Makedonas

15 for Cyprus https://city.sigmalive.com/article/2021/7/8/oi-15-presbeutes-mas-sten-olumpiada-tou-tokio/ 3-Athletics 1-Cycling (Road) 1-Gymnastics (Artistic) 4-Sailing 4-Shooting 2-Swimming

For Greece we have three Tokyo-bound athletes on this team. None of them have any chance of winning medals in Tokyo anyways and they do here, so I guess it makes sense for them to participate here.

1. Who were the most unexpected Qualifiers(Team/Individual) from your nation? I don't think any of these have chances for medals in Tokyo, but it's nice for them to be there: 1-Artistic swimming (team) We knew the duet would qualify but if you asked me after Rio, I wouldn't have expected this. Though they improved a lot and have a very young team, plus the increased quotas and host quota for Japan (who would've qualified anyways) I guess helped a lot. 2-Evangelia Psarra (archery) She was there at the last five consecutive Olympics but didn't expect it this time around. She won't win a medal but it's a nice story for her at 47 years old to keep making it to the Olympics, now her sixth time. 3-Emilia Tsoulfa (sailing) She is 48 years old and retired after winning gold in Athens 2004. She didn't win the quota but beat the other Greek sailors in the national trials to take their spot. 4-Fani Tzeli (taekwondo) She is only 19 years old and I thought Tokyo would be too early for her, but she beat a Rio 2016 medalist in the qualifying tournament which surprised me. She also won bronze at the 2018 Youth Olympics but I didn't expect her to do this well this early in her career. 2.Which athletes/teams ' not qualifying from your nation hurt you the most? Too many to list... 1-Eleni Chatziliadou (karate) 2018 World Championships gold medalist 2-Apostolos Telikostoglou (taekwondo) 2019 World Championships silver medalist 3-Men's basketball team (though throughout the last few months it became expected as everyone kept getting injured so in the end it wasn't a huge shock, though we did expect to beat the Czechs once we beat Turkey) 4-Women's water polo team (This time we probably didn't expect to qualify unlike 2012 and 2016, but it still hurt a lot especially not knowing if we'd take South Africa's place until two weeks ago) 5-Elina Tzengko (javelin throw) 2018 YOG gold medalist. She's only 18 but last year she threw 63.96 and with the standard being 64m, I thought for sure she'd make it and keep improving and probably make the final in Tokyo too. However this year she has been mediocre and didn't improve like I expected her to. She's 35 in Road to Tokyo so I doubt there will be three withdrawals. 6-Sofia Asoumanaki/Aikaterini Nikolaidou (rowing) They got 4th in Rio in the women's double sculls where they were the youngest team in the event (19 and 23) but unfortunately both have had a lot of injury problems, plus even if Nikolaidou was healthy in time for Tokyo she said she would try to qualify in the lightweight double sculls anyways. 7-Alexandros Tsanikidis (boxing) Chatziliadou's boyfriend. He is our best boxer and was one win away from Tokyo but then the remainder of the Olympic qualifying tournament got postponed and he got injured and was unable to compete when it resumed this year. 8-Rhythmic gymnastics (our first time since 1984 not being represented in the sport. In Rio we had both individual and team, as we usually do, and to get no one this time is sad especially since we even won a medal in Sydney 2000 with our ensemble group) 9-Efthimios Mitas (shooting) He is probably our best skeet shooter but didn't qualify which is disappointing because he had some good World Cup results and a national record in this Olympic cycle but couldn't deliver at the qualifying events.

http://sportsfeed.gr/thetikoi-se-xrisi-meldoniou/ Doping controls in Greece (where the Russians went for training) caught them.

Do you think they will be ranked high enough to get into mixed doubles? Only 16 teams can make it

Lithuanian women's double just replaced one of their rowers, but in 2016 Russia had to forfeit some rowing quotas. I guess we will see what happens.

I've said this like 100 times already, but the Armenian girl used to be a Greek triple jumper. She switched to Armenia a few weeks ago (probably has distant Armenian roots based on her surname and the fact that many Armenians settled in Greece after the Armenian Genocide), then ran her first 100m a week and a half ago. It seems like all she wanted was to get an Olympic chance, hence the switch to Armenia and probably at that point she was willing to do 100m. No way was she going to decide not to go to Tokyo simply because she couldn't get into her preferred event after she already switched to Armenia (presumably only for the Olympic chance). With Greece she never would've had a chance of getting a universality spot.

What did I say back then? And it happened again...

Well maybe no Zika virus but we had this little thing called COVID-19...

We only got 20 in athletics Belibasaki injured, the young girls Tzengko and Karydi failing under pressure, Pappas being MIA, N.Scarvelis and Baniotis not doing it either. I thought they would all qualify or at least 3-4 of them. I was also off by saying we would have 1-2 in diving (we have 0) and 3 in shooting (we have 2).

I'll say 5-6 for Greece, with Petrounias and Tentoglou being the only ones that I would surprised if they did not win medals.

Yeah, Christina Bourmpou/Maria Kyridou will not be able to defend their title from 2019 in the women's pair. They've already been in Japan for a few days now. I guess they'll have to wait until 2022 to return to the World U23s, they'll still be young enough for this category.

Before Tokyo we have the European U23 Championships and the European U20 Championships still. One is this coming weekend and one is the following weekend.

World U23 Rowing Championships will begin on Wednesday

I think for us the problem was that we invested a lot for athletes to be in Athens and still had some of those leftover for Beijing, but by the time London came around so many of them had retired. Plus we had an economic crisis which began between Beijing and London so that obviously didn't help either. However it seemed like for some sports there was no vision after Athens. It was like we focused on Athens so much that we neglected the future after Athens. I'm not sure how much Brazil focused on the future after Rio. China and the UK seemed to do a much better job than Greece in that regard. We also very well could've had 128 instead of 103 in London. We had two shock non-qualifications (men's basketball where we were ranked 4th in the world and women's water polo where we won the 2011 World Championships), so those two sports obviously played a role in our massive drop in team size from Beijing to London (we qualified both of those teams in Beijing). And please don't say that we will have 73 athletes in Paris, I refuse to believe it To be honest though I think in Paris we will go back to 100+. We have a very young team going to Tokyo so I expect many to return, plus we have a lot of good young athletes/teenagers in sports like athletics, swimming, rowing and a few others which gave us hope. Plus having France host might make it easier for us in some team sports, especially our men's and women's basketball team as there will be one more European spot.

Beijing 2008 was the most for Greece (156) not including the two times we hosted, and since then we went down every time (103 in London, 93 in Rio, 83 in Tokyo) so hopefully for Brazil's sake they wont suffer the same fate as us.

Unless anything changes, we have 83 going to Tokyo. Our smallest team since Barcelona 1992... However this is including 9 in artistic swimming and 13 in water polo, so I guess some might say we have 81 and not 83?

That's like Kristina Alvertsian from Armenia who is a triple jumper but will be running in the 100m, which she never ran in her entire life until last week

Congrats Czech Republic! You played a great game with great shooting, very impressive. Unfortunately once again we failed to qualify in both men's basketball and women's water polo. We are a joke. We are easily the most pathetic country in Europe and possibly the whole world. So embarrassing and we always get worse and worse. They should just cancel the Olympics to save ourselves from more embarrassment. Really just a disgrace how we've declined so much and have gotten used to being mediocre in so many sports where we should be good and used to be good. Shameful and disgraceful

Oh wait, he did play for Olympiacos actually I didn't even remember that. Probably because the format was different this year due to covid and we had some bad results so I wasn't fully paying attention like I normally do

Some big results at Greek U20 Championships this weekend. Still going on but almost done. 16 yo Iliana Triantafillou (born 2005) passed 4.12 in the pole vault. Her previous PB was 3.90. Our U18 and U20 NRs are 4.37 (Stefanidi), and our U23 NR is 4.51 (also Stefanidi) so if she keeps improving then I think she can break some of these records in the next few years. Yesterday we had a new U20 NR in the women's discus, Despina-Areti Filippidou threw 55.12 (previous NR was 54.50 from 1993 and her PB was 52.02). She is a 2003 girl so she will still be able to improve this NR even in 2022. Also Polyniki Emmanouilidou has the U20 NR in the women's 200m (23.83). She broke this record today too but unfortunately it was wind assisted so it doesn't count. However I think she can do it again at the European U20 and World U20 Championships coming up. Also she will still be in the U20 category in 2022 as well.

2020 World League was postponed due to covid and just ended a few days ago actually

39 years old and going back to the Olympics after making his debut in 2008! He is currently injured still but he's been going to physical therapy and hoped to be back last weekend for the Balkan Championships but didn't make it in the end. Happy in the end that he can make it to Tokyo (would've been a shame if his injuries + those suspicious athletes from some ex-Soviet countries would've kept him out). He deserves this. I hope he's healthy and can go to Tokyo. I think that's it for Greece now, after today's basketball game we will know the total number going to Tokyo unless we get 1 or 2 extra spots in swimming via OST, I'm not sure how likely that is but we got 2 OST spots for Rio. Also I think we have a female gymnast who is next in if someone withdraws. 18 yo Elina Tzengko in the women's javelin is still 3 out so I don't think she can make it but we'll see. Looks like in the end we might end up with 94-95 athletes after having 93 in Rio (depending on today's basketball result), something that didn't seem possible just a few weeks ago.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greece_men's_national_water_polo_team#Current_squad It says here that he plays for them. I think this is updated because some of these players like Fountoulis and Kolomvos just moved to Olympiacos, and Vlachopoulos was playing for AN Brescia in Italy and now it says he plays in Serbia, also Argyropoulos was playing for Olympiacos and now it says he's playing for Jug, so I guess these are the clubs people will play for next season and it has Kapotsis at Steaua!

He left? I thought he was still at Steaua. I'm also happy he's there because this might be his only chance for the Olympics. He's already 29 and we have a lot of young players coming up who won several tournaments already (2017 and 2019 World Junior Championships and 2018 European U19 Championships).