Makedonas

So sad for the English. Normally I don't like them (talking about football and has nothing to do with the country/people, I've been to London and it's probably my favourite city in the world), but I wanted them to win today. This meant so much to them but I just knew they would lose in penalties as they always do. Italy usually wins on penalties too (in recent years at least it seems that way).

Only Greeks and Danes are capable of winning the Euros and not qualifying for the next World Cup

In 2016 people said that about Tsitsipas making the boys' doubles final and being from Greece. You never know, maybe in a few years Jordan will have a top 10 player too!

No one was preventing Duplantis from going there if he really wanted to

I agree, however I was very curious about this because usually they don't have Olympic events in the World Championships during Olympic years, but 2020 was supposed to be the Olympic year. I guess it doesn't matter anymore though.

We have 83 (including an alternate for water polo and artistic swimming) but no official announcement has been made yet as far as I know. We are waiting until 14 July I think. Apparently we might get another quota in gymnastics from reallocation. At least this is what I heard, so we are waiting to see and we will know by 14 July.

We beat Croatia 11-7 to win bronze in boys water polo This Spyridon Lykoudis kid scored 5 goals, will be interesting to watch his development over the next years. We finished athletics and rowing with 4 medals in each. Again I will say that I think we can build a really good rowing team for Paris. Ntouskos is the only male rower we are sending to Tokyo, but now we had Palaiopanos/Stergiakas (M2X) and Papakonstantinou (LM1X) all win gold medals. And our female medalists are all young. 19 yo Anastasiadou got silver in LW1X and 18 yos Arabatzi/Fragkou got bronze in W2X. We didn't qualify for LW2X or W2X in Tokyo, so that's another good chance for us. Plus of course with a healthy Asoumanaki and Nikolaidou, and others who compete in the US university teams like Tsamopoulou, Christodoulidis, Pergouli, Vontzou, Noni, Agioti...we have many options. Of course there are also some girls who are even younger like Natsioula, Leventelli and also a bunch of girls from Thessaloniki who won medals at the European Junior Championships last year. The European U20 Athletics Championships next weekend will also be quite interesting. Tzengko, Filippidou, Emmanouilidou, Chatzipourgani, Dragomirova, Chytas, and the three guys in the hammer throw are the ones I'm looking forward to the most.

Tsitsos 4th in men's javelin I wanted a medal but still nice to see him back and with a new PB again after two years of dealing with injury problems and barely competing. So Greece ends with 4 medals, pretty good considering we only won 2 in 2019. This was the most medals we've won at this event since 2003.

Of course I'm going to say this because Greece won gold in LM1X and silver in LW1X, but honestly those events are really tough at the U23 category compared to even some of the Olympic events. For example LW1X is much more competitive than LW2X...

https://worldrowing.com/2021/07/11/2021-world-rowing-championships-shanghai-is-cancelled/ Another year without World Championships

Four medals for Greece (same amount as 2019) I'm pretty happy with this overall I must say. The Road to Paris is off to a good start. Gold in M2X and LM1X, silver in LW1X and bronze in W2X. Our M2X were very impressive. Stergiakas to come back to the national team after three years and win gold in the same event he won gold in 2018 as a 19 year old, and Palaiopanos who usually competes in sweeping events and won several medals in that (including bronze M2- in 2019), now doing it in sculls too. LM1X was also very impressive. I thought Niels Torre from Italy would win gold so it was a nice surprise for Papakonstantinou to beat him. I expected a medal from him but not gold. LW1X was a little disappointing because I thought Anastasiadou would become the 4th Greek to win gold in that event at the U23 level. However silver is still a great result and she was the youngest athlete in the final. Four of the other girls in the final will be too old for U23 next year, including the two other medalists. And the German girl only has one more year. Anastasiadou has three more years in U23. W2X was sad because our girls were leading the whole way, but overall this was a nice surprise that they even won a medal because they are so young and one of them isn't very tall and usually does lightweight events, and both are just 18 years old.

The W2X final was very exciting to watch! All three medalists were within one second of each other. And Romania was very close to winning a medal too. Our girls were in the lead for most of the race and lost it at the end unfortunately, but both are just 18 so winning bronze is still a very good result for them

But you have two players in women's singles, so if Serbia gets in, won't they use the same athletes from singles?

I agree. It also seems like certain areas in Greece produce athletes in certain events. For example we have a lot of throwers from Chania (Anastasakis, Frantzeskakis, Dousakis, Bouzakis, Tzatzimaki), Chalkidiki (Mouzenidis, Tzengko, Dragomirova, Latifllari, Kessidi) and Kilkis (Zaltos, Zotos, Prodanas, Korakidis brothers, Pavlidis). A lot of jumpers from Kerkyra (Karydi, Romaiou, Mantzourogiannis, Dosi, Monopolis, Nerantzis) and Grevena (Tentoglou, Zakka, Koutsaliari) And a lot of hurdlers from Katerini (Pesiridou, Kiafa, Chatzipourgani, Dalaka before she switched to 100m) Race walkers from Karditsa (Papamichail, Tsinopoulou, Drisbioti) I guess in some of these places they have good coaches who specialize these events and as you said they know what to do with the athletes. A shame we don't have many good middle/long distance runners, but there are some young ones that are quite impressive for our standards so far (of course I also thought the same about Karakatsani and Marinakou but neither one really did much of note).

That's very true, also sometimes we see people work hard for many years without improving their PBs and then suddenly everything falls into place. Dimitra Gnafaki is a good example of this in the 400m hurdles and also Ioanna Zakka in the high jump. Both of them seemed to kind of stall for a few years and stop making progress and then recently got huge new PBs. Hopefully that also happens with Karalis and also some others like Antonios Merlos and Panagiota Dosi. Also this weekend we have the U18 national championships in Volos. I haven't been following too much but disappointed that 16 yo Iliana Triantafyllou isn't there. She won the U20 championships last week (pole vault) with 4.12m. It's pretty incredible how much depth we have in some events (women's pole vault, men's hammer throw).

I think this year is different as @zob79said because some U23 rowers are going to Tokyo and therefore aren't here. Greece is another country that sometimes does very well at U23/Junior level and then we totally drop off after that. I think a lot of it has to do with our controversial national team coach (Postiglione) who many former and current athletes say needs to be removed, and also the fact that they don't make any money unlike other sports. Postiglione also does not approve of Greek rowers attending university and wants them 12 months out of the year to be in training camps. At some point they need to earn a living or get a part-time job or something. For example we had Christina Giazitzidou and Triantafyllia Kalampoka dominate LW2X together. At the World U23 Championships they won silver in 2008, gold in 2009, gold in 2010, and gold in 2011. Giazitzidou with a different partner won gold at the senior World Championships in 2009 and 2011 and then bronze at London 2012. Both Giazitzidou and Kalampoka stopped rowing at age 22. Kalampoka's last competition was the 2011 World U23 Championships where she won gold for the third year in a row in LW2X. It's quite crazy when you think about it. There are many examples like this in Greek rowing. Christos Stergiakas seemed to be another case, won gold at the 2018 World U23 Championships in M2X as a 19 year old, and he had some incident with the national team coach, but now shockingly he is back three years later but usually once these rowers leave the national team they never come back. Stefanos Ntouskos is probably expected by most to make the final in M1X in Tokyo and he's only 24 years old. He's actually the oldest rower on our national team which says a lot. He could possibly even win a medal in Tokyo. Even he said recently in an interview that he doesn't know if he will be able to continue after Tokyo because all these years he has been taking a break from university and at some point he needs to focus on something that he can actually make a career out of (he is enrolled in a medical school but has paused his studies for several years). Also I can't speak for Romania or Italy but in Greece it is very hard to combine studies with sport, especially in rowing where athletes don't make money and they usually train minimum 8 hours a day (unlike other sports where they perhaps don't train as hard or individual sports where they don't need to be with their crews and therefore don't have to coordinate their schedules). That's also why a lot of our rowers choose to go to the United States for their university sports (which is a separate conversation for another time).

I agree. I meant that I was hoping he'd be able to win gold from when he won silver in 2019. After following his results since then, it became clear that any type of medal would be a success for him here.

Our boys lost in water polo. They were down 0-4 after the first period so at that point it was always going to be hard to turn it around. They lost 10-12 in the end. Playing against Croatia tomorrow for bronze. We have four medals in athletics but zero gold (three silver from Frantzeskakis, Karydi, Karalis and one bronze from Mouzenidis). To be honest Karalis has been disappointing lately, I expected more from him. His PB is from 2018. However it's not the end of the world, Stefanidi didn't improve her PB for six years and still ended up winning Olympic gold. Rowing has been going very well. We only sent 7 boats and 6 of them made finals, with 5 of them having very good chances for medals in my opinion. Anastasiadou, Arabatzi and Fragkou are so impressive. 19, 18, and 18 years old. Fragkou was born in 2003 so she's still eligible to compete in juniors too. I'd like to see Anastasiadou team up with Nikolaidou and aim for Paris together in LW2X. I think they'd be able to win a medal together. It's a shame we haven't qualified for the Olympics in that event since London 2012 considering how many talents we've had in women's lightweight rowing. Also really nice to see Christos Stergiakas come back to the national team. He won gold at the U23 Championships in 2018 and disappeared after, so it's good to see him with a chance to win another gold three years later. I'd like to see us send to Paris our biggest Olympic rowing team ever. We had 10 in London and Rio but only 4 in Tokyo.

Another silver for Karalis. Was hoping he'd be able to upgrade his silver from 2019 to a gold this year but I guess it's still a decent result for him. He's been pretty disappointing the past few years. He's made zero progress while his peer Duplantis has done the exact opposite. I don't want to be too harsh on Karalis because he had some serious injuries, but I question his focus and commitment. He seems like he cares more to be a famous/social media influencer. He's still only 21 but the fact that his PB of 5.80(i) was from February 2018 is quite concerning. Back then he was 18 and seemed like he would surely improve a little more over the next couple years and become a medal contender for Tokyo. Clearly that isn't the case.

Who's dumb idea was it to have the men's 5000m split into two final races?

Greek boys finished 6th in the men's pair. Okay result, both are really young and will have 2-3 more chances in this category. Our men's four didn't make it to Final A which is disappointing but they are also a young team. Tomorrow we have 5 finals and they are all back-to-back. LW1X and LM1X we won our semifinals so I would be shocked if they don't win medals. Evangelia Anastasiadou proving her gold at last year's European U23 as an 18 year old was no fluke. If she can get a good partner (Nikolaidou if she's healthy) then they could honestly do big things and even win a medal together in Paris if she keeps improving like this. W2X and M2X we finished 2nd in our semifinals so I think both have good chances to win medals (both also won their heats). I'm very impressed with our W2X as both are just 18 years old. Also I'm curious to see how we do in LW2X. It seems like they can win a medal too. Basically I guess all 5 crews can win medals. I think if we win less than 3 medals, it would be a big disappointment. I think if we sent Christodoulidis in W1X and Noni/Vontzou in W2-, those easily could've been another two medals.

Sad, but thankfully it seems that she will be alright.

@zob79I expected Romania to be doing better so far

If you get a certain number of fouls, you lose the win?