won gold in the World U23s and European U23s but in the pair instead of the double, so I'll blame it all on that

A lot of discussion about lightweight rowing possibly dying out. It would be sad to see it go (I guess I'm biased because Greece has good lightweight rowers), but also I think people underestimate how good some of these lightweight rowers are. 20 yo Evangelia Anastasiadou, who is 165cm, won silver in W1X at the European Championships last month, beating out the likes of Alexandra Foester and Magdalena Lobnig. And let's not forget that Stefanos Ntouskos competed in a lightweight event in Rio, and then in Tokyo won gold in M1X.

Ntouskos finishing 2nd in his quarterfinal is a bit disappointing although I still like his chances to win a medal. After all, he finished 2nd in his quarterfinal in Tokyo and still went on to win Olympic gold Papakonstantinou just incredible. 1st in his quarterfinal and 1st in his semifinal. He seems to be the favourite to win gold here. Kalandaridis/Palaiopanos finishing 2nd in their quarterfinal is also good, they're looking in good shape to make it to Paris. Tokyo was a joke where we only had 1 male rower after having 8 male rowers in both London and Rio, so with them doing well it gives us hope to have a bigger team again. Fragkou/Natsioula coming 5th out of 6th in the repechage is disappointing. They led after 1000m and were 3rd after 1500m. It seems they just ran out of gas in the end, but both are just teenagers. They have 3 full days to rest before Sunday's C Final so hopefully they can have a good showing there. I still think this is a boat that can make it to Paris as they are so young and should do much better next year. Fitsiou finished 2nd in her semifinal which is great. She was poor in the heats (4th) but is doing better now. I'm not confident in her winning a medal although I'd happily be proven wrong. Although she's a lightweight rower I'd like to see her try to qualify in the women's single for Paris. Anastasiadou/Kontou making the final is just incredible. They are 20 and 16 (!!!) and made the A Final of an Olympic boat class at the World Championships. Again, I see no reason why we can't expect a medal from them in Paris provided they stay healthy. Both of them (especially Kontou) will probably be so much better in two years.

I'm in for Greece

2022 World Wrestling Championships: BRONZE Maria Prevolaraki (Women's Freestyle 53 kg)

Prevolaraki bronze in women's 53 kg So she has 3 World Championships medals in her career. 2012 bronze, 2017 bronze, 2022 bronze. It's too bad she said she will retire after Paris 2024, because she would win a bronze again in 2027 She's had a good year as she also won silver at the European Championships and gold at the Mediterranean Games Hopefully she can finally win an Olympic medal in Paris...

Recap of Greek boats so far: M1X: Ntouskos won his heat as expected, let's see how he does from here on. Anything less than a medal would be disappointing. LM1X: Papakonstantinou won his heat as expected and I would be surprised if he doesn't take a medal. Need to get him a good partner for the LM2X so he can qualify to Paris. Perhaps Gkaidatzis who won gold at the European U23 Championships in LM1X just a few weeks ago. They already won gold together in LM2X at the 2019 European U23 Championships. M2X: Kalandaridis/Palaiopanos made it to the quarterfinals and let's see what they can do. They both won a lot of medals in the youth categories but struggled so far in seniors, although their 5th place at last month's European Championships shows that they can make it to Paris. LW1X: Fitsiou is not looking too great here after taking silver at the European Championships, although she did win her repechage to advance to the semifinals. I will be happy if she makes the A Final. W2X: Fragkou and Natsioula were disappointing finishing 5th in their heat. Still, they are 19 and 17 so they are young although I expected better from them as both won a bunch of gold medals in U23/U19 categories over the last two years. Hoping for an improved performance in the repechage which would see them qualify for the semifinals. LW2X: Our girls are incredible. 20 yo Anastasiadou and 16 yo (!!!) Kontou finished 2nd in their heat and 1st in the repechage (beating Tokyo 2020 gold medalists Italy). That is amazing for their ages. I am not sure if they can win a medal but the first goal is to make the A Final. If they can make top 6 in 2022, I see now reason why they can't win a medal in Paris when they are older and more experienced. Let's see first how they do here though. I'm disappointed we didn't send a women's pair. Bourmpou/Fragkou won gold at the World U23s and European U23s, but Bourmpou had to go back to Yale University for studies and we put Fragkou in the women's double. Argyraki/Asvesta who won gold at the World U19s and European U19s I guess are too young for this level.

94 - 88 in the fourth and final game of the day. Almost...

5th place in the end isn't such a horrible result for us I guess, as I said we weren't expecting to win a medal here. Hopefully in 2024 we can finally win our first European medal...

I was sort of cheering for Jabeur (for various reasons) but I was not disappointed and do not mind Iga being the champion. Congratulations to our Polish friends here!

My friend, this is just wrong. Dorsey has GREEK ANCESTRY via his mother (in ADDITION to her living in Greece), so he comes from a half-Greek family, and he played for Olympiacos too, that is why I asked what is Brown's connection to Spain. It seems that the connection is none. Spain has the best league in Europe and yet he never even played there... There are many years where we were missing key players due to injury and instead of trying to find someone from another country, we went with what we had and tried our best, even if the results in the end were not what he wanted. For me I am proud that we show up with what we have and are not so desperate to win. That's why I am surprised with Spain, especially because they have been so successful. You guys should be above these "cheap tactics." You're better than that. Congratulations for the win and maybe we meet in SF

What connection has Lorenzo Brown with Spain? For me, Spain should be embarrassed. They have such great history in the sport, so many great players, big population, and they still had to go and naturalise an American who has never even played in the Spanish league?! It's bad enough we have countries like Bosnia, Montenegro, FYROM etc always with their token American who never stepped foot in their country before getting citizenship, (and don't get me started on Turkey also), but for Spain this is quite pathetic in my opinion. I am sorry if that sounds rude but they are really better than that and shouldn't have to naturalise players when they are a very good team as it is. And before anyone says anything about the Greek team, Dorsey's mother is half Greek and lived in Athens when she was young (and he plays for Olympiacos), the Antetokounmpo brothers were born and raised in Athens, and Calathes' paternal grandparents are from Limnos island (and he played for Panathinaikos for like 10 years), so it's very different.

So in the end we lost to Spain, another silver medal for us I was out to a dinner with colleagues so I didn't get to watch, but I see our girls missed 2 penalties... In the end I am glad we won a medal at least, and our girls are really young, only one player over age 25 (Margarita Plevritou is 27). Throughout 2021 and 2022 our national teams won 8 silver medals and 4 bronze medals, still 0 gold...maybe 2023 will be our year

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).