Second in The World

Sotiris and I took part in a beach volleyball tournament at the end of last May (2008). The tournament took place in a complex called "Mediterranean Κόσμος" which translates to "Mediterranean World" but its common name, the one everyone refers to it as, is simply "The World".

The tournament lasted two days, had 16 teams and was played in a double-elimination setting. On Saturday we won our first game by default and lost the second one. Our performance was quite bad. Sunday was a very different story: The stakes were high as we had to win all games in order to get to the final. And so we did. But the highlight was the final itself...

We played against two very good players, Akritidis and Naziris, both of whom have consistently won medals in Greece's North Cup in the past. One of them however had not trained during the year, due to army obligations. Both Sotiris and I put forward our best selves and probably played the best beach volleyball of our lives against the excellent opponents. The first set was very tight for its entire duration and ended with a slim 2 point difference in their favor although we were leading the score for most of the game. We lost the second set with a higher difference (close to 5 points) which was indeed quite expected both due to the quality of opponents but also because the body was weak, even though the spirit was willing (we had already played 9 sets before that). And just like that, we became second in the world!

Le me elaborate on the pun:
Greek, being a highly inflected language and quite strict with its syntax, would not allow us to play with words like that and mislead the public on our achievement. In Greek, we are forced to say "Δεύτεροι στο Κόσμος" [Deuteroi sto Kosmos] as opposed to "Δέυτεροι στον κόσμο" [Deuteroi ston kosmo] but in this case I choose English and say, with great pride, "Second in the world".

Here we are, Sotiris and I, second in the world...