Second place in 2025, Angelos Mantzouranis hoped that his 2026 NCAA outdoor season would end differently. Then he stepped into the tournament, still dealing with a hamstring tendon injury sustained at the 2025 World Championships. He believed his health was at a 3 out of 10 during warm-ups. None of that stopped him from walking out of Eugene with a title he had no business winning.

The 22-year-old had finally broken his streak and won his first NCAA Outdoor Championship gold medal. Despite that, Mantzouranis was far from happy with his effort and expected more from himself.

“We have at least one more year to earn it,” Mantzouranis said in his post-throw interview. “I feel like 75, 70 is not a mark to win a national championship. But yeah, like next year, I just, I don’t care about the streak. I wanna like throw further, be like, please myself with the throws. So I don’t know how that sounded, but yeah, throw further.”

The 22-year-old stepped into Eugene for the third year as a collegiate athlete, having finished third as a freshman and second as a sophomore. He had hoped to complete the medal tally as a junior and did exactly that, winning the meet with a 75.78m throw. His maiden gold-winning throw was just ahead of Texas Tanner’s 75.45m and Ryan Johnson’s 74.40m hammer throws.

That the Greek thrower did it with a hamstring tendon injury makes things even more impressive. However, as he warmed up (feeling just 3 out of 10), things progressed and “it got better,” allowing him to hit a decent mark.

“So in Tokyo I pulled both of my hamstring tendons,” the Greek thrower revealed. “It’s like here. We treated that like all the way through December. It got better, and then before the season started, this leg came back, like my right leg. It was tough. Like having to deal with that too and trying to figure out the technique with pain, and it was, it was weird.”

It’s probably why he put out an illegal first throw and then hit 68.63 in his second. That put him towards the bottom of the lead pack pile as Anthony Barmes took the lead. However, the lead three of Mantzouranis, Tanner, and Johnson soon picked things up by round 3. That’s when the Greek thrower hit 74.04 while Tanner hit 73.94 and Johnson took the lead with 74.40.

The Minnesota star then re-took his lead with 75.31 in round 4, only to watch Johnson throw first in round 5 to take it back with 75.45. That forced Mantzouranis’ hand, and he put out his best throw of the night to claim the title. It does bring an end to a long-standing drought for the thrower, something he has been chasing since he joined Minnesota.

However, with the injury still playing on his mind, Mantzouranis has a lot to think about going into the remainder of the season.

Angelo Mantzouranis reflects on the rest of his 2026 season

After an impressive 2025 season, Mantzouranis was expected to excel at the Tokyo World Championships. That’s even if the Greek thrower was up against some of the world’s best, including eventual winner Ethan Katzberg and silver medalist Merlin Hummel. However, injury struck at the worst possible time for the 22-year-old, and he dropped out of the tournament in the heats.

It was only the second time all season that Mantzouranis finished off a podium place, having largely finished among the top three prior to that. His injury was severe enough that it forced surgery in December, although a recurrence in January hurt his 2026 season. Even then, the 22-year-old hasn’t finished outside a podium place in his 11 meets thus far.

Going forward, though, the situation might change as the Greek international knows that it’s an off-season for him. That means no world championships or Olympics, with the focus more on staying fit and keeping himself in contention for the future.

“I mean, as I told you, it’s an off year,” the Minnesota thrower explained. “We don’t, like we didn’t set the same goals as last year, of course. But if it comes, it comes. Like, it doesn’t really matter after like, yeah, it doesn’t really matter ’cause like it was, it was a challenging season. I will not be mad if it ended in July with my national championship back home or like mid-August or something like that.”

For now, though, Mantzouranis can finally enjoy the title that had eluded him for years. Considering he arrived in Eugene feeling nowhere near fully healthy, walking away with NCAA gold may say more about his resilience than anything else.