Makedonas

Yes but to be fair an outdoor WL is seen as more significant as an indoor WL (especially since 60m is not an Olympic distance). I don't mean to disrespect Jacobs, but I think not having the outdoor WL is probably why he was not included. Still, Jacobs had a great season and you should be very proud of him! Also unfortunately for Tentoglou, there is no long jump team event to win "1 more Olympic gold"

Tentoglou had a WL with a big jump of 8.60. Jacobs didn't even have WL. Tentoglou also won gold at the European Indoor Championships in 2021 (I know Jacobs did as well).

After the first listen, I was able to narrow it down to 18. Then I narrowed it to 14 and finally 12, although I had to listen to some songs multiple times in the end to eliminate them and also to decide the order. Some really good songs here and also a lot of variety in genres. Well done to everyone!

For Greece this would be just your average Sunday, these things happen all the time in our league Okay maybe not every week but 3-4 times per year I'd say.

Also it should be known that the other athletes entered the training camp without their PCR results yet anyways so that was fine (they received them the next day) but Anneta who entered with a negative test result from the rapid test was "putting other athletes at risk." Even more disappointing is that our gold medalist Stefanos Ntouskos is the athletes' representative in the federation and he is one of the people who voted to suspend Anneta for one year (the maximum penalty). It's all about politics. Also the Kyridou sisters seem to be on one side and Bourmpou/Ntouskos on the other, they don't follow each other on Instagram anymore (even Maria Kyridou and Christina Bourmpou who were in the women's pair together and won so many gold medals together unfollowed each other).

Spain leads Greece 6-1 at halftime. Wow. We are shockingly poor today, nothing is going our way. We even had a penalty and missed that too. Somehow I have a feeling we will do better in the second half but I'm not sure if it will be enough to come back from such a large deficit.

Badosa is a very beautiful girl, wow

At least she would get wild cards for Doha and Dubai tournaments though. I'm sure it was difficult still but she got that at least. Maria Sakkari got nothing. No wild cards ever. No one cared about her because she was from Greece, but she never gave up and everything she did was on her own. So much respect for both Sakkari and Jabeur for making it to the top 10 against all odds. 5 years ago they played against each other in Fed Cup Group III and now both are in the top 10! Congratulations to both!

Stefanos wasted so many break point chances in the third set

We beat Hungary 13-8 so we are in the final now! FINA is streaming this tournament on Youtube. I wanted to watch today and totally forgot about it until the last few minutes of the game, but happy that our girls won and tomorrow I will watch the final. This is now the 6th medal for Greek water polo national teams in 2021. Unfortunately no gold yet, hopefully tomorrow will be the first though! We last won gold at this competition in 1997, though our most recent medal was a silver in 2017.

I think this is the 7th semifinal for Greek water polo national teams in 2021 Our men's senior team won silver at the Olympics and bronze in the World League. Our men's and women's U17 teams both won silver at the European Championships. Our men's U15 team won bronze at the European Championships, and our women's U15 team got 4th place at the European Championships.

Good win for Stefanos, the Italian is always complaining and acting in a rude and disrespectful way, I would not give his comments much importance if I were Stefanos. Is Jabeur the first Arab woman to make the top 10? I guess so. I know she is not the first African though.

Exactly this. If not for that then today's result wouldn't have had as much importance. Those two draws really damaged our chances. Especially the one against Kosovo, it was so foolish to take Tsimikas off for the last few minutes and then we ended up conceding the equaliser due to a mistake made by his replacement.

Sorry for ranting, I thought I typed it here in one of these posts but I guess I deleted it by accident. But Manolas was seen out at a bar the night before a national team game in Athens, it was very unprofessional and in that game he made a stupid mistake against a small team (I think it was the Liechtenstein game) and he was heavily criticized for it. I don't think he played for the national team after that again. We conceded a late equaliser in the 85th min or something. However when he played for Roma and now Napoli he is more serious. It is quite disrespectful and makes it seem that he only cares about money than his country. Of course I don't follow Serie A very closely to know what he is like there but it seems this way to me at least... Many years have passed now and I would like to give them both another chance with the national team, especially since toxic Tzavellas (who has a history of drama with other Greek players in the national team and is older than them and far less successful) was given a million chances with the national team and is still playing.

Manolas was awful for the national team. He really pissed me off and was a total primadonna, not taking the national team seriously and then being at fault for an embarrassing goal conceded against Liechtenstein in Euro 2020 qualifying in which the result was 1-1 in the end. I think that was the end of his national team career. He used the national team to help him boost his club career, did great at the 2014 World Cup to get a big move to Roma and then he stopped playing with passion for the national team, it was quite disgraceful. Sokratis made mistakes too in those years but not as bad, and in his case there is personal drama with our coach as well. I would definitely prefer him over Manolas. Sokratis always showed passion for the national team even when we hit rock bottom. Siovas was another good CB who was kicked out of the national team last year by this coach who is very divisive and overreacted to a comment Siovas made about Manolas and Sokratis being important to the team (when it was clear that the coach had no intentions of inviting them). So there is a lot of drama and with Tzavellas being suspended, we were left with Mavropanos and Chatzidiakos as CBs (not sure why Kyriakos didn't play, I think he is injured). They are still good players and we have a lot of depth at that position so we are lucky but they made costly mistakes today due to their inexperience. EDIT-Sorry if what I am saying is confusing, I am quite angry now and my thoughts are all over the place

Thank you, I appreciate it. It is tough sometimes. Also it was nice to see a great crowd/atmosphere again after playing in empty stadiums for so long now.

Normally I would agree with this statement but we had many more shots today compared to our opponents, plus we hit the woodwork twice (Masouras post and Pavlidis crossbar) and then Sweden scored one of their two goals via penalty. Despite the lack of goals we appeared to be more threatening offensively especially in the first half

Congratulations @Belle but to be honest (I don't mean to be disrespectful) I think Sweden didn't play that well and we gifted it to you in a way. We dominated the first half, the offside goal and then two posts. It was too bad we couldn't take our chances there and then in the second half we conceded a foolish penalty because of the inexperienced Mavropanos. Had Manolas or Sokratis been there, I don't think we would have conceded that penalty. Then another foolish defensive mistake which led to the second goal. I don't want to sound bitter or disrespectful but it was frustrating because we could have beaten Sweden today and we were by far the better side in the first half and then we totally self destructed in the second half. But that is football.... Now we need to beat Spain (and Kosovo) and hope that Sweden can get a result on the last matchday against Spain in order to finish second. Very difficult...

You forget that Kournikova was top 8 without any title, and Sakkari had a great year this year, she made two slam semis, Miami semis, and several 500 tournament semis/final Also I really hope Pavlyuchenkova can make the top 10 but it looks like Jabeur will get there before her

We won 32-7 against Slovakia. Sorry @hckošice

Despite her early loss in Indian Wells, Maria Sakkari will move up from her current ranking of number 9 to a new career-high. She is guaranteed to be at least 8 in the next rankings, and will be number 7 as long as none of Swiatek, Pavlyuchenkova, Jabeur win the title in Indian Wells. Also with Svitolina having to defend her WTA Finals finalist points from 2019 soon, and Muguruza having her 2020 Australian Open finalist points coming off at the beginning of next year, Maria is on a good path to be top 5 after the Australian Open. It will also help a lot if she can have some more big runs between now and then.

High jumper Konstantinos Baniotis Not a big surprise as he is 34 and turning 35 next month and his career has gone downhill due to injuries the past couple years. He has a PB of 2.34m outdoors and 2.33m indoors. He competed in three Olympic Games for Greece (2008, 2012, 2016). He won silver at the 2019 European Indoor Championships. He was 4th at the 2011 European Indoor Championships and 2012 World Indoor Championships (the three medalists there were all dopers so really he deserved gold), 5th at the 2016 World Indoor Championships, 6th at the 2009 European Indoor Championships and the 2016 European Championships, and 8th at the 2010 European Championships. Unfortunately he never made an Olympic final, with his best jump in Olympic qualifications being just 2.22m in Rio. He made two finals at the World Championships (10th in 2013 and 14th in 2015). He won the Greek national championships many times.

Ένα μεγάλο μπράβο στην Ευαγγελία Φράγκου (κωπηλασία) για όλα που έχει καταφέρει φέτος. Η 18χρονη από τα Γιαννιτσα συμμετείχε σε τέσσερις μεγάλες διοργανώσεις φέτος, με αποτέλεσμα να κατακτήσει τέσσερα μετάλλια σε τέσσερα διαφορετικά πληρώματα! Στις αρχές Ιουλίου πήρε χάλκινο στο Παγκόσμιο Κ23 της Τσεχίας στο διπλό σκιφ με την Αγγελική Αραμπατζή. Το Δεκαπενταύγουστο κατάκτησε το χάλκινο στο μόνο σκιφ στο Παγκόσμιο Νεανίδων της Βουλγαρίας. Στις αρχές Σεπτεμβρίου πήρε χρυσό μετάλλιο στο διπλό σκιφ στο Ευρωπαϊκό Κ23 της Πολωνίας με την Ευαγγελία Αναστασιαδου (η οποία ανήκει στην ελαφριά κατηγορία!!!), και σήμερα στο Ευρωπαϊκό Νεανίδων της Γερμανιας πήρε το χρυσό μετάλλιο στο διπλό σκιφ με την Στυλιανή Νατσιουλα (είχαν πάρει μαζί το χάλκινο το 2020 στη συγκεκριμένη ρεγκατα).

So in the end just two medals for us, but our first gold since 2018 (we won 3 medals in both 2019 and 2020 but no gold). Fragkou/Natsioula won gold easily in the women's double, as expected I guess. They won bronze last year here, and I think both will have good chances to make it to Paris (whether in the same boat or not). Fragkou had an incredible 2021. Bronze at the World U23s with Arabatzi in the double, bronze at the World juniors in the single, gold at the European U23s with Anastasiadou and now gold at the European juniors with Natsioula. Now she is done with the junior category and I expect that next year she will also make her debut in the senior category in addition to competing at the U23 level, and that Natsioula will win medals at both the junior and U23 categories (though the World U23s and World juniors will be held simultaneously so she can only compete in one of those I guess). And bronze for us in the women’s four. We won silver last year with two of the same rowers, and I was hoping for a repeat since we finished second in the preliminary race, but we caught a crab which was costly. Still, great to see Greek women win another medal in a four-person boat. We had won a lot of medals and one and two-person boats over the last 15 years or so (and men’s medals in four-person boats), but nothing since 2007 in a four-person boat until 2019 and now this is the third consecutive year that we did it. Two of our four girls will be eligible to compete as juniors again next year, so hopefully we can continue this streak. And even though there were only four boats in the race, Romania and Italy both won medals at the World juniors this year so it was quite a high level. Also nice to see Lemonia Makrygianni win bronze after her brother won bronze in the men’s double last year at this regatta. 5th place for Eleni Leventelli in the women’s single. I thought she would either win bronze or finish 4th but I didn’t expect the Latvian to win a medal. Still a decent performance for her, she is the only one from the A Final who will still be a junior next year so she can win a medal then. Also 5th for Iasonas Exarchou in the men’s single and for our men’s double. A bit disappointing that neither of these boats could win medals, I was thinking at least one could, and also they are all in their last year as juniors so it’s not like Leventelli’s case where next year she’ll have a great chance to reach the podium. Aside from Ntouskos’ historic gold in Rio, it really wasn’t a good year for our male rowers. Our two golds at the World U23s were from rowers in their last year at the U23 level, and we only won one silver at the European U23s from a men’s crew and that was the men’s double where one of the rowers was in his last year as a U23. Hopefully next year will be better for our men but it’s concerning. Disappointed that our men’s pair and men’s four finished 4th in their semifinals, especially the pair as they were super close to making the final, but these were the boats with the smallest chances to win medals for us anyways.

I don't know. I figured Australia and China would skip but thought at least one of USA/Canada would show up