Petrounia’s plans for Los Angeles, the bows of foreign commentators and the gift for the “third age”
Lefteris Petrounia’s fight in 2021 in Tokyo became a “sandwich” between two scalpels. The Rio gold medalist went into surgery a few months before the Games, narrowly managed to qualify, was crowned world champion, went to Japan in the middle of a pandemic, won a bronze medal behind two Chinese, and immediately made another appointment with the surgeon.
“He is a regular commando,” bowed the national team doctor Odysseas Paxinos. “Anyone else in his position would not go down to the Games at all” we wrote then. Three years and an Olympic medal later, Petrounias feels healthy, optimistic and determined to chart a course for Los Angeles. “I will be out of competition for a year, I will weigh the data together with my coach, we will measure the competition and make a program” he said shortly before boarding the plane back from Paris. “Of course, training will stop only for one month. If you leave gymnastics, it also leaves you.”
He was thinking about the next exercise
When the 34-year-old Petrounias climbed onto the rings to perform the program that would give him the third Olympic medal of his illustrious career, he was thinking about nothing but the next exercise. Not the coracles that were waiting for him in Athens? Not the wife who watched with bated breath? “To tell you the truth, the only thing on my mind besides the race was my vacation. I woke up in the morning and was looking forward to rest and long walks. “This will be the last 60 seconds before the break,” I told my coach. He looked at me laughing and continued the joke: “Sixty seconds and then finally I won’t see you in my eyes again”!
Petrounias was not always so devoted to his art. Mikros only wanted to play football, do parkour (like Miltos Tedoglou) and go out with his friends. “He was a genuine child of the “I drink baffo and play Pro” generation,” someone who knows him well told us in Paris. The young man was away from gymnastics for three straight years (“I saw my friends having a good time and I wanted to live like all the kids my age”) and it took a lot of effort to get back to the gym.
“The coach I had at the time stopped believing in me and that pushed me away,” he explained in an earlier interview. She celebrated her first major distinction in April 2011: a bronze medal at the European Championships in Berlin. In the 13 years that followed, he nailed the Greek flag to all the peaks that existed on his horizon. “It is an honor for us to have watched Lefteris Petrounias so many times in our career,” the Eurosport announcers praised during the qualifiers.
Stability and comfort in the hoops
Pundits say that the indomitable Greek’s complex programs and … otherworldly skills changed the face of the competition. The duration of his stability on the rings and the comfort with which he makes the “cross” resting only on the palms (without using the fingers) left all European competitors far behind. From an athlete of the old continent, Petrounias can now only lose when he himself competes injured and untrained.
The only ones who proved worthy of it are the Chinese. In both Tokyo and Paris, Liu Yang, the new “Lord of the Rings”, was crowned Olympic gold medalist. In 2021 he was joined on the podium by Yu Hao, this year the doubles specialist Jingyuan Zhu. In two consecutive Olympiads, Petrounias won bronze medals behind a Chinese duo.
Was 4th place closer than 2nd in the Paris final? Should Lefteris feel lucky or unlucky? “Neither one nor the other. Or rather both,” he replies. “I won the medal thanks to a perfect landing. It was the first and last time since I traveled to France that I didn’t miss half a step on the way out. On the other hand, I made two mistakes in the vertical that deprived me of two “pennies” in the final score of the execution. If I avoided those as well, I would be tied with Liu and beat him thanks to the lower degree of difficulty of my program.”
A few weeks before the Games the world federation announced rule changes that looked as if Petrounias himself had ordered them. “For me, who is also a bit old, what they decided was a godsend,” he says. “The mandatory number of exercises is now reduced from ten to eight. Therefore, the level of difficulty of a program is reduced by 20%”. Lefteris Petrounias of the gray temples will be 37 years and nine months old in Los Angeles.
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Olympic Games: C’est fini with eight medals for Greece
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