Makedonas

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

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.