Makedonas

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

Incredible. So proud of her

I am struggling to breathe...

First time ever no Americans in QF of either draw! Wow So tired and also so nervous to watch Sakkari vs Andreescu now

Embarrassing joke. No World Cup 2022 for us. I wish I appreciated 2010 and 2014 more because I didn't think it would take us this long to get back to the World Cup again

So in the end Greece only got one gold medal (as well as one silver and one bronze). This is the worst we have done at the European U23s in a while although it was expected because we didn't send our strongest team. Germany also won one gold medal so now they remain in 2nd place in the all-time medal count and Greece still 3rd. Big result for our girls in W2X, they totally dominated and won gold. Evangelia Anastasiadou last year won gold as an 18 year old in LW1X and now in her first year in the U23 category she switches to W2X and challenged herself with 18 year old Evangelia Fragkou and they won gold. Really happy for Fragkou who finally won a gold after three bronze medals (2020 European Juniors, 2021 World U23s, 2021 World Juniors). She should win another medal next month at the 2021 European Juniors. Both Anastasiadou and Fragkou will be in Paris, I'm pretty sure of that. Though Anastasiadou will probably be in LW2X and Fragkou in one of the other sculling events, maybe W2X or W4X. Silver for our boys in M2X. Stergiakas (U23 World Champion) definitely led the way there, as his partner was the 18 year old Exarchou who didn't even make Final A of the recent world juniors (though a lot of the Greek athletes were recovering from covid then so maybe that played a role). I'm pretty confident Stergiakas will be in Paris too. He won gold at the World U23s and European U23s in 2018 and didn't compete for the national team in 2019 or 2020 but now he's back and won gold again at the World U23s (with a stronger partner than Exarchou). Also big result the bronze medal for Eleni Leventelli in LW1X. She is only 17. The other two medalists were 22 and all three medalists were separated by less than one second. She's set to compete at the European Juniors next month so that could be another medal for her, and this time competing against people who are actually in her age category for a change. Too bad that our girls got 4th in W2-. Obviously if we sent Bourmpou/Kyridou they would've won gold probably, but Charalampidou/Papaterpou did well considering they are both 18 even though they were very far behind the three medalists. I hope they can get a medal next month at the European Juniors. Not sure what happened to our M4- out there. They won their heat and seemed to be going for a medal the first 1000m and then totally collapsed. At least they are young. Our boys in LM2X got 7th, both are also just 18 and were the youngest team in the crew. Hope they can win a medal at the European Juniors as well. Finally it was very disappointing to see our boys in M2- get 8th. I really expected better from them. Still, in most events we had the youngest crews and everyone else will be back next year except for Stergiakas. Congratulations to our medalists:

Too bad Sakkari can't keep her Rabat 2019 points although it's ridiculous that she still has them. Anyways, it won't make much of a difference since she's ranked so high now anyways. What about ITF points from 2019? I know they cut them in half and are letting players keep them for another year, at least that was what they said originally. That's how Despina Papamichail made US Open qualifying because she had 50 points from two tournaments in July 2019 (100 points) and instead of losing them all she lost 25 from each (so lost 50 total).

Today's finals will be live streamed here.

Great win for Maria Sakkari

There is no proof that he is talking to the coaches in bathrooms. Only Zverev made those allegations. And we all know Zverev should be the last person to make allegations about others given his situation... Tsitsipas went to the bathroom at every match at the US Open with a clear bag that showed his clothes. No phone or way for his father to talk to him. Zverev never liked Stefanos from the moment Stef beat him in Toronto 2018, so it's not surprising he would make these unproven claims. Let's not forget Zverev was once accused of being on the phone at the ATP Finals, so he should know better than to accuse others without proof.

Is it illegal to go to the bathroom now? People are exaggerating this so much. Krejcikova took so many long bathroom breaks during Roland Garros and no one complained. And the men play best of five sets. Plus Tsitsipas sweats a lot more than other players, even Sakkari said it and she plays mixed doubles with him, so she knows that he needs to always change to new clothes. 'Sir' Andy Murray is a pathetic sore loser and a bully. He is 34 years old and let a bathroom break bother him so much? Also he kept using bad language and F words. Not what you expect from a so-called "mature" player. And he shows his immaturity in his tweets. Can't even spell his opponent's name correctly. I lost respect for him.

Will make it more difficult for us now. A shame because we started so well with a draw at Spain...

Anneta Kyridou suspended from the Greek national team for one year. No, she didn't fail or miss a doping test. All athletes were required to show negative PCR tests to enter one of the training camps earlier this year. The medical centre where she got tested accidentally gave her a rapid test. Now she is being accused of "putting other athletes at risk" despite it not being her mistake and she apologized and immediately went to get a PCR test after it was revealed that the place where she got tested made a mistake. Really a ridiculous decision and the real reason is that she is not liked by the federation because she exposed some coaches for abusing athletes.

No this year. Interesting selections with the Greek team. We are sending 15 rowers, but 7 of them are from the junior category. Of all other countries combined there are only 5 from the junior category. Kind of interesting that we are sending such a young team. We are third all-time in these championships on the medal table (only behind Romania and Germany) and I was hoping we could pass Germany this year as we have the same amount of gold medals as them, but with this small and young team I guess that probably won't happen. We won 4 medals at the World U23s this year including 2 golds, but only 3 of those 6 athletes are coming to the European U23s, and none of them are in the same crews. Perhaps the most surprising is that we are sending Anastasiadou/Fragkou in W2X. Fragkou is very good despite being a junior won bronze in that event at the World U23s, but Anastasiadou is a lightweight rower, just 165cm, and last year she won gold here as a junior in LW1X so I guess she wanted stronger competition? It's very surprising. And 2004 girl Eleni Leventelli in the LW1X is also surprising. She was in LW4X last year here as well. Kind of strange that the only two times she competed for our national team were in the European U23s. She has never competed in the World or European juniors, which is crazy because she is so young and it would be interesting to see how she'd do against her peers. She can still compete in juniors even next year. I don't know why they rush to throw her into U23s and never put her in juniors.

Also Ireland leading Portugal

Maria Sakkari won too!

Stefanos Also Valentini Grammatikopoulou won 6-3 6-2 in her debut

Alkisti Avramidou and Christina Tsoukala (water polo) Avramidou is 33 years old. She already retired from the Greek national team at 31. Tsoukala is only 30 years old, played her last match with the national team at 29. Both girls played for Olympiacos and won Euro League this past year. Both girls were also part of the Greek national team which won gold at the 2011 World Championships as well as three silver medals at the European Championships (2010, 2012, 2018). Tsoukala was also at the 2008 Olympics as a 17 year old. I don't think anyone ever expected Tsoukala to never return to the Olympics after making her debut at 17, but that's another discussion. Avramidou is possibly the best women's water polo player ever from any country to never go to the Olympics (for as long as it has been an Olympic sport). I thought Tsoukala would stick around until 2024 and definitely didn't think she'd end her club career too, so this is sad news. What a story it would've been to go back to the Olympics 16 years after Beijing. Oh well... Also now everyone from our World Championships winning team 10 years ago is retired

Horrible sportsmanship from team Russia in the final, absolutely disgusting what they did in the last few minutes of the match. Wow...