Maria Stratoudaki Wins Three Golds and Sets Greek Records in Durres

By Taki Panos

Eighteen-year-old Maria Stratoudaki went to Durres with a plan and left with nothing left to win. At the European Youth, Junior and U23 Weightlifting Championships in Albania, she took gold in the snatch, gold in the clean and jerk and gold in the total in the women's 53 kg class, and her 190 kg total rewrote the Greek record book, as Lifo reported. Three events, three golds, one very full suitcase.

That 190 kg total was not one record but three. Ta Nea noted it set Greek marks for women, junior women and youth women in the category, and it improved her own previous national total of 188 kg, set in May at the World Junior Championships in Egypt, by two kilos. When a teenager already owns the senior national record, the rest of the field is chasing more than medals.

If you are new to the sport, the format is simple and unforgiving. Every 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 goes to the shoulders first. The best lift in each is added together for the total. Miss all three in either lift and your night is over, no matter how strong you looked in the warm-up room.

Stratoudaki opened the snatch at 80 kg and made it. She then missed at 83, which is the moment when nerves usually start talking. Instead she asked for 85 on her third attempt and locked it out to take the first gold of the night. It was a patient start rather than a flashy one, and in weightlifting patience is underrated. A safe opener and a bold third attempt is a plan that wins a lot of medals.

The gap was already clear after that first lift. Romania's Alexia Diana Sipos, who finished the snatch with 79 kg, was second on the lift, a full six kilos back. In a weight class where medals are often decided by a single kilo, six is a canyon. It also meant Stratoudaki could go into the clean and jerk with a cushion, which is about the most comfortable place a lifter can be.

The clean and jerk told a sharper story. She made 100 kg, missed 103, then skipped past it and went straight to 105, and made that too, equalling her own Greek record and collecting the second gold. Missing a middle attempt and still having the nerve to add two more kilos is the sequence that separates a solid junior session from a night that ends up in the record books. That is not luck. That is a lifter who trusts her training.

The total sealed the sweep. Sipos took silver with 179 kg, and Spain's Malen Monasterio Urbitarte took bronze with 176 kg. Stratoudaki's margin over second place was 11 kilos, the kind of gap that makes a podium look quieter than the work that built it. Somewhere in the arena, I suspect, the other coaches were already doing the math on how long she will be in this age group.

Ta Nea identified Stratoudaki as an athlete of Krateros Chania, coached by Stelios Giordamilakis, so this is a Cretan story as much as a national one. If you have ever spent time on the island, you know Crete does not do anything halfway, and on this evidence its weightlifters are no exception. A small club and a dedicated coach producing a European triple gold medalist is exactly how Greek sport has always worked.

The Durres haul also fits into a very busy 2026. According to Ta Nea, she won two medals at the World Junior Championships in May and set six Greek records around that meet, then added two silver medals at the Mediterranean Games. Across the year's two biggest junior and youth stages so far, she now has five medals. For a lifter still in her teens, that is not a warm-up season. That is a statement of intent.

Weightlifting does not get anything like the airtime of football or basketball in Greece, which is a shame when the results look like this. The country has a proud history on the platform, and young lifters need nights like Durres to be seen, not just recorded in a federation press release. Three golds and a triple national record deserve at least as much attention as a midweek league match.

My take: the most impressive part was not the 190. It was the two missed attempts and what she did right after each one. Plenty of talented juniors can lift heavy when everything goes to plan. Fewer can miss, reset and go heavier with a medal on the line. That habit will matter far more than any single record as she moves up the age groups and the competition gets older and stronger.

For now the numbers say enough on their own: 85 in the snatch, 105 in the clean and jerk, 190 in the total, three golds on the same day. For more stories like this one, keep an eye on our Greek Sports section. I have a feeling Stratoudaki will give it plenty to work with.

Sources: Lifo, Ta Nea.

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