European Pre-Olympic tournament: In the hunt… for a French “ticket” Gionis, Toliou, Sgouropoulos, Terpou

Among the dozens of strong European table tennis athletes of the Sarajevo Pre-Olympic tournament for a place in Paris is Greece, ready to fight to secure its eighth consecutive presence at the biggest sporting event on the planet. The great event is held in the capital of Bosnia/Herzegovina from 15/05 to 19/05, it concerns only the simple and the Greek colors are represented by Panagiotis Gionis, Yiannis Sgouropoulos, Katerina Toliou and Elisabeth Terpou.

Gionis of five appearances succeeds in every pre-Olympic process so far, Toliou participates in a Pre-Olympic for the fourth Olympic year and is always looking for the Olympic “ticket”, Sgouropoulos is again chasing the “burning desire” after 2021, Terpou is its debutant mission and everyone defines their own ambitions and dreams.

On Tuesday at noon, the Greek champions learned their opponents in the groups. In the technical guidance they will have the federal coaches Costas Vatsaklis (men) and Giorgos Karytsa (women).

Stage 1 in the European Pre-Olympic tournament includes 12 groups. For men, the first two of these are for three athletes and for women, six for three athletes. The final entries are 46 and 42 respectively. The top two from each advance to the stage 2 boards.

Giannis Sgouropoulos will compete in the first group against the Spaniard Alvaro Robles (number 1 of the competition) and the Moldovan Vladislav Ursou.

Panagiotis Gionis leads the ninth group with opponents Cedric Nutink (Belgium), Abdullah Yigenler (Turkey) and Alexander Gillen (Ireland).

Katerina Toliou is in the fifth group with Georgina Pota (headed by the Hungarian Olympic athlete) and Raquel More (Switzerland).

Elisabetta Terpou was drawn in the seventh group led by Britt Erland of the Netherlands and also rivals Spain’s Sofia Zhuang and Latvia’s Aleksandra Gersova.

“And Panagiotis and Giannis have a good tradition with these opponents. Panagiotis has struggled with both Nutink and Gigenler, but he has defeated them, while for the Irishman I believe he cannot put up much resistance.

Giannis has prevailed in the recent past against his current opponents and not once. He defeated Robles in both the European and the Mediterranean Championships, he has played with Ursos for a long time, but he also had positive results against him”, Kostas Vatsaklis commented on the draw and added:

“We also had double training today, the kids are feeling good and I’m optimistic. From the beginning, we play with the system of the best of seven sets, we know that it is a tiring and soul-destroying tournament, we believe that we will cope with the endurance and the quality of competition”.

Giorgos Karytsas was tight-lipped, for his part, however, he gives the “sign” that the project is extremely difficult and that the girls first want to present themselves competitively, so that they can claim something substantial. “The girls are up against very high level athletes. This is something we knew beforehand and are prepared for. What we want and will try to do is to catch our performance and be as competitive as possible”.

The schedule for the matches of our athletes in the groups in Greek time (we are one hour ahead):

In men:

In the 1st group on 15/05:

Sgouropoulos-Robles at 18:00, at table 5

In the 1st group on 16/05:

Sgouropoulos-Ursou at 13:50, at table 1

In the 9th group, on 15/05:

Gionis-Giggenler at 12:10, at table 5

Gionis-Nutting at 19:40, on table 1

In the 9th group on 16/05:

Gionis-Gillen at 16:20, at table 2

To women:

In the 5th group on 15/05:

Toliou-Pota at 14:40, on table 2

In the 5th group on 16/05:

Toliou-More at 18:00, on table 5

In the 7th group on 15/05:

Terpu-Erland at 14:40, on table 4

In the 7th group on 16/05:

Terpu-Gersova at 11:20, on table 3

Terpu-Zhuang at 18:50, at table 2

The first two athletes from each group pass, as mentioned above, to stage 2 (24 athletes). There will be a scoreboard with a simple “knockout”. The first two will qualify for the Olympic Games (the final will not be played). The matches will be held on 17 and 18/05.

In stage 3 we will have a new “knockout” board with the remaining 22 men and women who did not qualify for Paris from stage 2. In the Olympic singles tournaments the top two on the board qualify, as does the winner /three from the match for places 3-4 of stage 3 that will follow between the losers of the semi-finals. The matches here will be held on 18 and 19/05.

In Sarajevo, Sgouropoulos has his father Nikos, former Greek champion and international table tennis player, by his side.

In addition to Georgina Pota, several foreign athletes well known to the Greek public are participating in the Pre-Olympic tournament. The Ukrainian Margarita Pesotska of Olympiakos, the Bulgarian Maria Yovkova of AEK, the Bulgarian Petio Krastef of Pera Athens and the Slovenian Ana Tofad of Panathinaikos are “chasing” the qualification for Paris.

In the list of participations we also meet the Cypriot Mario Yangou, who for years had competed in the Greek A1, the Englishman Liam Pitchford and the Italian Deborah Vivarelli who played last year in Olympiakos and the Bulgarian Denislav Kotzabashev, who has also worked with Greek teams .