Telikostoglou silver medal at the Bulgaria Open G2 tournament

The silver medal of Apostolis Telikostoglou at -80 kg, marked the presence of our pre-Olympic team at the international graded tournament Bulgaria Open G2 held in Sofia. At the same time, Dionysis Rapsomanikis (-58k.), Konstantinos Hamalidis (-68k.), Phaedra Kaltekis (-57k.) and Thenia Sarvanakis (-62k.), took 5th place in one of the strongest competitive tests for the team which has been recommended by the Hellenic Taekwondo Federation.

The “silver” world champion of 2019 in Manchester, reached the final with three victories, namely 2-0 over the Kosovar Bayra, 2-1 over the Polish Robak and 2-1 over the Turkish Kartal. In the match for the gold medal, he was defeated 4-3, 9-6 by the Italian Alessio, occupying the 2nd place, which gives him enough points in his attempt to directly qualify for the Olympic Games in Paris.

Sarvanaki, also runner-up at the 2022 world championships in Mexico, needed two wins to reach the quarterfinals. She beat Zpak from Poland 2-0, while in the Greek civil war, she defeated the 7th Olympic champion of Tokyo and member of the pre-Olympic team, Fenia Tzeli, 5-0, 3-1. In the match for her entry into the semi-final, she lost 3-2, 0-5, 3-4 to Spain’s Ortiz Benito and took 5th place.

In the quarter-finals, Hamalidis’ progress also stopped. With two wins against Bulgarian opponents (Abramov, Dzordev) he reached the 8th round, but there he was defeated 2-1 by the Korean Kwon, finishing fifth.

Caltechi defeated Christie from Britain 2-0 and Maxic from Serbia 2-0, but in the match to enter the medals, they lost 0-0 and 5-1 to Assemani from Belgium.

A disputed decision by the referees in the match against the South African Hamdi deprived Rapsomanikis of his entry into the medals. He finished his run in 5th place in the final ranking of -58 kg, having two wins (over Germany’s Abdel Halim and Poland’s Novak) in three matches.

As for Nasia Mitsopoulou, she lost to Croatian Pole in the round of 16.