On the board of stage 2 at the European Pre-Olympic table tennis tournament in Sarajevo, Panagiotis Gionis on Friday with three wins, entered the semi-finals and, if he prevails on Saturday morning (10:30 Greek time), he will “check the ticket” for the the sixth consecutive Olympic Games of his enviable career!
He moves forward as if he has been ready for a long time, he moves forward with the air of an athlete who always achieves his goal in the Pre-Olympic tournaments and goes into the match with the naturalized Slovakian Wang Yang to fulfill his “burning” desire an hour earlier. Should he be defeated, he will have another chance to qualify through stage 3 and obviously with very high hopes of succeeding, as he has convincingly shown with his great performances.
The closing of the third day of the event reserved the most difficult mission, but with a big heart and inexhaustible strength, the top defender overcame the Ukrainian Yaroslav Zmudenko with 4-3 sets after a thrilling one-hour match.
Wide 4-0 set wins against the Italian Niagol Stoyanov in the “32” of the board and the Belgian Martin Allegro in the “16” preceded in matches that he made easier with his terrible performance! In the mini “marathon” he already has six consecutive victories, while he shows excess self-confidence and great stamina.
His coach for 15 years in the National team, Kostas Vatsaklis, plays his own role not only with coaching, but also with the fact that he is particularly demonstrative from the bench and very supportive. The experienced ping pong player also looks very good physically with the help of his teammate in S,EF Giorgos Konstantinopoulos, who is in the capital of Bosnia/Herzegovina as a physical therapist.
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