Petrounias Wins World Silver on Rings in Rotterdam for His Fifth World Medal

By Taki Panos

Six days of waiting, one clean landing and a score he clearly did not love. Lefteris Petrounias won silver in the still rings final at the World Artistic Gymnastics Championships in Rotterdam on Saturday, October 24, 2026, scoring 14.333 behind China's Lan Xingyu, as Sport24 and ERT Sports reported. Armenia's Artur Avetisyan took bronze with 14.233. It is the fifth world championship medal of his career, and it came from a man who only just squeezed into the final.

If you missed the first act, Petrounias took the eighth and last spot in the final last weekend after a landing error held him to 14.033 in qualifying, and then spent a nervous Sunday watching the rest of the field try to pass him. Athletiko called it a week full of anxiety. For anyone new to the story, he is the 2016 Olympic champion from Rio, and Greek fans have called him the Lord of the Rings for years. Saturday was his eighth world final on the apparatus, as Sport24 and Athletiko both noted.

He was second up, right after Avetisyan, so there was no time to sit and study the competition. His routine carried a 5.700 difficulty score, earned 8.533 for execution and picked up a 0.100 bonus for a stuck landing, per Sport24 and Athletiko. That landing was the whole story. The dismount that hurt him in qualifying was nailed this time, and he moved straight into first place on the provisional standings, Athletiko reported. As he landed, he appeared to shout "That's how it's done" (translated from Greek), a moment both Sport24 and NewsIT picked up from the broadcast.

Then the number came up and the smile froze. Sport24 wrote that the television cameras caught his obvious disappointment at the 14.333, and Athletiko also described his visible displeasure with the judges. You can understand why. It was 0.300 better than his qualifying score, both outlets pointed out, but three gymnasts had scored higher than 14.333 in qualifying, so at that moment it did not look like a guaranteed medal. Nobody knows the math of a rings final better than the gymnasts themselves, and he still had six routines to sit through.

The next few went his way. Japan's Shinnosuke Oka, Turkey's Mehmet Ayberk Kosak and Belgium's Glen Cuyle all finished behind him, Athletiko reported. Cuyle, who had stuck his dismount in qualifying to reach the final, had a rough landing this time and scored only 12.833, per NewsIT and ERT Sports. Kosak had tied Avetisyan on 14.233 in qualifying but could not repeat that mark on the day. With every routine that came up short, the silver looked a little more solid.

Lan Xingyu was the one man who could not be caught. The Chinese gymnast, who also topped qualifying with 14.733, delivered a routine with 6.000 in difficulty and an 8.766 execution score for 14.766, Athletiko reported, and ERT Sports noted that it was his first world title on rings. A difficulty gap of 0.300 is a lot to give away on this apparatus. To close it, Petrounias would have needed an execution score close to perfect, and Lan simply did not leave him that room.

The medal itself was settled by the last two routines. Ilia Zaika, second in qualifying with 14.533, took a step on his landing and scored 14.100, Athletiko and ERT Sports reported, and that was the moment Petrounias was guaranteed a place on the podium, as NewsIT noted in its live coverage. Britain's Courtney Tulloch, third in qualifying on 14.500, went last and scored 13.366, according to ERT Sports, NewsIT and Athletiko, which locked in the silver. Two of the three men who had outscored him in qualifying finished below him when it counted.

Here is where the numbers start to look silly. Petrounias now has three world golds, from Glasgow in 2015, Montreal in 2017 and Doha in 2018, plus silvers from Antwerp in 2023 and now Rotterdam, as Sport24, ERT Sports and Athletiko all listed. Sport24 and NewsIT counted this as his 22nd medal at major championships. That haul includes Olympic gold in Rio, Olympic bronze medals from Tokyo and Paris, and eight European titles, according to NewsIT. He also took bronze at the European Championships in Zagreb in August, per Sport24 and NewsIT.

Age makes all of this more impressive. ERT Sports and NewsIT both put him at 35, and Ilialive pointed out that the final came just days before his 36th birthday. Still rings is brutal on shoulders and elbows, and staying at the top of it for this long is a different kind of achievement from winning one title. He has now stood on the world podium across 11 years, from Glasgow to Rotterdam. For a country the size of Greece, that kind of run at the very top of a global sport does not come around often.

It has been a busy October for Greek athletes abroad, from Konstantinos Lampridis winning snatch gold in Durres to Stefanos Tsitsipas, who fell to Nikoloz Basilashvili in the Almaty semifinals on the same day. Few of those stories land quite like a Petrounias medal, though. Sport24, Athletiko and NewsIT all ran live blogs from the moment the finalists were introduced, and within minutes of the result the Greek sports sites were already counting his medals again.

My take: the complaint about the score is understandable, but the bigger story is the landing. A week ago he was hanging on to eighth place because of one bad dismount. On Saturday he went out second, stuck it, and put the pressure on everyone who came after him. Lan's 6.000 difficulty was out of reach on the day, and there is no shame in that. A world silver at 35, after scraping into the final, is not a consolation prize. It is a reminder that he still belongs in the conversation every time a rings final comes around.

Looking further ahead, Athens will host the European Artistic Gymnastics Championships from June 1 to 4, 2028, as Sport24 and Gazzetta reported, a rare chance for Greek fans to see a major championship at home. Whether he is still competing by then is a question for another day. For now, keep an eye on our Greek Sports section for every Greek result from around the world. Eighth into the final, second in the world. Not a bad week's work.

Sources: Sport24, ERT Sports, Athletiko, NewsIT, Ilialive, Gazzetta.

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