Galery

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The Greek swimmer Yiannis Drimonakos returns from the European swimming championship in Budapest with a bronze medal for 200 m butterfly. The 26 years old swimmer enters again into the depths of the European championships after two years of absence from the sports scene. He took third place in Budapest with a time of 1:57:10, which is the best result for the season. The last medal Drimonakos won is from the European championship in Budapest in 2006. Then he returned home with silver.

The Greek strongly hoped to win a medal during this year's European championship. Although he successfully realized his dream, Drimonakos is not particularly pleased with the outcome: “I can not say I'm satisfied, because my time is not very good. Surely, I can swim better. I do not think I could win the gold medal, but the mistakes I made got me closer to 1.57. This, of course, is due to the fact that I have not participated in any competitions for two years. And experience plays a large role in the European championship... What I would like to say is that I came here to start again to participate in European championships. The most important thing in life is not to win but to enjoy what you do. And I feel so recently.”

The coach Dimitris Damasiotis is happy of the achievement of his trainee: “This has justified the expectations of Yannis. I feel happy to know this man. We knew the psychological side of things which we had to go through for the championship, but there was a very strong hidden desire for a medal ...”

The Pole Paul Kozheniovski won the European gold in Budapest with a time of 1:55:00 and the Russian Nikolay Skvortsof won the silver with 1:56:13.

Greece had two participants in the championship finals. Stefanos Dimitriadis took eighth place in 200 meters butterfly with a score of 1.59.70.

The lady swimmer Lisistrati Halkidi ranked 15^th in the 200 m semi-finals, combined style individually. The 18 years old competitor reached 2:17:36, which is very close to her best time performance this year of 2:17:15.

Aris Grigoriadis remained outside the first three in the 100 m back finals. The 25 years old swimmer ranked fifth with a time of 54.27 as opposed to his performance in the European championship in Aydhofen in 2008 when he won a silver medal in the discipline.