With the same grace that captivated the judges and won two bronze medals at the World Championships in Budapest, Evangelia Plataniotis fell into the pool in Rome, at the premiere of the European Championships. She placed 3rd (out of 22 girls) in the solo freestyle competition swimming and set herself a strong bid for a podium spot in the event finals on Sunday at 10:30. Our 28-year-old champion performed her program to the tune of Queen’s song “The Show Must Go On” and with a score of 91.0667 was very close to Italy’s Linda Cerutti, who came in second with 91.3000 points. The first was Marta Fedina from Ukraine, who scored 94.0000 points and is considered the main favorite for gold.

In swimming, the premiere did not go so well for the Greek colors, as none of our 7 athletes who participated in the competition qualified. The closest, perhaps unexpectedly, was Daniil Giurtsidis, who improved his individual record (4:19.97 from 4:20.00) but finished 9th best overall and narrowly missed out on qualifying for the final of the 400m individual medley. Slovakian Richard Nagy finished 8th and qualified for the final in 4:19.75.

Christian Golomeev was a respite, except for the 50m freestyle semi-finals, placing 17th in the morning heats with a time of 23.65. In the same competition Stergios Bilas placed 19th with 23.79, Kostas Stamos was 30th with a personal best of 24.09 and Christos Papadopoulos was 32nd with 24.12. Arcadios Aspougalis (27th in 1:01.93) and Savvas Tomoglu (34th in 1:03.04) were also far from qualifying for the 100m breaststroke heats.

A disappointing premiere of Greek swimming colors with seven exceptions.

On the Greek side today’s swim program highlights the performances of Anna Dountounaki in the 50m butterfly and Andreas Vasios in the 100m freestyle. However, the efforts of our girls in artistic swimming are of greater interest.

Details: ARTISTIC SWIMMING: 10.30 Duet, free program (qualification): Platanioti, Malkogeorgu, 16.00 Solo, technical program (final): Platanioti, 18.00 Moments (final): Team.

SWIMMING: Morning – Preliminaries (10.00) 50m butterfly (C) Dountunaki, 100m freestyle (A) Vazaios, Meladinis, Bylas, Papadopoulos, 100m breaststroke (C) Drasidou, Kontogeorgou, 200m backstroke. (A) Makrygiannis, Siskos 4x100m Mixed Team National Mixed Team 800m Freestyle (A) Markos. Afternoon (19.00) 200m backstroke (C) Final 50m butterfly (A) Final 100m freestyle (C) Final 100m breaststroke (A) Final 100m breaststroke (C) Semi-final 100m freestyle (A) Semi-final 50m butterfly (C) Semi-final 200m backstroke (A) Semi-final 800m freestyle (C) Final 4×100m mixed team Mixed (final).