Makedonas

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...

Stefanidi gives us the third medal here, although I was hoping it would be our third gold. Still nice for her to be on a major podium again for the first time since the 2019 World Championships and doing so with a SB! Frantzeskakis into the men's hammer final as expected. He is really doing better than Anastasakis who once again failed in qualifying at a major competition... I'm surprised Karydi made it to the women's triple jump final. She's having a horrible season but the level is so low that it makes her look decent. Also pleased to see Gnafaki make it to the 400 hurdles semifinals with a new PB! She had 58.48 as a 19 year old in 2016 and didn't improve her PB until 2020! Now she has improved it 5 more times in the last two years, and here in Munich up to 56.45. Another new PB in the semifinals would be awesome. I'm pleased to see that she is finally back on the right track after years of struggling. The bad news for us is that one of our women's 100 hurdles, Anais Karagianni, had to pull out due to injury. She joins the list of female track athletes (Emmanouilidou and Vasiliou as well) that had to withdraw from these Championships

Of course she had another SB in last night's final here Greece in women's pole vault since 2012 (Kyriakopoulou bronze), 2014 (Stefanidi silver), 2016 (Stefanidi gold), 2018 (Stefanidi gold and Kyriakopoulou silver), 2022 (Stefanidi silver). Hope we can keep it going and be like Poland in women's hammer

Well they didn't compete in the relay, we sent all of our reserves to the heats and they finished in 10th place. Anyways individually we got silver from Christou, who was 0.03s behind Ceccon, and bronze from Gkolomeev which is nice considering he was far from his best this year. Vazaios finished 6th in his final. Overall, a nice championships for Greece with 3 medals, the same amount as last year. We had an NR and a bunch of PBs as well. You forgot to mention Pilato! What?! People always say Greek and Lithuanian surnames sound similar (because of the -s endings), but Pavlidi surely has Greek origins? I've never heard of Greeks living in Lithuania except if they played basketball there, what's his story?! I'm very curious...

We have 4 gold but only one is in an Olympic event Christou (men's 100 backstroke, missed it by 0.03s), Ntouskos (men's single sculls, missed it by 0.29s), and Stefanidi (women's pole vault, was leading the whole time until the last height) were so close to golds in Olympic events...

2022 European Championships: GOLD: Apostolos Christou - Men's 50m backstroke SILVER: Apostolos Christou - Men's 100m backstroke BRONZE: Kristian Gkolomeev - Men's 50m freestyle

Quarterfinals: 75 - 67

She is still talking about this. "I would very much like the sport to change...the same opportunities for distinction based on what we do in the water and not based on which country we represent or what public relations we have" In my opinion she has a very good point, only in this sport do we know who wins the medals before the competition even begins... Greece competed in 7 events here, got one bronze and 6 4th place finishes. I mean come on, all the same countries won all the same medals in the same order...

Now it's the Men's Youth World Championships. Unfortunately our boys lost 9-8 to Spain today in the quarterfinals. The referees were tragic I must say... The big surprise is that won 12-7 against to make the semifinals I always wondered why the Dutch men were not a top team in water polo while their women are, maybe this new generation is really good though?! We beat them only 12-11 in the group stage. I was surprised it was so close but I guess the Dutch really are good

Our u16 men's team into the semifinals even without Liotopoulos

Some of the others today were disappointing. Stamatia Scarvelis missing out on the women's hammer final was shocking. She competed in 10 meets this season. Her two worst performances were the World Championships and European Championships What is worse is that at all 8 other meets she threw over 67.68 (the necessary height to make the final here in Munich), and most of those times were over 70m. She seems to really struggle in these big events... Chrysoula Anagnostopoulou finished 12th (last) in the women's discus final. I was definitely not expecting a medal or anything, but a better placement would've been nice and it would've helped her in the world rankings as well (to get into the 2023 World Championships and 2024 Olympics). Instead, she threw a shocking 56.10 which was her worst result of the season in 12 competitions. Like Scarvelis, she also flopped on the big stage although at least she made it to the final... Vasiliki Chaitidou finished a respectable 16th place in the women's long jump considering it was her first major competition and she would've needed to equal her PB to make the final anyways. Antonios Merlos not making the men's high jump final was disappointing but not too surprising, and it's good that overall he had a productive year after not doing well the past few years, he seems on the right track again. I don't really have any comments on anyone else who competed today for us, too insignificant for me to say anything

Germany is good for us, we have only ever finished top 10 in the medals table twice at the European Championships, and both times were in Germany. Munich 2002 we were 5th with 4-0-2, and Berlin 2018 we were also 5th with 3-2-1. Munich 2022 is off to a good start so far, we have 2-0-0 38 yo Antigoni Drisbioti winning gold in the women's 35km walk was a great start for us. I expected a medal from her but didn't think she'd get gold. She is really having her best results in the last year. 8th at the Tokyo Olympics (20km) and 4th at the World Championships in Eugene (35km). The Hellenic Olympic Committee didn't give her funding because she is "too old" according to them (which everyone who placed top 8 in Tokyo got except those after 30 yo like her and Kyriakopoulou). Her story is really cool too and she's starting to get some recognition in Greece finally, although I guarantee that 99% of the people congratulating her have never watched race walking and probably never will... Tentoglou winning gold was obviously expected, and I'm glad he was able to do it with a WL/CR. This was also his second best outdoor performance of his career (he has 8.60 from last year) and third overall (he had 8.55 at the World Indoors this year). He still doesn't have the NR (8.66) which is crazy and I thought he would do it this year (though he still has Diamond League after this). His 8.52 jump today was far from perfect, he left a lot of space and could've definitely gotten over 8.60, plus the conditions weren't the best. Also he left the last 2 jumps and didn't make attempts, I really wanted him to get over 8.60 again and get a new PB and the NR but I guess I'll have to wait

Solid day for us with our guys Christou (100 backstroke), Gkolomeev (50 freestyle) and Vazaios (200 IM) all qualifying for their finals. Could be a busy day for them tomorrow as I hope they will also be competing in the men's 4x100 medley relay together and hopefully in the final there too. All three of them have won European medals in these races in the past, so hoping for at least two more medals tomorrow

Round of 16: 84 - 62

Tentoglou only 7.94 but still it was the 2nd best of everyone in qualifying. What a weak event. Anything other than gold would be a massive disappointment... Good to see Anagnostopoulou make her third consecutive European Championships final Hoping she can be top 8 for the first time here... All three Greek male triple jumpers under 16m Although 40 yo Tsiamis was actually very close to making the final. He said this would be his last season but now he hasn't made any official announcement, I wonder if he is thinking to continue another year or two...