Konstantinos Lampridis Wins Snatch Gold and Total Bronze in Durres

By Taki Panos

Three attempts, three good lifts, one gold medal. That is how Konstantinos Lampridis opened his Tuesday in Durres. The Greek won the snatch in the men's under-23 65 kg class at the European Junior and U23 Weightlifting Championships in Albania with 124 kg, then added bronze in the total with 272 kg, as ERT Sports reported. Turkey's Mustafa Elis took the title on 277 kg and Ukraine's Andrii Revko took silver on 273. Two medals in a single session is a good evening's work in any sport.

If Durres sounds familiar to regular readers, it should. A day earlier at the same championships, Maria Stratoudaki swept three golds in the women's 53 kg class, a run we covered in our Stratoudaki story. Lampridis became the next Greek name on the podium, and Documento framed it exactly that way, noting that he climbed the podium twice right after Stratoudaki's three golds. Back-to-back nights like these are how young lifters get noticed at home.

Weightlifting rewards patience. Each lifter gets three attempts in the snatch, where the bar goes from the floor to overhead in one motion, and three in the clean and jerk, where it stops at the shoulders before going up. The best of each is added together for the total, and medals are awarded for all three. Lampridis opened his snatch at 121 kg, moved to 123 and finished with 124, per Ta Nea. Three attempts, three good lifts, and the best snatch of anyone in the session.

The European federation's own report shows how tight that lift was at the top. According to the EWF, Lampridis won the snatch ahead of Elis and Revko, with Elis on 123 kg and Revko on 121. One kilo separated first and second. In a sport where lifters pick their attempts carefully and coaches play a quiet chess match with the scoreboard, a single kilo is a real margin, and Lampridis was the one who owned it.

The clean and jerk was where the evening got harder. Lampridis made 148 kg, then missed at 151 and again at 153, as ERT Sports noted, which left him fifth on that lift. Elis made 154 kg for the clean and jerk gold and Revko made 152 for silver, per the EWF. That six-kilo gap to the winner was the whole story of the total. Big snatch, quieter jerk, and a podium that could easily have been a different color.

Add it up and you get 272 kg, one kilo behind Revko's 273 and five behind Elis's 277. Sportaran's day two results list the same top three: Elis with 123 plus 154, Revko with 121 plus 152, Lampridis with 124 plus 148. One kilo from silver is the kind of number a lifter replays on the bus home. It is also the kind of number that says he belongs in this group, not on the edge of it.

It was a day of fine margins in Durres. The EWF described the first two sessions of day two as each being decided by one kilogram in the total. Turkey's Burak Aykun won the men's junior 65 kg with 281 kg to Moldova's Ion Badanev on 280, and Bulgaria's Deniz Denev took the men's U23 60 kg title with 263 kg to Georgia's Giga Odikadze on 262, figures that match Sportaran's results. Lampridis's session followed the same pattern, just one step further down the podium.

There is a nice story inside the numbers if you go back twelve months. At the same championships in Durres in October 2025, competing as a junior at 65 kg, Lampridis won clean and jerk silver with 155 kg after making 150 and 153 first, according to the Hellenic Weightlifting Federation. The snatch was the problem that night. He made 120 kg, missed 123 and 125, finished fifth on the lift and ended fourth in the total on 275 kg, one place off the podium, as Documento reported at the time.

So the script flipped. A year ago the jerk carried him and the snatch held him back. This time the snatch won him gold, four kilos heavier than his best from last year, while the jerk came in seven kilos lighter than that 155. Swings like that are common for a young lifter stepping up into a new age group, and they give his coaches a very clear list of homework. Find the old jerk, keep the new snatch, and the total takes care of itself.

Lampridis comes from Aridaia in Pella, in northern Greece, per both the federation and Documento, a long way from the big sports budgets of Athens and Piraeus. After Durres, the Hellenic Weightlifting Federation congratulated him and his coaches and wished him even bigger successes ahead, as Ta Nea and ERT Sports both reported. It is a reminder that a lot of Greek sport is built in smaller towns and modest gyms, by coaches whose names rarely make the papers.

Weightlifting does not get much airtime in Greece outside an Olympic summer, and that is a shame. The country has a proud history on the platform, and results like these are how the next generation gets built: one European medal, then another, then a senior call-up. For fans in Greece, Greeks following from abroad and anyone new to the sport, these are the names worth learning early, before the big stages arrive.

My take: the total bronze will be the headline, but the snatch gold is the part I would underline. Three good lifts under pressure, finishing heavier than everyone else in the session, is a skill, not luck. The misses at 151 and 153 hurt, and a make at 151 alone would have been enough for silver. They are also fixable. Pair this snatch with last year's 155 kg jerk and the math says 279, which would have won the session outright.

The championships continue in Durres, and Lampridis and Stratoudaki have already brought home five medals between them. For more results like this one, keep an eye on our Greek Sports section. One kilo short of silver, one kilo clear in the snatch. Not a bad Tuesday.

Sources: ERT Sports, EWF, Ta Nea, Documento, Sportaran, Hellenic Weightlifting Federation.

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