Greece won gold in the 5K Team Pursuit race at the European Swimming Championships in Hungary last Friday. Olympian Spyridon Gianniotis, Antonios Fokaidis and Kalliopi Araouzou comfortably won with a time of 59 minutes and 3 seconds.

In a tight finish for the silver medal, Italy (Simone Ercoli, Simone Ruffini and Rachele Bruni) came second with a time of 59:55.6 seconds, just ahead of Russia (Sergey Bolshakov, Daniil Serebrennikov and Anna Guseva). Germany, Spain, the Czech Republic, France, Switzerland and Ukraine finished from fourth to ninth respectively.

This is a huge upset by the Greeks who have swum in the shadows of Russia, Germany, Italy, Great Britain, the Netherlands and Spain for some time.

Photo of Spyridon Gianniotis.

Copyright © 2010 by Steven Munatones