Nikolaos Gountoulas

Nikolaos Gountoulas
Full name	Nikolaos Gountoulas
nation	Greece
birthday	4th February 1985
place of birth	Kozani ,  Greece
size	185 cm
Weight	81 kg
Career
discipline	Rowing / belt
society	Omilos Filon Thalassis
National squad	since 2001
status	resigned
End of career	2012
Medal table
World championships 1 × 1 × 1 × European championships 4 × 1 × 0 × U23 world championships 1 × 3 × 0 ×
World championships gold 2008 Linz Lightweight two-without bronze 2010 Hamilton Two without a helmsman silver 2011 Bled Foursome without a helmsman  European championships gold 2008 Athens Foursome without a helmsman gold 2009 Brest Two without a helmsman silver 2010 Montemor-o-Velho Foursome without a helmsman gold 2011 Plovdiv Two without a helmsman gold 2012 Varese Foursome without a helmsman  U23 world championships silver 2004 Poznan Lightweight double quad silver 2005 Amsterdam Lightweight foursome without silver 2006 Hazewinkel Lightweight foursome without gold 2007 Glasgow Lightweight foursome without
Last change: September 22, 2015

Nikolaos "Nikos" Gountoulas ( Greek Νικος Γκουντουλας ; born February 4, 1985 in Kozani , Greece ) is a former Greek rower .

Career

In 1999 Nikolaos Gountoulas started rowing with his twin brother Apostolos . During their careers, the brothers rowed mostly together in different boats and achieved the same successes. Gountoulas competed eight times at junior world championships between 2001 and 2007. In the U23 area , he won a silver medal three times (2004 to 2006) and a gold medal once (2007). He started out as a lightweight .

From 2004 the Gountoulas twins were also used in the open age group. At the Rowing World Cup in Eton, they took eighth place in the lightweight four without a helmsman . In 2006 the first use at the World Championships for the open age group followed. In the easy four-without, the Greek quartet placed 15th, in 2007 with a slightly different line-up to 13. For Nikolaos Gountoulas and his brother Apostolos, going in the easy two-without helmsman proved to be the key to success for the 2008 season, because here they could win the gold medal and become world champions at the world championships of the non-Olympic boat classes in Linz. A little later they won the gold medal at the European Championships in Athens in 2008 in the four-without in the open weight class with Georgios Tziallas and Giannis Tsilis .

In the new Olympic cycle, the Gountoulas twins permanently switched to the open weight class. In 2009 they rowed in two-without at the world championships in Poznan to the bronze rank and won the European championship in Brest. For a year they then switched to the difficult four-man without with Stergios Papachristos and Giannis Tsilis, and achieved silver at the European and World Championships in 2010 . With the aim of participating in the Olympics in two-without, Nikolaos and Apostolos Gountoulas went back to the two-man in 2011, were again European champions and took 4th place at the World Championships in Bled. The qualification for the 2012 Summer Olympics was also successful: the Gountoulas twins competed in the Olympic rowing regatta on Dorney Lake in two-without , and finished in ninth place. At the end of their international careers, they started a few weeks after the Olympic Play at the European Championships in Varese, Italy, and won another gold medal in the four-without with Ioannis Christou and Georgios Tziallas.

Gountoulas started for the Omilos Filon Thalassis club in his hometown of Thessaloniki. With a height of 1.85 m, his competition weight as a lightweight was 68 kg, later in the open weight class around 81 kg.

Web links

• Nikolaos Gountoulas at Worldrowing.com ( FISA database )
• Nikolaos Gountoulas in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )