Gionis is on the board of the participants in the Europe Top 16 Cup

Panagiotis Gionis will finally be among the 16 top athletes in Europe who will take part in the big annual ping pong tournament, as the Portuguese Markos Freitas canceled his participation.

The games will take place on the weekend of February 26 and 27 in Montreux, Switzerland. The top defender had issued a ticket for Friday anyway, since he had been called a few days ago as the first substitute, but on Tuesday afternoon the Greek federation was notified that he would play.

Thus, he will finally have the federal coach, Costas Vatsaklis, by his side and the two men will leave together for Switzerland. Gionis is preparing for his eighth participation in the institution and, of course, he was also present in the Top 16 of last September, organized exemplary in Thessaloniki by EFOEPA.

The national coach will not exceed ten appearances in the established tournament, as he had coached Kallinikos Kreanga three times, with whom he also celebrated winning the trophy in 2011 in Liege.

Gionis goes to Montreux for the third time for the Top 16, in fact in 2018 and in 2019 he had qualified for the quarterfinals. His most important success was the bronze medal in Baku, Azerbaijan in 2015.

We remind you that from the moment he went to Switzerland, he would lose the Panhellenic Men-Women Championship, which will take place at SEF, also on 26-27 / 02.

Since it was finalized that he will be on the board of the participants in the established event, Gionis will return to Athens on Sunday.

For Freitas, who he replaced, let us note that he played in the final in Thessaloniki in front of the Greek fans and in addition he was the winner of the Top 16 in 2014 and has played a total of three finals.

In the list of entries the left-handed Portuguese was sixth. It should be noted that Gionis could not replace a German or Swedish athlete, only their compatriots.

If no other cancellations occur, the athletes who are going to take part in the Top 16 are the following:

Dmitry Ovcharov (Germany)

Timo Bowl (Germany)

Matthias Falk (Sweden)

Simone Gozi (France)

Darko Jorgic (Slovenia)

Robert Gardos (Austria)

Christian Carlson (Sweden)

Jonathan Groth (Denmark)

Wang Yang (Slovakia)

Tomislav Pukar (Croatia)

Emmanuel Lebson (France)

Daniel Habeson (Austria)

Andrej Gacina (Croatia)

Kirill Skatskov (Russia)

Panagiotis Gionis (Greece)

Baris Moule (Switzerland)

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