Six qualifiers on the board of Panagiouriste for the Greek team

On Saturday, the teenagers Stathis Manolopoulos, Alexandros Madesis, Yiannis Anastasiadis, Yiannis Koutras, Giorgos Kosmas advanced to the “64” board in the World Table Tennis Youth Contender in Bulgaria in the Under 19 age category and to the “32” board the boy Kostas Fakaros in the Under 15 category.

Manolopoulos, in fact, qualified as the winner of his group, while the rest of the children finished second. It should also be emphasized that, taking the step in the above age category from their own, Koutras and Anastasiadis demonstrate two qualifiers in the “knock-outs” in Panagiouriste, while Fakaros also managed the same after yesterday’s qualification in the U17 .

Disqualifications were registered for the remaining nine Greeks, but in a strong international tournament, experience and the usefulness of such competitive tests count a lot. All matches in the U19 and U15 boards take place on Sunday on the last day of the Contender.

Manolopoulos may have been affected at the beginning by the fact that he had no matches for two and a half days in Panagiouriste, but he immediately reacted and finally with two wins he was at the top of the 15th group. In his premiere, he found himself losing a 2-0 set to the Englishman Jakub Pivovar (head) and impressively “turned” the situation to 3-2 in his favor (6-11, 7-11, 13-11, 11-8, 11 -8).

His second match against the Turkish Furkan Simsek was also very difficult. The international defender lost the first set, but continued with a good standard of performance to win 3-1 sets (13-15, 11-6, 11-7, 11-5).

Anastasiadis in the fourth group initially lost 3-0 sets to the strong Bulgarian Ioan Velitskov, yesterday’s finalist in the U17 final (9-11, 4-11, 1-11). In the decisive game he defeated the Romanian Mihai Ionescu 3-0 and went to the “knock outs” (11-7, 11-6, 11-9).

Koutra had the same course in the eighth group. He fought off France’s Flavien Coton, the 2022 European Junior Singles Champion, 3-0 down normally (2-11, 5-11, 0-11) and then with a solid performance he imposed on Mansoor Abdullah of the UAE with 3 -0 sets to reach the qualification target (11-3, 11-4, 11-9).

Madesis qualified from the 11th group with exactly the same score. He was defeated 3-1 sets, being competitive, by French leader Antoine Noirot (11-9, 6-11, 5-11, 9-11) and in the afternoon easily defeated Malta’s Luke Bonello 3-0 sets (11- 7, 11-2, 11-5).

Also, with the second place, Kosmas from the 14th group advanced. In the first match, he lost to the Slovak leader Damian Floro with 3-0 sets (9-11, 7-11, 6-11) and in the decisive match of the third match, he prevailed in the most critical points of the Turkish Arda Edis, to win by 3 -1 set (16-18, 11-7, 11-6, 13-11).

Giorgos Gerakios, in his second international participation with the Greek colors, was limited to third place in the tenth group. He battled with 3-0 sets from the Indian leader Divans Srivastava (8-11, 5-11, 7-11) and from the Ukrainian Oleh Rehotun (8-11, 6-11, 5-11).

16-year-old Grigoris Tsilopoulos finished third in the 17th group. He lost 3-0 sets first to the leader, England’s Ralph Pattison, (5-11, 4-11, 9-11) and then to Zhu Jinghe from Singapore (6-11, 6-11, 4-11 ).