Antigoni Drisbioti (; born 21 March 1984) is a Greek race walker, who is considered the best Greek walker of all time.

Drisbioti won gold medals in the 20 kilometres walk and 35 km race walk at the 2022 European Athletics Championships, the first golden double for Greece at the event. Drisbioti finished fourth in the 35 km walk at the 2022 World Athletics Championships. She also won the bronze medal in the 35 km race walk at the 2023 World Athletics Championships held in Budapest. In addition, she took bronze in the 20 km walk at the 2013 Mediterranean Games. She represented Greece at both the 2016 Rio and 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Drisbioti is the Greek record holder for the 3000 m walk, 20 km walk and 35 km walk. She won eight national titles.

Antigoni Drisbioti

Career

Drisbioti was born in Karditsa (Greece), but her family soon had to move to the town of Atalanti for better working conditions. She lived there until the age of 8 before returning to Karditsa, where she completed high school.

Antigoni Drisbioti

Her family run a small taverna in the center of the town, where, according to her own statements in a television interview, she has worked for many years alongside her training. She decided to practice walking as a sport as a freshman in high school and made her international debut at the age of 19 at the 2003 European Race Walking Cup held in Cheboksary, Russia. But the same year, Drisbioti gave up her sporting career, started studying Sports Science and only began to train and dedicate herself to the sport again in 2011 aged 27. She is married and lives in Karditsa.

Antigoni Drisbioti

Drisbioti celebrated her first major success at age 29 at the 2013 Mediterranean Games in Mersin, Turkey, where she won the bronze medal in the 20 km race walk with a time of 1:41:53.

She competed at the Summer Olympics for the first time in 2016 in Rio, finishing 15th in the 20 km walk. At the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, held in 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, she placed eighth in the event.

At the 2022 European Athletics Championships in Munich, the 38-year-old won the gold medal in the 35 km walk with a championship record of 2:47:00 after finishing fourth at the World Championships in Eugene, Oregon the previous month in 2:41:58, a national record. With her second gold medal in Munich in the 20 km walk event in a personal best time of 1:29:03, she became the first Greek athlete to win two gold medals at a European Championships.

Statistics

International competitions

National titles

Greek Athletics Championships

20 kilometres race walk (3): 2018, 2020, 2023

35 kilometres race walk (2): 2021, 2022

Greek Indoor Athletics Championships

3000 metres race walk (3): 2020, 2021, 2023

References

External links

Antigoni Drisbioti at All-Athletics

http://sportsfeed.gr/panellinio-kleistou-me-no1-fetos-ston-kosmo/

1984 births

Living people

Athletes from Karditsa

Greek female racewalkers

Athletes (track and field) at the 2016 Summer Olympics

Athletes (track and field) at the 2020 Summer Olympics

Olympic athletes for Greece

Mediterranean Games bronze medalists for Greece

Mediterranean Games medalists in athletics

Athletes (track and field) at the 2013 Mediterranean Games

20th-century Greek women

21st-century Greek women

Greek European Athletics Championships winners

World Athletics Championships medalists