Makedonas

We beat Belarus. That would've been embarrassing if we lost.

With all due respect, those are not exactly big names the way the likes of Papapetrou, Sloukas, Calathes, Papagiannis, Mitoglou, Papanikolaou, Printezis, Larentzakis etc. are. (and obviously the Antetokounmpo brothers)

I agree. None of the players who played for us against GB would've played if our Euroleague (and even NBA) players were available instead. It's actually a joke. Croatia for example also missed out on the last World Cup because of these dumb rules. With all due respect, our real team never would've lost to GB. I am not surprised at this result because we were in the same group last time and although we won both games against GB (again with our random players), they were close games. I am surprised they are still holding qualifying this way. Look at Turkey losing to Belarus as another example. That would never happen with the real national teams.

Kastoria, Greece, 2012 (As you can see the Greek videos I found are of athletes from smaller cities/towns where these medals were more important to the people from those places. For example, Petrounias and Stefanidi are both from Athens so you never see people in those places going crazy for their medals because it's not such a big deal in a big city) Friends and family of Christina Giazitzidou (rowing) watch her win a bronze medal for Greece. Her crew were favourites to win gold so it was kind of bittersweet for them. They were very happy to win an Olympic medal but disappointed about the colour, especially since they led for a large part of the race and then fell to silver and eventually fell to bronze in the last few strokes. Her mother is the blonde lady in the blue shirt, you can see how nervous she is throughout the race, and her father is the bald guy who kisses her at the end. The other lady in the blue shirt is one of her sisters and I think some of the old people near them are grandparents probably. Also the blonde lady in the white shirt (next to the lady in pink) I think is also Christina's sister but I am not certain. Then afterwards the party began:

I gave Spain 2 points but I guess the other Greek jury members did not

Even here I struggled to choose between these two @hckošice

Congratulations @Hipooo Thank you @Dnl for all of your hard work! Also thank you to everyone who voted for Greece and gave us 48 points! Unfortunately we finished in 29th place, although I am not surprised and personally I would not have given our song any points. We are one of the 15 countries that never missed a version of the song contests, however we are the only ones who never finished top 10. I hope this will change soon. I already have song ideas for both contests in 2022. Here are my personal votes (vs how many points Greece gave to them) 12 points- (11) 11- (12) 10- (4) 9- (8) 8- (0) 7- (2) 6- (5) 5- (6) 4- (0) 3- (7) 2- (0) 1- (0) Canada and Sweden were by far my favourites. Those two and USA were the only ones I knew before this contest, although Czech Republic also sounded familiar. Canada @intoronto I always liked, although I knew the modern version from the movie "Cars" and did not know about this earlier version, and Sweden @Belle was a song that I enjoyed a lot during my teenage years and always gives me good/happy memories when I hear it.

They have a three Canadians. I just looked at all the current NBA rosters and unless I'm mistaken, only the Pistons with three Canadians and the Bucks with three Greeks meet this criteria. Yet you were so dismissive and made it seem like there are many many teams which fit this criteria... Curious to see if we are the only European country with this, ever.

I will be unavailable tomorrow. Not sure about the other Greek jury members however.

Grevena, Greece, 2021 (from 5:24) In Miltiadis Tentoglou's hometown, they set up a large screen at the park and many residents went to watch him win gold in the men's long jump in Tokyo. The final took place in the middle of the night in Greece, and you can see the sunrise towards the end of the video. The first lady who speaks (Ioanna Papadimitriou) is Tentoglou's mother. The next girl at 6:17 is Tentoglou's sister, Katerina. They also showed some friends and his first coach. At 7:24, you can see they painted "8.41" in gold letters on the sidewalk which is how far his jump was, and painted 8.41m of gold letters. Then in this video, you can see the crowd react to his first attempt at 3:33, and his final attempt (which moved him into gold medal position from outside the podium) at 3:49. Also in this video we see more of his mother, as well as his aunt:

Igoumenitsa, Greece - 2012 People in Alexandra Tsiavou's hometown react to and celebrate her rowing bronze medal at the London Olympics. She was in silver medal position and then at the end fell to bronze which is why some people were disappointed at one point in the video right before the end.

I thought it would be cool to make a topic where people could post videos of Olympians' friends and families reacting to their medal wins. I'll start it with Greece's Anna Korakaki winning gold at the 2016 Olympics in shooting. This is at her house in Drama, Greece. In the video, her mother is the blonde lady standing on the chair and her brother is also there (the guy who kept screaming) as well as other friends/family members (her father is her coach who was with her in Rio).

Yes and also Halep and Kvitova are much more famous than Sakkari and they also posted today about it. My point was that in the current top 10, nobody besides Sakkari (at least as far as I am aware) has posted anything about it. EDIT-I now see that Badosa and Jabeur eventually posted too.

I think Biden said he is considering a diplomatic boycott (not because of Peng but just in general), although he met with Xi the other day and didn't say anything or even say anything about Covid so who knows.

So far Sakkari is the only top 10 player to post about this

Congratulations, Muguruza! I only care because this means Sakkari stays at number 6 and doesn't fall to number 7 as Kontaveit can't pass her

Maria Still, she had an amazing year. I am so proud of her. She improved her year-end ranking for the 11th straight year. This time, from 22 to 6 or 7 (depending on tomorrow's result). She made 8 (!!!) semifinals including big tournaments like Roland Garros, US Open, Miami and WTA Finals. Unfortunately she was 1-7 in these semifinals but still she made tremendous progress this year and as a Greek tennis fan I am very proud of her success. It's a pity that so many people in my country hate her and celebrate her losses because she is dating the Prime Minister's son (yet these haters are the same people who always say "love is love" and "support gender equality" etc etc ). By the way I am supportive of everyone and their rights but it's just hypocritical when we had a female politician from the far left party make sexist remarks about Maria and her relationship during the Olympics, that is why I am upset, because this anti-Maria behaviour has become normalised in some parts Greek society (they are a minority but they exist) and she doesn't deserve such treatment. It is so wrong because first of all they shouldn't take their political anger out on a tennis player, and also Maria never made any political statements ever anyways and even if she did, there are other athletes who have which I disagreed with but I still supported them in their careers. Anyways congrats to Kontaveit, she has been the best player on tour the last few months. 29 of 32 matches won

This song from the 90s was in contention to be Greece's entry this year (it was my personal pick), although we decided to not send it. Enjoy

This is also my fear. Still a great win for Maria, she's had so many top 10 wins this year. And I'm glad she won after Stefanos lost earlier today.

There is a meet in Karpenisi, Greece from November 26-28 where 400+ swimmers will try to achieve the standards, so the provisional lists definitely won't be out before then.

I really hope Greece can return to the medals here. I can't believe that our senior team has not won a medal since Eurobasket 2009! It's actually crazy but we've had a lot of disappointing results since then. At the 2010 World Cup we played Spain in the round of 16, while at the previous World Cup we played Spain in the final. At the 2014 World Cup, we won our group (beat teams like Argentina and Croatia) but lost in the round of 16 to Serbia, who ended up making the final. The other teams who won their groups had easy draws, we had to play Serbia. At Eurobasket 2015 we won our group (beat hosts Croatia for example) and beat Belgium in the round of 16 but lost a very close match against Spain in the quarterfinals. Of course Spain ended up winning the tournament. It also doesn't help that we are always missing several key players for big tournaments very often in the last decade or so. I think this can be a very good Greek roster IF everyone is healthy and shows up: Guards: Sloukas, Calathes, Dorsey, Larentzakis Forwards: G.Antetokounmpo, Papapetrou, Mitoglou, T.Antetokounmpo, Papanikolaou Centres: Papagiannis, K.Antetokounmpo That is only 11 players so I would give the last spot to another forward probably, either Printezis (he will be 37 so that is why I didn't include him because I'm not sure if he will still play for the national team, plus he seems to be declining, although he might want to play one last time after he had to miss Olympic qualifying due to injury), or Kalaitzakis (he is playing for the Bucks but so far only appeared in 5/14 games for them). Other than that, no one else really stands out and there are dozens of other players that can be in contention for any position if some of these guys aren't available. We could also probably use another centre otherwise, but Koufos is now in the NBA G League and he has really declined the last few years (despite not being that old yet), and I don't think Mantzoukas (our big young talent) will be ready as he is only 18 and barely plays for Panathinaikos.

With Giannis and Thanasis Antetokounmpo and also with Georgios Kalaitzakis, the Milwaukee Bucks have three Greek players on their roster. Giannis and Thanasis have each played 13 games so far this season, while the rookie Kalaitzakis has played in 5 games. Have there been any other examples of an NBA team having three players from the same country on their team? Excluding USA of course. I can't think of any in recent memory. I can think of teams with two players from the same country but not three.

@Henry_LeonHow is Mitoglou playing? What are your thoughts on him? His stats seem good this year and obviously AX Milano is doing well as a team too, but I haven't seen any of the games.

Wouldn't be surprised to see FIFA/UEFA do everything possible to keep Portugal and Italy apart