Makedonas

Victoria Canada time. So 02:05 in Greece. I don't know if Egypt is the same time as Greece?

Haha fair point but our team is expected to do well because basketball is a huge sport in Greece and our national team has a lot of history. You are right that for many players this is the biggest game of their careers. With the exception of Mitoglou, Sloukas, Calathes and Papagiannis, most of our players don't normally play for the national team. So for them it is a really big deal because if we weren't missing so many important players this year, they wouldn't even be here. So they might never get this chance again even some of the younger ones. If we do qualify I think we might see a few changes depending on if some of our injured players recover in time. Surely Thanasis Antetokounmpo will join the team once his NBA season ends, and for his brother it depends on his injury situation.

I think 16:05 local time but I'm not 100% sure

What a performance! So proud of our boys! Even when we were down early in the first half I still had hope we would come back and win. I thought I was going to wake up my neighbors with my screaming but it sounded like they were watching too. Now we must not underestimate the Czechs. Another tricky opponent but I'd much rather face them than be playing against Canada again. We can do it. To see our team FINALLY go back to the Olympics for the first time since 2008. Please it would be my dream. 2012 was a shocking embarrassing non qualification out of nowhere, then 2016 another big disappointment. Now this time when we least expected it, could this be the time that we finally end our streak of non qualifications and go back to the Games?!

Thank you. So sorry for Canada. This is such a big opportunity for us right now. A shame we are playing with basically our B team but hopefully we can still make it, that would be great. First we have to beat Turkey. They will be tough. We usually beat them but history means nothing. Hoping for a good game from our boys tonight.

The Czechs should've won already, but they couldn't make free throws and made ridiculous turnovers at the end to allow Canada back in the game. Wow...

TEAM GREECE Emmanouil Zerdevas (GK) Konstantinos Genidounias Dimitrios Skoumpakis Marios Kapotsis Ioannis Fountoulis (Captain) Alexandros Papanastasiou Georgios Dervisis Stylianos Argyropoulos Konstantinos Mourikis Christodoulos Kolomvos Konstantinos Gkiouvetsis Angelos Vlachopoulos Konstantinos Galanidis (GK) Pretty good mix of youth and experience. 6 of these 13 players were in Rio, and only 2 were in London. Sad to see Alexandros Gounas not there, though it was expected because he was dropped from the national team in February and hasn't been called up since. Relieved to see Vlachopoulos back. He is arguably our best player (along with Fountoulis) and he wasn't at the recent World League finals, but I guess he was just injured or something because he was training with the team and playing in friendlies just a few weeks ago. Also I wish Dimitrios Nikolaidis got picked. For some reason he doesn't seem to be liked by our coach and often doesn't get called up, however he is very young so he will have more chances in the future.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CQ1kzOVsSDM/ Theodoros Iakovidis confirmed for men's 96kg. So in the end, Greek weightlifting survives (for now). This was going to be our first time since 1964 not sending anyone in weightlifting but now we can relax for a little until we worry about trying to qualify someone in 2024. Which will be a problem because Iakovidis said he would probably retire after Tokyo.

Alexis Copello of Azerbaijan is out of the men's triple jump. Not surprising as he hasn't competed at all during this outdoor season. Neither has the other Azeri, Nazim Babayev. I wonder if he'll withdraw. Tsiamis now moves up to 33rd. I don't wish injury on anyone but it would be really nice if Tsiamis gets in. He certainly would've made it but DNS in the final of the Greek national championships (after jumping in qualifying) and then was going to go to the Balkan Championships but withdrew a few days prior. Both events would've given him easy ranking points to go to Tokyo. Then you have the three miracle men (one from Uzbekistan, one Armenia, and one Georgia) who all qualified in this event despite never jumping anywhere near the standard unless they are in their home countries. World Athletics really needs to do something about this problem. Tsiamis really should be in Tokyo, would be such a shame for him to miss out...

Bulgaria also wasted a chance in rowing by not sending anyone to the European Qualifying Regatta. They 99% would've qualified in men's single sculls.

And let's not forget they (FINA) have some history with mistakes in those invitations https://swimswam.com/fina-mistakenly-invites-greek-swimmer-vourna-to-swim-in-rio/

It's very sad to see Bulgaria with only 42 athletes. It seems like every time their team gets smaller and smaller (same problem with us as well)

I knew you weren't making it against Greece or anything, I was just saying that our guy would've probably finished higher in the rankings if Dimas didn't refuse to send him to the 2019 World Championships.

Sorry if it was said before, but do we know when OST invitations will be announced?

If it makes you feel better, Greece didn't even send a team to the 2019 World Championships and it's been kind of a scandal now because our guy probably would've qualified if he went in 2019 and got points. However Pyrros Dimas (who is now president of our weightlifting federation I believe) decided to not send anyone and now he received some backlash for it. Especially since this could be the first time since 1964 that we don't send any weightlifters to the Olympics (our only woman who qualified lost her spot because she was caught doping), and we've won more medals in weightlifting than any other sport except athletics, so this is like the final nail in the coffin for Greek weightlifting if we can't even qualify anyone for the Olympics anymore.

Perhaps she said she won't go even if she does get in.

So they may not have been allowed to compete in 400m? I guess that seems likely, yeah.

Are you sure, because it looks like Paolini #87 and Jorovic #90 SR were the last ones in from Europe. Bogdan is #91. Anyways I am really surprised that so many Romanian girls aren't going. I expected them to care about the Olympics especially being Romanian. Cirstea and Begu have been before, but Tig and Bogdan? That surprised me.

That's the thing, why would they choose 200m over 400m? It makes zero sense.

Obviously I'm thrilled for Vasiliou, especially since she made a long post yesterday on Instagram about not qualifying and how much she was crying and also originally she said she would retire after Tokyo (pre-covid days). However, I'm really surprised about the Namibians! Does anyone have more information about them? I'm surprised this hasn't really been discussed much.

Did Bogdan get in or she is one of the first alternates?

Yeah, ironically they entered a Greek woman with distant Armenian ancestry (she just started competing for Armenia last week) who is a triple jumper and never ran 100m in her career until last weekend

Here's another one: https://www.worldathletics.org/athletes/armenia/alexander-donigian-14423245

And now Alvertsian got a universality place in the women's 100m. She is a long/triple jumper and never ran 100m in her long career (her World Athletics profile has results from 2011). Her first (and only) 100m ever was actually last Saturday in the Balkan Championships https://www.worldathletics.org/athletes/greece/kristina-alvertsian-14459789

Does no one else find this crazy about the Armenian guy? World Athletics not posting his result until ONE MONTH LATER. This is so ridiculous and unfair. Plus he might've gotten a universality place anyways so did they really have to go pull this suspicious stunt at the last minute like that? In that case Tsiamis also qualified. His wind assisted 17.21 in May (before he got injured) was actually +2.0 and not +3.0. We couldn't just say the initial wind reported was wrong? It seems like that's what Armenia did...