As the World Aquatics Championships rally on in Japan, Greece has been making waves with their performances in water polo.
The men’s water polo team are through to the semi-finals after a 10-9 win against Montenegro on Tuesday.
Greece scored a goal with just two seconds left to take the win and will now play Serbia next in hopes to make the final.
It has been an outstanding tournament for the Greeks thus far, having dominated the group stage against the US, Australia and Kazakhstan, beating the latter 18-2.
This saw Greece qualify straight to the quarterfinals, where they beat Montenegro.
Meanwhile, Australia lost to France 8-11 in the first round of the finals and will now play Croatia for ninth place.
On the women’s side, Greece also displayed a dominant group stage performance, beating all three opponents, Italy, South Africa and Argentina for a total score line of 61-16 (12 of those goals against them came from Italy).
With Greece through to the quarterfinals, they came across Australia on Monday, and in a close fought affair, the ‘Aussie Stingers’ upset the European heavyweights by just one goal, winning 9-8.
Australian coach Paul Oberman said his team’s “defence was working really well” against a very good attacking team.
“They (Greece) are a very good team, they are going to score goals,” he said.
The Stingers would come up short in their next game however, losing 10-12 to Spain.
Australia will now play Italy for third place, while Greece will face Canada in seventh placed game.
In other news out of Japan, Greek sisters Anna-Mara and Erini-Marina Alexandri, who were representing their new home Austria, took home gold.
The 25-year-olds claimed the first ever artistic swimming world championship title for Austria.
Born in Athens and hailing from Volos, they had previously represented Greece but left the country after a fallout with the Greek Swimming Federation which they accused of lacking meritocracy.
This comes a month after the triplets – their sister Vasiliki serves as a reserve – swept gold at the 2023 European Games, securing Austria a quota at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.
Vasiliki herself won silver in the Artistic Swimming – Women’s Solo Free.
On the current medal table, Australia are second with six gold medals (nine medals total) only behind People’s Republic of China, who have 17 gold (29 medals total).
