Five of our champions check their fitness at the established Finnish Table Tennis Open

In Finland and in an Open with a long history evaluated by the European Table Tennis Union, Greek participation in international table tennis tournaments will continue.

Three athletes and two athletes from our pre-national teams left on Wednesday with final destination Kisikalio, where from Thursday to next Sunday the 33rd Finlandia Open will be held. They are Alexandros Madesis, Stathis Manolopoulos, Giorgos Kosmas, Malamatenia Papadimitriou and Chrissi Fotiadou.

All of them are in the age category up to 21 years (Kosmas is still a teenager) and in the suburbs of Helsinki they will have the opportunity to give useful competitive tests not only in the men’s and women’s, but also in the Under 21.

The experienced coach, Konstantinos Kostopoulos, is also going to Finland, having taken over the technical guidance for four of the five children except for Manolopoulos.

The event is hosted at the “Susi Training Center” and has a high number of participants every year. It starts with the Young Men’s and Young Women’s category and from Friday the big category will follow, where it is already planned to be ranked for all positions.

It is to advance groups, while all matches will be judged by the system of the best of five sets.

19-year-old Madesis and 20-year-old Papadimitriou compete in AEK and are at the top of the Greek K21 rating table.

The 20-year-old Manolopoulos, who cooperates this year with Pera Athens, holds the third place in the same age category of men. The 16-year-old Kosmas is in the DAO Tavros and number 7 in the current ranking of teenagers.

Fotiadou, athlete of ASEA Sarises Florina, is at number 3 among the Young women. All together they have many Panhellenic titles from the simple youth categories.

In the recent past, several Greek champions have competed in the established tournament of the Scandinavian country, such as Georgia Zavitsanou, Ioanna Gerasimatou and others.