Makedonas

^Stosur losing a match in Australia? How shocking!

Was it then or 2013/14? I remember her being in the top 100 around that time period

@Monzanator Yes, I am just happy she made it to her third WTA final, hopefully she wins her second title. She lost many semifinals since winning Rabat 2019. From memory she lost in the semifinals of Rome 2019, San Jose 2019, Saint Petersburg 2020, Ostrava 2020, Abu Dhabi 2021, Melbourne 2021, Miami 2021, Roland Garros 2021 and US Open 2021. I might be forgetting one or two more. So yeah it seemed like she always lost semifinals so I am happy she finally won one. Sorry for Iga but she will also move to a new career-high. I always loved tennis but never imagined to have a Greek player in the top 10 for both ATP and WTA at the same time. It seemed like a wild dream. Some years ago I hoped for players in the top 100 of both and even that seemed unrealistic. Good things happen to those who wait I guess

Maria is number 5 in the WTA race...in late September! Honestly she deserves the top 10 and more. She did great this year. Semifinals at two Grand Slams, also semifinals at the big tournament in Miami, now final in Ostrava, also she made the semifinals of two other 500 tournaments (Abu Dhabi and Melbourne). In total she has 7 wins against top 10 players this year! I could be wrong (I only did quick research) but I think is the most of any player, tied with Barty. I don't think anyone else has more than 4 (Krejcikova).

Thank you Of course I will probably be totally off and we will have something like 70 athletes in Paris

Sakkari now guaranteed to go up to at least number 11 on Monday. Soon I think Greece and Spain will be the only countries to have players in both the men's and women's top 10!

I hope to see with 100+ athletes again and I think it is very possible but we'll see. Water polo we will certainly qualify our men's team. Between men's basketball, women's water polo and women's basketball (we have many good young players so I'm not sure if 2024 will be too early or 2028 more realistic but you never know), I think we can get another 1-3 teams although men's basketball and women's water polo are always one game away and then choke. Same thing happened this year. I don't think we'll qualify a full team in artistic swimming again (which is so sad because our girls didn't get to compete in Tokyo because half of the team got covid) but we will definitely qualify a duet. Many sports like cycling, judo, taekwondo, table tennis, fencing, wrestling we will probably qualify 1-3 athletes in each sport like usual. Weightlifting and archery we are hoping for 1 in each just as in Tokyo. Tennis we had 2 in Tokyo, hoping for another 1-2 in Paris but we will see. Petros Tsitsipas is close to top 200 in doubles and Valentini Grammatikopoulou is getting close to top 100 in doubles so maybe they can join our other two players. Grammatikopoulou/Sakkari would've made it this year if they stayed on the alternates list until the last minute. They had a higher combined ranking than Brazil and Chinese Taipei 2 but then again so did dozens of other potential teams from other countries that also weren't on the list. Some sports we haven't been in the Olympics since 2012 (beach volleyball, canoeing, diving) or 2008 (boxing). Of those I think we have the best chances in boxing and diving, hopefully to get about 1-2 in each of those sports. Sailing we had 8 in Tokyo and that's usually about what we have so I think it will be the same in Paris, somewhere between 6 and 11 sailors or so for us. Swimming we had 17 in Beijing, 14 in each of London and Rio, and 12 in Tokyo so we keep going down but I think we can go up again to about 15-18 in Paris. The problem is women's swimming has gone downhill. That is where we see decreases. We had 7 in Beijing, 6 in London, 4 in Rio and 2 in Tokyo. I don't think it is possible to keep going down, the only way is up so I am hopeful some of our young girl swimmers will do better. Shooting we usually have 2-3 shooters (at least the last few Games that's how it was) but the sport has grown a little and we have some young athletes that came close to qualifying for Tokyo, so I think in shooting we should aim for 4-5 quotas for Paris and based on results it seems realistic. Gymnastics we only had 1 athlete in Tokyo after having 9 in each of Beijing, London, Rio. A lot of this is because we didn't qualify in the rhythmic group as we usually do, and no other individuals qualified in artistic or rhythmic even though some were expected to. I think 3-4 is realistic for Paris. Rowing we also went down with only 4 athletes, we had 10 in each London and Beijing. But the ages of our rowers in Tokyo were 20, 20, 22, and 24 so we have a very young team and I expect more in Paris. We had 20 in athletics which was the lowest we had in a while, but most expressed desire to continue to 2024 except for two who will retire in 2022, but both of those athletes only qualified after withdrawals anyways (Tsiamis and Vasiliou). We have some up and coming athletes, also a lot of female race walkers and with the new 35km team event I guess that will give us more quotas. So maybe we can aim for 30 in Paris? I will say this for Greece should be our targets: 36-Team Sports (men's water polo + two other teams in basketball/water polo) 1-Archery 2-Artistic Swimming 30-Athletics 2-Boxing 3-Cycling 1-Diving 2-Fencing 4-Gymnastics 3-Judo 15-Rowing 10-Sailing 5-Shooting 18-Swimming 2-Table Tennis 2-Taekwondo 3-Tennis 1-Weightlifting 3-Wrestling So in total that equals 143. Probably seems very optimistic but time will tell. @Ted @maestro @George_D

And now Kvitova in the semifinals too. This is looking stronger than many slam semifinal lineups Sakkari could've made the top 10 if Kvitova and Bencic both lost today. Still a chance this week. But I like Kvitova and Bencic too. I think Maria will make the top 10 regardless, she is very close and has few points to defend while others have many points to defend over the next few weeks.

Weird, I didn't see that part of the match but saw the ending/handshake and it looked quite friendly.

Bourousis is another one who retired this year. Some months ago there were talks about Spanoulis, Bourousis and Zisis possibly helping Greece qualify for Tokyo. That would've been so nice. Oh well... Basketball will never be the same again for me, I grew up watching all of these guys.

So this year we won silver for both men's and women's European junior water polo championships, not bad Also our men won silver at the Olympics and bronze at the World League. And our U15 team won European bronze. We need to win a gold now! Too many silver and bronze

Tsitsipas pulled out of Davis Cup last minute due to injury and is now facing backlash from Greek media/fans. He did however say he will get vaccinated by the end of the year, so maybe people will stop being so cruel on him. Him and Sakkari also got backlash for their Olympic outfits (which adidas gave them, people acted as if they made their own clothes) which did not have the Greek flag on it. Maybe people in Greece should look at how many players skipped the Olympics and how many players always skip Davis/Fed Cup and appreciate that our players actually care.

Why the last?

http://sportsfeed.gr/defterathlitria-evropis-i-ellada-2/ Άλλο ένα μετάλλιο στο πόλο!

And Simona Halep

Kostas Kaimakoglou (basketball) He was a Euroleague champion, and national team member for many years. Won bronze at Eurobasket 2009. In total he was on two World Cup teams and four Eurobasket teams. This is really the year of retirements for Greek basketball legends, everyone from that generation is gone. Spanoulis, Zisis, Perperoglou, Kaimakoglou and maybe I am forgetting 1-2 more.

https://tennisnews.gr/tennis-world/us-open/item/48975-djokovic

Thank you Novak Djokovic for speaking the truth about Stefanos

Wow, very interesting. Thank you for posting this! So this year we had four semifinals in majors (Tsitsipas at Australian Open and RG, Sakkari at RG and US Open). Only Serbia (Djokovic at all four) and Russia (Medvedev AO and US, Karatsev AO and Pavlyuchenkova RG) have the same amount.

She beat two top 10 seeds in RG (Kenin and Swiatek) and three in USO (Kvitova, Andreescu, Pliskova) only to lose to unseeded players in SF. Very disappointing but still massive that she made two SF this year.

Why does it seem like we say this quite often?

AMAZING MARIA! She is guaranteed to go up to number 13 now even if she loses against Raducanu, will pass Eleni Daniilidou (number 14 career high) as the best Greek woman of all time! One of the most famous Greek traditional/folk songs, played at weddings and other events like that all the time. The main lyrics mean "wow Maria, I love you." Very accurate for this tournament and also a personal favourite of mine Also some Greek fans sing it during her matches.

We have never played against Andorra, Azerbaijan or FYROM. I think we've played everyone else.

We had chances to score more goals against Sweden than two. Really crazy that we beat Sweden and drew with Spain, but only drew with Georgia and Kosovo. We could be in a good position to qualify but as always we do well against the good teams and struggle against the weaker teams. We are a joke.

Me too