Makedonas

I wonder if this is why the Greek federation announced from yesterday that our duet qualified? Yet here I was calling them stupid, thinking they didn't know the rules and were celebrating prematurely

Thanks @Rafa Maciel Any news on South Africa accepting their quota? They DNS in Doha. Also I didn't notice until now that only 18 duets are going to Paris, whereas it was 22 in Tokyo and 24 prior to that.

2024 Davis Cup World Group I: Greece 4-0 Romania Stefanos Tsitsipas GRE d. Marius Copil ROU 6-3 6-4 Aristotelis Thanos GRE d. Nicholas David Ionel ROU 4-6 6-3 6-2 Tsitsipas/Tsitsipas GRE d. Copil/Cornea ROU 6-7(4) 6-3 6-4 Ioannis Xilas GRE d. Luca Preda ROU 6-1 6-4

Can anyone tell me why our Olympic committee and aquatics federation posted on their official social media pages that we qualified in the duet? Some Greek sports sites took the story and ran with it too... Perhaps they didn't notice Italy successfully appealed their duet score (thus surpassing us) and/or maybe they have insider information (for example, is New Zealand going to reject their quota as they did for Rio and Tokyo?) Regardless, it's very unprofessional for them to not wait until tomorrow when it's official, and it'll be even more embarrassing if it was their mistake and Ukraine ends up knocking one of Canada/Italy out of team qualification and then we don't end up qualifying the duet after we prematurely celebrated

Great work! Doesn't have a really good professional boxer? I forgot his name but I think he won something recently. Also LOL at having only one person listed that is actually from that country

We ended up beating Romania 4-0! I thought we would win 3-2, so definitely it was a lot easier than we expected!

Greece Would be quite a disaster if we don't even make the duet at this point, which is unfortunately very possible now... We qualified the team for the Olympics just three years ago, and now we can't even qualify a duet, even without Russia or Belarus...

I guess we are done I also don't understand why Platanioti does not compete in the team event, though we scored so poorly I doubt she would've made much of a difference. This reflects poorly on the federation/coaches imo, they dropped so many of the girls who got us to Tokyo for these new teenagers who clearly aren't experienced enough...

Swimming +1 Athanasios Kynigakis (men's 10 km open water)

That's actually a pretty good result for your girls, we beat you much easier last month at the European Championships

Unlikely (and not sure if even possible), but what if less than 5 teams make all 3 finals?

Konstantinos Stathelakos (hammer throw) 36 yo, represented both countries and competed at London 2012, was now a coach (last competed as an athlete in 2020) and died in a car accident in South Africa where he was at a training camp with his athletes.

@Bearas@Werloc

Need Kynigakis to get a quota tomorrow. 13th in Gwangju, 5th in Tokyo, DNS in Budapest, 6th in Fukuoka...it would be a shame to not make it to the Olympics and there is so much pressure as this is the only chance if you didn't win a medal at last year's Worlds... Hopefully he is able to compete at his normal level and he will make it

We are leading 2-0 against after Day 1! Tsitsipas won 6-3 6-4 over Copil Once again, our number two player Stefanos Sakellaridis is not playing for the national team. So actually our 8th highest ranked player, Aristotelis Thanos (number 1433) got the chance to play against Ionel (no. 265). Thanos actually won 4-6 6-3 6-2! Thanos must be similar to your Molcan @hckošice (but obviously a much lesser version), because he does nothing in other tournaments but is somehow 3-0 in Davis Cup singles matches, all times against opponents ranked much higher than him (last year he won vs no. 564 from Ecuador and the year before vs. a guy from Jamaica who was then 1130 but now 319). He is 22 yo, so not that young, but maybe he can improve a lot in the next few years and at least make the top 500 or so. You don't win three big Davis Cup singles matches by accident... So now tomorrow should be easier, we can probably rest Stefanos in doubles and have him focus on his singles match where he can clinch the victory for us. Also the venue this time was the Ano Liossia Olympic Hall, which was built in 2004 and hosted judo and wrestling at the Olympics. It was not used much since then for various reasons (it is not very close to the city centre and not easily accessible by public transportation), but the arena is now used by AEK BC (one of our biggest clubs and Tsitsipas' personal favourite team) for the past few years and our national basketball team has played some games there recently. So now we played at home the last three times in Davis Cup, and at three different iconic venues (though this one was the least famous of the three). However I think it would be nice if they played in other cities too. Greece is not just Athens and my Thessaloniki deserves some of these events too

We still don't have any sailors qualified for Paris which is crazy considering we had 8 in Tokyo, 7 in Rio, 11 in London, 12 in Beijing, 18 in Athens (host), 11 in Sydney, 14 in Atlanta, 9 in Barcelona, 8 in Seoul, 7 in Los Angeles... We will definitely have the lowest amount of sailors on our Olympic team in many decades, but Tsortanidis coming so close here (and also a decent showing from Kokkalanis) gives me hope that we can still qualify a few sailors for Paris. Of course all the category changes since Tokyo did not help us. We were in 6 events in Tokyo and the only one which stayed the same was women's laser radial, and our athlete there is now competing for Portugal...

Also I do have hope that some of the girls who were kicked off the team will eventually come back. Alzigkouzi was part of our national team at Worlds in 2013 and 2015, then disappeared for a few years and came back for 2020 Olympic qualification and is now still with the team at age 28. Malkogeorgou was on our team at Worlds in 2015 and 2017, then was MIA and came back in 2022 not only for the team but also to be part of the duet. Aside from them and 21 yo Kariori (who was part of the Tokyo team), only Platanioti is also not a teenager.

I really hope we can qualify the team, but I know it will be extremely difficult. Still, it's good to see we seem to be on the right path. It is especially important for us because Tokyo was the first time we qualified since 2004, and our girls didn't even get to compete because of multiple positive COVID cases in the team. They were really young too, so it was important to make it in 2024 so they would get the chance. Unfortunately, the team now has mostly new girls. Of the 9 girls from Tokyo, only 3 are still with us, and one is Platanioti who has already competed at the Olympics 3x (and will be a part of the duet for Paris assuming we qualify at least for that). Papazoglou was dropped from the national team after 2021, but she at least got to go to Rio (duet) and competed in the duet preliminary in Tokyo so I don't feel as bad (though she was very offended when the national team dumped her). Karamesiou and Vasilopoulou were also dropped after 2021, even though they were just teenagers they basically had to end their careers. Then Misikevych was dropped after 2022, also a teenager. Then after 2023, another two teenagers were dropped (Fragkaki and Gialama) and afterwards they spoke out about how they were mistreated by the federation etc. So really it is a messy situation, and even if we make it, it will be mostly new girls so qualification won't really feel like the "redemption" we hoped for...

Anyone know why Austria is not competing in the duet here? I know they already have the quota so perhaps that's why?

Bravo, Evangelia!

Your work for this as well as for other qualification trackers is extremely helpful and we all appreciate it. However, for tennis it is not complete as the Race to Paris is more accurate than the regular rankings.

281 pts

basketball legend Dimitra Zaponidou passed away at 89 yo She was the first captain of our women's national team. A great player for Greece in an era where it was almost unheard of for women to be playing basketball in our country. A lot of people believe she lived in the wrong country and that in another life she would've been a big name in the basketball world. This is a news report about her death. You don't need to speak Greek to see what a treasure she was, the video of her dribbling the ball and reminiscing on her career/younger days