We now head into the closing weekend of the 2024 Olympic Games and what an event it has been.
Greece sit at 38th with seven medals (one gold, one silver and five bronze) and Cyprus 70th with a silver medal, only their second medal ever.
As for Australia? It has been an event that will go down in the annals of history.
What more can be achieved as we approach the end of the 2024 Summer Games?
Wednesday was the nation’s greatest-ever single Olympic day, and has propelled the nation’s overall golden tally to new heights.
It pushed the title total from 14 to 18 in barely six hours, while most of Australia was asleep, their golden tally now clears the 17 achieved in Athens and Tokyo.
Australia won gold on each of the first eight days in Paris – the previous best was four – and has won a title on almost every day at the Olympics to sit 3rd in the tally.
And with the weekend still to come, there remain several live chances to push the bar higher.
Now to Greece’s medal wins.
Most notable would have to be the gold medal winner Miltos Tentoglou, who finished first in his long jump event.
This is his second consecutive gold at the Olympics, winning in Tokyo, which makes him the first Greek athlete to do so.
Apostolos Christou won Greece its first medal in swimming since the first modern Olympic Games in 1896.
Taking home the silver in the men’s 200m backstroke, he set a new national record and prior to that he also just missed out on another medal by a mere two-hundredths of a second, finishing fourth in the men’s 100m backstroke.
Just missing out on a podium finish, Christou’s 52.41 seconds was the best ever result achieved by a Greek swimmer in the pool.
Theodoros Tselidis won a bronze medal for the Men’s 90kg judo event, defeating Spaniard Tristani Mosakhlishvili a few days before his 28th birthday, taking home the country’s third ever medal in judo.
Last Sunday gymnast Lefteris Petrounias clinched a bronze medal for Greece in the men’s rings event and days before, Zoe Fitsiou and Milena Kontou earned the bronze medal in the rowing women’s lightweight double sculls.
Petrounias returned from Paris with the third Olympic medal
of his career to further cement his legacy at the Games.
Meanwhile his legacy in Greece is set to be immortalised
following the announcement to name the ‘House of Gymnastics’ after him.On Tuesday, Emmanouil Karalis won the bronze medal in pole vault at the Paris Olympic Games.
Karalis reached 5.95 metres, securing third place and breaking his personal record of 5.87 metres.
It hasn’t been all shine for the Greeks at the Games though, as pole vaulter Eleni-Klaoudia Polak was provisionally suspended after failing a doping test.
Polak, who failed to reach the pole vault final during qualifying rounds on Monday, returned an “adverse analytical finding” and her results scratched from competition.
She denied any wrongdoing saying she has never taken supplements or protein, and that the substance came from meat that she ate. She added that she has iron issues and eats red meat daily.
In water polo the Greek men’s team went on a tear in the preliminary round finishing first but suffered a loss to Serbia in the quarter final.
Greece, which had equalised six seconds before the end with Vlachopoulos, lost 12-11 to the two-time Olympic gold medallists, ending their quest for another medal after winning silver in Tokyo.
They now compete for positions five to eight against Australia early on Saturday morning.
As for the women, they were defeated 12-9 by Hungary in a qualifying match and now challenge for seventh place against Canada on Saturday morning.
Despite much hype over Greece’s basketball team featuring in the Olympics, it hadn’t been that great for the Greeks.
Even with Giannis Antetokounmpo, Greece only won one match, against Australia, and fell to Germany in the finals, even after leading by 12 points in the first quarter.
As the closing ceremony nears, so does the decision to who will be flag bearer.
Long jump gold medallist Miltiadis Tentoglou was offered the position but declined.
Instead he expressed his desire to be the Greek flag bearer at the opening ceremony of the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles.
Reports now say the most likely candidate to carry the flag at the closing ceremony appears to be Emmanouil Karalis, who won bronze in the pole vault.
