Sport in Greece

Greek athletes have won a total 169 medals for Greece in 17 different Olympic sports at the Summer Olympic Games, including the Intercalated Games, an achievement which makes Greece one of the top nations globally, in the world's rankings of medals per capital The Archaic Age (c. 750–500 B.C.E.

When Archaic Greeks founded new colonies as independent city-states from the Black Sea to Sicily, they took their games with them, and soon they returned to watch or compete at Olympia and other sites.

Like modern expansion franchises, new city-states abroad established local games to display their ethnic legitimacy, resources, and status, and they competed for prestige as homes of victors, festivals, and patrons of the sport.

Sophisticated and broad, Hornblower and Morgan’s volume uses Pindar and other sources to show that athletic prestige was sought by individuals, families, and communities all over the Greek Mediterranean.

The work also covers Western colonial elites, the tyrants of Sicily, and Greek sport in Hellenistic Egypt and the Roman Empire.

24 Applying New Historicism to Pindar, Nicholson examines the poetics of representation and omission as victors and poets attempted to re-create realities for personal and political ends.

Elites and tyrants displayed their wealth and status by personal athletic competition or indirectly via equestrian events in which hired or slave drivers risked injury but the owners claimed the victories.

Nicholson argues that socioeconomic changes brought challenges by non-elite citizens in Archaic and Classical Greece, moving anxious aristocrats to minimize the contributions of hired charioteers and jockeys, and paid trainers, in their victory commemorations (odes, dedications, and vases).

At the Beijing 2008 Paralympic Games the Greek Team made its most successful appearance ever with 24 medals (5 Gold, 9 Silver and 10 Bronze).

Its national governing body is the Hellenic Football Federation founded in 1926, which is member of FIFA and UEFA.

Both competitions have been dominated by Olympiacos, which is the most successful football club in Greece, followed by Panathinaikos, AEK Athens, and PAOK.

A number of Greek and Greek-born foreign players have gained notability for their achievements such as Nikos Galis, widely regarded as one of the all-time greatest players in international basketball history, Panagiotis Giannakis, Panagiotis Fasoulas, Fanis Christodoulou, Theodoros Papaloukas, Vassilis Spanoulis and Dimitris Diamantidis.

Anastasia Kostaki and Evanthia Maltsi are female Greek professional basketball players that have played in the WNBA.

Ethnikos Piraeus have also won a LEN Trophy, while Olympiacos have made it to the final in the same competition y Dimitrios Diathessopoulos is known as the father of Greek water polo.

Lambros Papakostas a retired Greek high jumper who won two silver medals at the World Indoor Championships in 1995 and 1997, with a personal best, achieved in Athens in 1992, 2.36 metres.

These include Leonidas Pyrgos, Ioannis Georgiadis gold, Tilemachos Karakalos silver and Periklis Pierrakos-Mavromichalis bronze.

Just after, in 1999 the Panhellenic Association of Futsal Clubs (Πανελλήνια Ενωση Ποδοσφαιρικών Σωματείων Σάλας) was established.

Handball is considered among the five major olympic team sports in Greece,[7] but it is less popular than football, basketball, volleyball and water polo.

Due to the mountainous terrain of the country the roads are unpredictable, and thus an ideal place for hill-climb rally; This has led to the foundation of the Hellenic Hill Climb.

Despite the passion of the Greek people for the Formula 1 & Moto GP, there is no race track that meets the requirements for the organization of such an event.

A Hellenic Rugby (Union) Federation established in 2004 set up the mechanism for organizing its national team for international competitions.

Several Greek shooters won many Olympic medals in the first Olympiads (Pantelis Karasevdas, Georgios Orphanidis, Ioannis Frangoudis gold, Panagiotis Pavlidis, Georgios Moraitinis, Iason Sappas, Alexandros Theofilakis, Ioannis Theofilakis, Alexandros Vrasivanopoulos silver, Nicolaos Trikupis, Nikolaos Morakis, Anastasios Metaxas bronze).

A new rise in shooting's popularity has been noted after Anna Korakaki won 1 gold and 1 bronze medal at the 2016 Summer Olympics.

Some of the most notable Greek athletes in the sports of sailing and rowing include world and olympic champions such as: Swimming and Diving are two sports that Greek athletes have achieved significant wins at the Olympic Games, World championships and European Championships.

Greece also has several other players at the international level, like Konstantinos Economidis, Anna Gerasimou and Irini Georgatou.

Since the late 2010's, a new era started for this sport in Greece with the rise of Maria Sakkari and Stefanos Tsitsipas.

[12] Weightlifting has been the most successful individual sport for the Greeks, with the national team regularly winning gold medals at the Olympics and the rest international competitions.

Some of the greatest weightlifters in the history of the sport include Greek legends such as: The forms of wrestling we know today as Greco-Roman and Freestyle found their origins in the lands on the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea.

According to the findings of the research the most popular sports to watch in Greece are in descending order: football, basketball, athletics, motorsports, tennis, volleyball, waterpolo, martial arts.