Greece Beat Bulgaria 60-52 to Win AirBadminton European Gold in Olympia

By Taki Panos

There are not many places where a national team can win a European title in the same town where the ancient Olympians once raced, but Greece's AirBadminton team just did it. On Friday in Ancient Olympia, the mixed national team beat Bulgaria 60-52 in the final of the AirBadminton European Championships, as Ilia Enimerosi reported. The Hellenic Olympic Committee described the title as the greatest success in the history of Greek badminton, per Greek City Times. For a sport that rarely makes the back pages, that is quite a sentence.

If AirBadminton is new to you, you are not alone. The Badminton World Federation launched it with HSBC in 2019 as an outdoor version of the game, built for sand, grass and hard courts and played with a wind-resistant shuttle called the AirShuttle, according to the BWF. This was also the first time Greece hosted the European Championships, Sportime noted, so the event landed right beside the sanctuary we wrote about in our guide to the Temple of Zeus in Olympia. Not a bad backdrop for a first.

The team event works like a relay, which is half the fun. Points carry over from one match to the next until one side reaches 60, as Sportime explained, so a single strong pair can flip a whole tie and one bad stretch can sink it. The championship ran from October 14 to 16 under its official name, the BWF AirBadminton European Continental Championships, and it was the third edition of the event, per Proini. The host side came in hungry and, as it turned out, ready.

Greece did not stroll into the final. Before the semifinal, the hosts beat Lithuania, Azerbaijan and Croatia, then came from behind to knock out Germany, the defending European champions, according to Sportime, with Proini also reporting the win over last year's title holders. Beating the champions in front of a home crowd is the kind of result that tells a young program it belongs at this level. It also raised the stakes, because a home crowd now had real reason to dream of a medal.

Thursday evening's semifinal against the Netherlands started badly. The Dutch won the opening women's triples leg 15-12, as Fosonline reported, with Eleni Moutevelidou, Theodora Liakou and Theodora Lambrianidou playing for Greece. Stamatis Tsigirdakis and Ioannis Sarougiannidis answered in the men's doubles with an 18-11 stretch that put Greece ahead 30-26. Then Moutevelidou and Lambrianidou turned the women's doubles into a statement, stretching the lead to 45-31 before the final leg. Fourteen points up with one leg to play is a comfortable place to be.

Georgios Orfeas Tsamousiadis, Sarougiannidis and Tsigirdakis closed it out in the men's triples, outscoring the Dutch 15-8 for a 60-39 win, per Sportime. That result alone guaranteed Greece its first ever European final, a medal and a place at the AirBadminton World Cup, as both Sportime and Greek City Times pointed out. A lot of teams would have treated the final as a bonus after that. This one clearly did not, and the crowd in Ancient Olympia got the ending it came for.

Bulgaria were no pushovers. They reached the final by edging Türkiye 60-59 in the other semifinal, according to olympia.gr, and they had taken bronze at the previous edition, per Sportime. The final started at 12:30 on Friday, with the third place match between the Netherlands and Türkiye played at the same time. Greece won it 60-52, a tighter margin than the semifinal but a clear one, as Ilia Enimerosi and Greek City Times both reported. Hosts on Wednesday, champions by lunchtime on Friday.

Credit where it belongs. The eight-player squad was Ioannis Sarougiannidis, Stamatis Tsigirdakis, Georgios Orfeas Tsamousiadis, Achilleas Tsartsidis, Theodora Lambrianidou, Theodora Liakou, Eleni Moutevelidou and Alkisti Vasilika-Patsarasli, as Proini listed them. The coaches are Giannis Halatsoglou and Kostas Raftopoulos, per olympia.gr. Plenty of those names will be new even to devoted Greek sports fans, and that is exactly why a title like this matters. Nobody gets famous in a sport the public never sees.

The local angle is a big part of the story too. The tournament was organized with the Hellenic Badminton Federation and the Badminton World Federation, with support from the Municipality of Ancient Olympia, according to Proini. Federation president Giannis Kapos attended every one of Greece's matches, olympia.gr reported. Ilia Enimerosi also posted video of the final point and the celebrations, and it is worth a look if you want to hear what a historic win sounds like in a small town in the Peloponnese.

Most Greek sports headlines this week have been about football and basketball, from European nights to derby talk, so a badminton gold is easy to miss. It should not be. The country's sporting story, which we touched on in our facts about the ancient Olympic Games, has never been only about the big team sports. Smaller federations rarely get prime time, which makes a home title like this their best chance to catch the eye of kids, parents and sponsors who never thought about the sport before.

My take: this is a genuine milestone, not a novelty win. AirBadminton is still young, and the European field is smaller than in established sports, so nobody should pretend this equals an Olympic medal. But Greece beat the defending champions, handled the Netherlands with ease and held off a Bulgaria side with podium history, all with the extra weight of playing at home. The World Cup will be a far tougher test. If the federation turns this result into more kids on outdoor courts, the gold will be worth even more.

Next up is the global stage, which Proini says comes in 2027, the first time Greece has qualified for it. Between now and then, the team has a European crown to carry and a sport to grow at home. For more results and takes on Greek athletes in every sport, keep an eye on our Greek Sports section. Gold in Olympia. It has a nice ring to it.

Sources: Ilia Enimerosi, Sportime, Proini, Fosonline, olympia.gr, Greek City Times, BWF.

Image: Flag of Greece, via Wikimedia Commons (public domain).