The Shooting star award goes to … Céleste Mordenti (LUX) and Eleftherios Petrounias (GRE)

At the Women’s All-Around final of the 2025 European Championships in Artistic Gymnastics in Leipzig (GER), Kamran Ramazanov, CEO of our global partner SmartScoring, presented the SmartScoring Shooting star award to Luxembourg’s Céleste Mordenti and Greece’s Eleftherios Petrounias.

Started in 2018, this award aims to put a gymnast with an exceptional story in the spotlight, someone who is an inspiration for the future generation of gymnasts and the general public alike.

Moving to Amsterdam in 2022 for her studies in Artificial Intelligence, Céleste Mordenti started to train there too, evolving to a whole other level than she had attained before in Luxembourg, both as a gymnast and as a person. She became the first Luxembourgish medal winner at a World Challenge Cup last year and repeated this recently. By achieving this major success for her and her country, Mordenti is an inspiring gymnast for the next generations in Luxembourg, proving that even a gymnast from a small country can be successful in Gymnastics. Recently Céleste joined the athlete commission of the Luxembourg Olympic Committee and she is always willing to help to defend the rights of the gymnasts in Luxembourg.

Eleftherios Petrounias is well and truly the Greek Lord of the Rings: three-time Olympic medallist, including Rio 2016 Champion, three-time World Champion and a record-holding seven-time European Champion on rings. In an international senior career that spans already almost 15 years, Petrounias faced several setbacks. First, at the 2015 World Championships, Petrounias was fighting for Olympic Qualification while he had just lost his father. The emotions back then were very intense. The gold medal he later won at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games was a victory dedicated to his father. Then, right after the 2018 World Championships a severe pain in the left shoulder needed surgery. A race against the clock ensued, with a specific training schedule in order to regain his strength and return in time for the qualification events before the Tokyo Olympics. With the support of his loyal entourage, his wife Vasiliki Millousi and their two girls, Petrounias continues to shine. Outside of the gym, he’s a community leader and member of the Hellenic Gymnastics Federation as athletes’ representative.