Makedonas

PSAT Awards (from Greek journalists) : Male athlete of the year: Giannis Antetokounmpo (basketball) Female athlete of the year: Maria Sakkari (tennis) Team of the year: Men's national team (water polo) Coach of the year: Thodoris Vlachos (water polo) Disabled male athlete of the year: Athanasios Ghavelas with guide Sotirios Gkaragkanis (athletics) Disabled female athlete of the year: Alexandra Stamatopoulou (swimming) Disabled team of the year: Mixed pairs BC3 (boccia) It's kind of funny that the male athlete of the year in an Olympic year was someone who didn't even go to the Olympics, but he was NBA Finals MVP so of course he had to win it because the whole world knows him. I personally think Miltiadis Tentoglou (long jump) deserved it the most. He had WL for indoor and outdoor, Olympic gold and European indoor gold. Really he was the best in the world in his sport and it still wasn't enough. Stefanos Ntouskos (rowing) also won Olympic gold. It was between Antetokounmpo, Tentoglou, and Ntouskos in the top 3. Crazy that Tsitsipas wasn't one of the three nominees (he was 5th in the preliminary vote), most other years he might have won but this was a really strong year for our men. Kostas Tsimikas (footballer for Liverpool) was 7th. I think Sakkari deserved it this year for the women (unlike last year when she won it which I didn't think she deserved), it was the first Olympics since 1988 that we didn't have any women win medals. Sakkari made the quarterfinals in mixed doubles and round of 16 in singles, losing close three set matches in both to eventual medal winners. She had nine wins over top 10 ranked opponents this year, made two Grand Slam semifinals and moved up from 22 to 6 in the rankings. The other two nominees were Ekaterini Stefanidi (pole vault) who got 4th at the Olympics, and Anna Ntountounaki (swimming) who won gold at the European Championships, two medals at the European Short Course Championships, 9th and 11th at the Olympics in her two events (one being a relay) and set many national records this year. Anna Korakaki (shooting) was 4th in the voting and did not make it to the final round, she got 6th place in both of her Olympic events this year. Side note: I'm disappointed that our rower Evangelia Fragkou was 39th out of the 39 female nominees. She competed in 4 events this year and won medals at all of them, including two gold (though they were both at European events, her other two medals were at World events). I'm not saying she should've been top 3 or even top 10, but she didn't deserve last place especially when other female rowers who didn't win as much as her were placed much higher.

21 yo Georgios Pilidis, who competed this year at the Olympics and won gold at the World U23 Championships, will be taking a break to compete in the Greek reality show "Survivor." His reasons for this are probably economic, as one of our female sprinters/hurdlers Katerina Dalaka became very famous from competing on Survivor and attracted a lot of sponsors and is now a "social media influencer" and also is competing again despite taking a long break (she was on the show for two seasons because she was runner-up in 2018 and went back in 2019 because she wanted to first place, and she did win). She also won big prize money for winning the show. So this is a new trend I guess for athletes to get economic support. I don't watch the show, but I'd imagine Dalaka did so well because she was already in very good physical shape unlike some other contestants who are just regular people and maybe workout a lot but are not professional athletes. However Pilidis is definitely much bigger than Dalaka in his sport, as he has won many medals at important competitions and is definitely an Olympic medal hope for 2024. Dalaka was already 25 or 26 when she first went to Survivor, and competed in the European Championships just once. She sometimes wins medals at the Greek and Balkan Championships but she's not really a top athlete like Pilidis is.

I'd be shocked if we don't pick Maria Ntanou. This will be her third Olympics (and possibly her last considering her age). She has never done it before (and it's not like we have a ton of options) and she works for the IOC and Hellenic Olympic Committee. She was an Athlete Role Model at the 2020 Winter Youth Olympics too.

Do we have any chances for more quotas? I know nothing about winter sports. I think we currently have 2 in alpine skiing (1M, 1W) and 3 in cross-country skiing (1M, 2W) although I could be mistaken. We had 7 athletes in both Vancouver and Sochi, and only 4 in Pyeongchang, so at least we improved from 2018. Our largest team was Nagano 1998 where we had 13 athletes in six different sports (alpine skiing, biathlon, bobsleigh, cross-country skiing, luge, snowboarding). In 2014 we competed in sports like skeleton and ski jumping, up until 2010 we always had biathlon too. Now it looks like it might be the second Olympics in a row with only the two sports (alpine skiing and cross-country skiing). To be honest it is hard for me to get interested in the Winter Olympics when my country doesn't have any realistic medal hopes, although I sometimes enjoy watching ice hockey and curling (obviously watching other countries).

Wow, I wonder if this has to do with Ieva's ban? Milda didn't want to switch to single sculls? Donata is already 32 so I wouldn't be surprised if she stopped too. She already seemed to have stopped and only came back when Ieva got banned.

Vasiliki Arvaniti (beach volleyball) - Three-time Olympian (Athens 2004, Beijing 2008, London 2012) and two-time European champion (2005 and 2007). She is 36 years old and after not qualifying for Tokyo it's not surprising that she retired, she already gave birth to her child and then came back to try to qualify for Tokyo but tore her ACL in late 2019 which made things difficult.

"Qami" was the name of Armenia's Eurovision song a few years ago also, so I guess they figured they'd do better with "Qami Qami" Maybe now they can send another song "Qami Qami Qami" and they'd surely win

So far we had 4th, 7th, and 7th places in our three finals. Now we have another two finals. Too bad Gkolomeev isn't here, he really could've won a medal.

Our mixed relay team made the final with the 6th best time and a national record. Still no medal for us, this is our third final so far, I really hope we can win one this weekend.

Very interesting. I was surprised to see her name in the callups yesterday, though I'm not sure how good she is. Still, it doesn't change the fact that her Ethnikos Piraeus teammate Stephanie Haralabidis (who was born and raised in Greece and is one of the best players in the world) plays for USA instead of Greece . Though she got an Olympic gold medal so I guess it was the right choice for her. Italy had a half Greek on their Olympic softball team in Tokyo, so I guess we're even now And our two best female marathon runners are half Italian, Alexi Pappas (from USA) and Gloria Privileggio (from Greece). EDIT-We actually had the Valcareggi siblings in alpine skiing, they were born in Italy but their mother is Greek and they switched to Greece, one of them actually represented Greece in Sochi even.

Vazaios 4th in men's 200 IM. Disappointing to not win a medal after being so close, but very proud of him. Christou is in the 100 backstroke final with the 3rd fastest time in the semifinals so hopefully he can win a medal. The goal for the Greek team here is basically to win a medal. We've only ever won one medal at this event and it was a bronze in 2008 by a doper so it doesn't really count. Really we are due for a medal, I hope it comes in the next few days although many thought the men's 200 IM was our best chance.

Greece once again with Kosovo, after the last nations league and WC qualifying. We just can't get away from them

I miss the years when we would have a national final. I don't like this internal selection process. 2015 was the last year we had a real national final and it's no coincidence that our perfect qualification record ended in 2016. Our song in 2019 was actually very well received by Europe when it was released but it didn't do as well as we expected. I don't know what you mean by "100% Greek" because Katerine in 2019 had two Greek parents and lived in Greece for many years despite being born in Canada, although she wasn't famous in Greece before Eurovision and neither was Stefania who is from the Netherlands even though her parents are both Greek also. Anyways she got Greece back to the top 10 for the first time since 2013 so I guess it was a good choice. I agree though that it's disappointing to not send someone who is famous/popular in Greece as I think we have many good options. Also lately we always send females, maybe it's time to send a male again? As for the traditional sounds, well the last two times we sent traditional sounds were the only two times in history that we didn't qualify (2016 and 2018) so Europeans always say on youtube that they miss our traditional sounds but then when we send them they don't vote for us It's funny that Ilias Kozas was shortlisted because he gave an interview some years ago where he said he would never do Eurovision again so I wonder what made him change his mind.

I just saw a video of Amanda, she actually speaks Greek quite well (with an obvious accent and some minor grammatical errors though). Her real surname is Georgiadis but Tenfjord is her stage name because it's the city where she lived in Norway (she's from Ioannina, Greece and moved to Tenfjord, Norway at age 3). She didn't say anything about her mother being Norwegian so I'm not sure if that's even true.

I'm Greek and I have never heard of her before. I can guarantee that 99% of the Greek public does not know her either. Apparently she was born in Greece to a Greek father and a Norwegian mother and was raised in Norway.

Should be a walk in the park for our women's team. I wonder if we will send the real national team or some young girls to give them a chance to play.

109th place for Kontochristopoulou. Kind of crazy to think she was only 18 when she qualified for the Rio Olympics and she seemed so promising for the future but it ended up being just a crazy fluke.

Ναι, μάλλον

http://sportsfeed.gr/evropiko-igrou-stibou-stin-athina-to-2026/ Πολύ καλή ιδέα!

Also any news on rowing categories? Lightweight? Coastal?

Very disappointing news, especially boxing. We haven't qualified any boxers for the Olympics since 2008 and finally have some young hopes now and 2024 might be their only chance to make it. Weightlifting we used to send big teams and at the last three Olympics we only had one weightlifter. We no longer win medals in the sport and there are many problems so I'm not surprised or disappointed, though for us that was always one of our most successful sports historically so it is significant for us I guess. We were always irrelevant in modern pentathlon anyways so I am indifferent. Surfing and skateboarding are a joke in my opinion. What's next? Bowling? Darts? Billiards? Those are actually better options in my opinion!

She is the queen of withdrawing so who knows

Starting in January, Greece will be fining unvaccinated residents aged 60+ 100 euros per month. I am vaccinated and a supporter of the Prime Minister but disappointed in him for this. I think there are other ways to go about this and it's unfair to people who don't want to receive the vaccine in my opinion.

England beat Latvia 20-0 on Tuesday!

Team Greece Men: Apostolos Christou Dimitrios Markos Georgios Spanoudakis Andreas Vazaios Women: Georgia Damasioti Maria Drasidou Anna Ntountounaki