Lefteris Stefanoudakis, a big name in Greek weightlifting in the 1970s who competed in the Olympics in Munich and Montreal, would love to have been a part of the Athens Games, but is happy to have left the daily hardships of maximum competition.

Training for up to 12 hours a day brought its rewards, including a gold medal at the Mediterranean Championships and several national records. But he also came with the constant threat of injury, always watching his diet and frequent trips to the sauna before an event to make his weight class, that was even before he made the podium. And that’s not all.

“Sport has a lot to do with the power of the mind than the body,” says Lefteris, a stocky figure who looks good for his 54-year-old who still works out “for fun.” “During a lift I was concentrating so hard that you could have put a nail in my arm and I wouldn’t have felt a thing.” And judging from the facial expressions in his faded black and white competition photographs on the walls of his crowded office showing him in various vein poses, I can believe it.

That mental stress is sure to be even greater for this summer’s Greek athletes, given the high expectations of the home crowd, Lefteris says.

“The Greeks will be under great pressure to act. Having said that, everyone seems to be under pressure to succeed these days due to reliance on sponsorship. When we went to the Olympics we had a great sense of accomplishment because we had paid for everything ourselves. themselves: our kit and equipment and travel expenses to the events. “

And although Lefteris returned home without a medal, he was happy to enjoy the simple honor of leading the parade of athletes during the opening ceremony.

“I couldn’t believe it when the Greek team was asked to guide the athletes around the stadium because of our country’s Olympic heritage,” Lefteris said. “It was an emotional moment because Greece is such a small country and we were ahead of countries like the United States and the Soviet Union. It was one of the proudest moments of my career.”

“It was great to be among so many like-minded people from all over the world, especially for me coming from a small town in Crete. Everyone was smiling and hugging and we even exchanged little gifts.

“I remember that in Montreal there was a crowd of supporters outside the stadium waiting to invite us to eat at their homes,” he says. “Unfortunately, such things are unlikely to happen this time due to the terrorist threat. Security will be so tight that I doubt any of the athletes will have a chance to see the real Greece.”

Of course, terrorism is not a modern phenomenon and the murder of 11 Israeli athletes in Munich after an Arab group calling itself Black September stormed the Olympic Village and took them hostage shook the world. He also left his mark on Lefteris.

“I couldn’t believe what I was seeing when I turned on the television,” he says. “The day before we were on a bus with the Israeli weightlifters coming back from training. We were chatting with them about their progress, then they got off the bus and said goodbye. We never saw them again. That was the worst moment of my career. and it forced me to put a lot of things into perspective. “

He may have explained his disappointing 18th place overall. But the tragedy seemed to bring people closer together, forcing them to forget their differences instead of putting up barriers. It also sparked Lefteris’ close friendship with a German security guard, whose father had been among the occupying forces in his hometown of Polemarhi, west of Hania.

“Every day we would go to the athletes’ restaurant, where a security guard would check our badges at the door,” says Lefteris. “One day this guard, seeing that I was Greek, asked where I was from. When I told him I was from Crete, he was interested to know where exactly because his father had served there during WWII. And when I told him he As it turned out, his father used to screen motion pictures at my father’s kafenion.

“So we hugged and became good friends. But that didn’t stop him from sending me back to my room the next day when I forgot my pass. I respected him for that, especially after what had happened with the Israelis.”

A year after disappointing results in Montreal, Lefteris resigned to focus on helping the next generation of Greek weightlifters. Always aware of the support he had received when he was young, he wanted to give back for his sport in the same way.

For him, it had all started at the age of 13 after a soccer game at Hania Stadium, about 100 meters from his Stefan Athlitika sports tent, when he was paralyzed by a room full of muscular weightlifters exercising. on one side. bedroom.

“I said to myself, ‘I can do that’ and after talking inside myself, I tested it by lifting 55 kg,” says Lefteris. “They asked me to join them in Athens the following week at the junior championships, which I did and took the Greek record.”

From then on he was hooked, even making his own weights out of cement. But he thinks the Olympics are likely to be a great missed opportunity to ensure that future stars of Greece never have to skimp on teams like he had to.

“Sport should be promoted in schools because the education it provides is more than physical,” adds Lefteris. “However, I fear that after the Olympic Games the country will not have the money to take advantage of the increased interest. It seems that the Olympic Games these days have more to do with tourism than with sport.”

Therefore, Lefteris has no intention of boosting the Athens tourist economy this summer. He intends to follow the fate of today’s Greek weightlifting heroes, Pyrros Dimas and Kakhi Kakiasvilis, who are competing for their fourth Olympic gold medal, from the giant television screen in his shop. Get closer if it’s happening, if only to make sure that, even in Hania, the Olympic spirit is still very much alive.

1896 AND ALL THAT...

Ten things you did not know about the last Olympic Games in Athens.

1. The First Modern Olympiad opened in Athens on April 6, but only after a wealthy local architect donated a million drachmas to restore the 330 BC Panathenaic Stadium. C. when the Greek government could not finance a new one.

2. The 245 competitors, more than half of them Greek and all men and women were unable to compete, came from only 14 nations. The first Olympic champion for more than 1,500 years was American James Connolly, who won the triple jump.

3. The winners received a SILVER medal and an olive crown, while the runners-up received bronze medals and a laurel crown. Competitors in third place received nothing.

4. Athletes competed as individuals rather than for their country. And some, like Oxford student John Boland, went to Greece as spectators and returned as Olympic tennis champions, despite playing in ordinary leather-soled shoes.

5. German athlete Carl Schumann kept busy. His gymnastic efforts earned him victories in individual horse jumping, as well as team horizontal bar and parallel bar events. But while he missed the medals in the long jump, triple jump, shot put and weightlifting, he took first prize in Greco-Roman wrestling.

6. Greek shepherd Spyridon Louis won the marathon, beating his 16 fellow competitors by more than seven minutes in the shoes given to him by his fellow townspeople. In addition to his medal and olive crown, he also won free meals at an Athens restaurant and free shaves from a patriotic barber until his death in 1940.

7. Briton Launceston Elliott won two medals in weightlifting, coming first in the one-handed lift with a weight of 71 kg and second in the two-handed lift with 111.5 kg.

8. In rope climbing, Greek Nikos Andriakopoulos took first place after being the only person to reach the top of the rope, which was not surprising as competitors could only use their hands and had to leave legs extended.

9. In 1896 there were no concerns about the Olympic Pool, because there were none. The swimmers were thrown into the sea in temperatures of 13 degrees C off the port of Piraeus and had to head for the coast. Hungarian Alfred Hajos, who despite winning the 100m and 1200m freestyle events, later said that during races he was more interested in staying alive than in wanting to win.

10. Eight of the ten competitors in the 100km track cycling event did not complete the required 300 laps after complaining of dizziness.