At the same time that Greek fans (and non-athletes) were celebrating by his side and sharing the light that emanates from his smile, Emmanuel Karalis was eating his clothes. The ephemeral victory lap of people who appear only for the legend but disappear in the difficult the young champion cannot stand him. And so he decided to put aside the laudatory snaps from the Glasgow podium for a while to resurface a post of 2022, immediately after his return from the European Championships in Munich. “In success there are many, in failure only two” reads the caption of the snapshot where Emmanuel is pictured smiling with the unique company of his parents at the airport. The message was clear: “You out there only remember me when I win. But I need you when I lose.”
2022 was the most difficult year for the young sprinter. The indoor season ended with a serious injury, while the open one brought only nils: 22nd at the World Championships in Eugene, 13th at the Europeans. Those who lived close to him at that time speak of acute panic attacks, which sowed concern among his own people. On August 19, Emmanuel himself decided to open the window of his room. “After an injury in the indoor season there was a series of events that lowered my morale. For the first time this year I had a panic attack which, as a result, plunged me into anxiety and depression for quite some time,” he publicly confessed on Twitter.
He continued: “I pushed myself very hard to reverse this situation, but it made things worse and, unfortunately, the ‘bad’ Manolo took over. I pushed myself to continue the season and try to be positive and enjoy every event, as I do, but I always felt lost and unmotivated. I am tired and feel completely exhausted. I’m stopping the season here. I need to rest and focus on my mental health for a while. I need to step back and take a break to get my smile back.” His 23rd birthday was steeped in gloom.
Duplantis and… Giannis
When he took his first steps, still in the shadow of Constantinos Filippidis, Karalis was considered a child prodigy. His throw of 5.54m in March 2017 in Jablonec, Czech Republic, in the first international meet of his career, coached by Vassilis Megaloikonomou at the time, turned the spotlight on him after setting a junior world record. The athlete who was pinned down was a boy from Sweden the same age as Karalis, twenty days younger in reality, an immigrant to America. His name was Armando Duplantis. “We have grown up together with Monto” was what Karalis would remember many years later about the absolute ruler of the competition. Duplantis is not losing to anyone anymore and is over 6 meters in the scarpinis and bluejeans that the reason says, but Karalis shared the world podium with him last Sunday in Glasgow.
He almost beat him and took the silver medal instead of the bronze.
Back in Athens, where Karalis lived and trained almost unknown among strangers, a black boy with an African mother in the footsteps of the Antetokounmpo brothers (since Giannis is five years his senior), was preying on the monster of racism. School was a traumatic experience for Emmanuel and his twin sister Angeliki: “A group of children had marked us. They pushed us, beat us, threatened us and our family, told us to go back to our country. What could we do? We sat on a bench and cried. This went on for a very long time, from when I was about 14-15, until my sister told my mother. The matter reached the principal of the school and fortunately the attacks stopped. Now I get strange looks and half-assed looks on the street from strangers. But my family raised me to keep only love. The crap I hear goes in one ear and out the other. I have happened, I confess, to turn off the computer and lower the switches. But there are also users who stand by my side. For every bad comment, 20-30 people gather and support me. Minds are slowly opening. Racism is the only element of Greekness that I would like to change.” Emmanuel first laid down in the psychologist’s bed at the age of 14 and continues to this day. “The only solution is to speak and break the silence,” he says. “Otherwise, this thing can sink you.”
Karalis overcame his fear and spoke. A schoolboy, he needed a firm helping hand from his sister (“she’s stronger than me”), but in athletics he was helpless against demons, just like on race days. In February 2017 and again in May 2019 the little one said “so far it’s not enough”. In two successive memorandums to SEGAS through a lawyer, Emmanuel denounced his coach Filippidis and veteran boxer Dimitris Kyteas for racist behavior in the OAKA training room. Three other athletes stood by Karalis (Papachristou, Gusin, Nerantzis) who confirmed his words. Kyteas was punished by SEGAS and the Fan Identity Committee with a ban on entering the playing fields for one year with suspension. Many reports called the penalty a “caress”, but Karalis had won the bet. “I appreciate and respect him” said the… defendant. Since then, no one has dared to speak insultingly about the Afro-Hellenic champion.
Karalis placed fifth at the 2018 World Indoor Championships in Birmingham (5.80m), fourth at the European Indoor Championships the following year in Glasgow (5.65m), fourth at the 2021 Olympics in Tokyo (5.80 m), the second in the European Indoor Athletics last year in Istanbul (5.80 m), the third this year in Glasgow against the behemoths of the event (5.85 m). He is not a top athlete, he has not yet approached the 6m barrier, his individual record is… only 5.86m (from the Panhellenic Indoor Championships in 2023), but he knows how to give his best in the big games , where his failures are minimal.
“When I wear the coat of arms, I experience something and become a different person,” he says today. “I prefer to be an athlete of the races than of the records” he said in the interview he gave at the beginning of 2019 to Documento: “The athlete must also be a bit of a dog. In the struggle I become a bulldog too. People may see me smiling, but my blood is boiling. It doesn’t suit me to go down like a robot. I achieve my best performances when I compete happy and relaxed.”
Sirens from USA and Qatar
When Karalis looked Duplantis in the eyes, he heard the sirens of American colleges singing sweetly at his door. At the same time, he saw kelebia approaching him. “We will give you a lot of money, as long as you change your nationality,” an impresario from Qatar promised him. Although he grew up poor, Emmanuel turned down both Arab petrodollars and NCAA scholarships. “At American universities there aren’t many coaches specializing in pole vaulting,” mom Sarah explained. Emmanuel was still a baby. “I am the happiest teenager in the world” he declared in 2018 in Birmingham, with the papyrus of fifth place in his pocket. “But my next goal is not to win medals, but to grow a beard,” he joked at the same time in an interview with the website Vice. “I wait and wait and wait, but they won’t come out!”
After the Glasgow mini-epic, Manolo thanked his mother, whom he considers a pillar of the family, “a rock at our side”, as befits the deeply matriarchal pattern of Africa. The Ugandan refugee Sara Mulunga met decathlete Haris Karalis in Pyrgos, married him after a trip to New York and gave us from her guts one of the brightest smiles this place has ever seen. At the previous Olympic Games in Tokyo, Emmanuel was coached not by his father but by Panagiotis Symeonidis, head of a team of about ten supporters. “I dedicate my fight to my parents, who ate with plastic cutlery and yet managed to send their son to the Olympics” he said, holding the card that read in capitals: “THANK YOU MOM AND DAD”.
“During the match, all the difficulties we experienced growing up were going through my mind,” he explained in an interview with Sport24. “I was thinking about where I started and where I’ve come. I don’t hide that my family had a financial problem. Fortunately, it goes now, it’s over.” In the years of poverty, even gasoline for the routes from Peania to OAKA was an unaffordable expense. The successes of the little one brought sponsors, premiums, financial comfort. After all, the father is now the son’s coach.
The repressed of the five days
Sometimes a man and sometimes a child, at the age of 24 Emmanuel Karalis – named after his grandfather’s Orthodox priest in Africa – looks back on his school years, puts aside the problems that prematurely hardened his skin and remembers the incident that cost more than the beard that didn’t grow: “The five days, man. My absence from the five days has killed me. All my friends were preparing for the trip, they also went to Patras for the carnival, and I was preparing for the World Championship to appear 110% ready…”.
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