The bronze medal was won on the morning of Wednesday 06/09 in the men’s doubles, in the Balkan table tennis championship of Albena, by the brothers George and Konstantinos Konstantinopoulos.
In the thrilling semi-final against hosts Bulgaria Vladimir Petkov/Petio Krastev clearly had the chance to get their 3rd straight win on the board as they took a 2-0 set lead.
In the end, however, they lost 3-2 and could not get what they deserved, namely the qualification to the final. This was the second medal for the Greek team, which completed its competitive presence in Bulgaria. It was preceded by gold in the men’s team. The report is positive and there was clearly the possibility for other places on the podium.
Tasos Riniotis, Gerasimos Hatzilygeroudis, Nikos Antoniadis, Malamatenia Papadimitriou, Dimitra-Thomais Tsekouras, Aliki Kioufi and Ioanna Gerasimatou also took part in the event.
In the technical guidance was the Regional coach of Patras Sotiris Zikos for the men and the national federal coach Giorgos Karytsas for the women. She represented EFOEPA at the conference of the Balkan Union and the delegation was accompanied by the special secretary of the board of directors of the federation and public relations manager Xenia Stathis.
The awarding of all prizes took place early in the afternoon, after the end of the entire program.
The men’s doubles started yesterday Tuesday from the round of 16. The Konstantinopoulos, who as the 2nd favorite were at the bottom of the table, had relatively easily scored two victories to enter the 4th place and the medals. This morning they had an inconclusive semi-final against the Bulgarians Petkov/Krastef (their teammate until last season in Panathinaikos) and they aimed to go one step further. They took the 1st set to overtime, laid a bigger foundation for advancing to the final when they made it 2-0, but could not reach the final victory. The neighbors improved their performance, Konstantinopoulos lagged behind in the details of the next sets, which were also “full” in the score and the defeat came with 3-2 sets (15-13, 11-7, 9-11, 8-11 and 8-11.
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