Sole Cypriot medalist sets sail for Rio

Pavlos Kontides tightened the zip of his wetsuit with hands dried and calloused by rope and sea salt. It is part of a ritual that takes the only Cypriot Olympic medal winner 30 minutes as he gets his Laser dinghy ready for the Mediterranean winds. It is part of a ritual the 26-year-old Kontides has become obsessed with as he seeks to upgrade his silver medal from London 2012 to a gold in Rio.

He spends his time between sailing competitions perfecting his technique in the waters off Limassol, his home town on the south coast of Cyprus.

The athlete is in his element leaning his 1.8-metre (six-foot) frame out from the hull of his Laser as it skims across the foam. Kontides began sailing at the age of nine. He likens the discipline needed to master the arts of tacking and reading the wind to riding a bike and playing chess at the same time. “When you are out there, you have freedom, you just switch off from the world and you’re by yourself, against the water and against your opponent,” he said.

FACE ON A STAMP

It was on August 6, 2012 that Kontides reached the summit of his career so far, winning a silver medal in the men’s Laser race near Weymouth on the south coast of England. “I have those pictures and those memories in the back of my head,” he said. “I can see the Cypriot flag waving in the wind, the sunlight... everything was in slow motion,” he added. “It made me feel so special, it was something that is very hard to describe with words.”

Kontides became an overnight celebrity in his nation of 800,000 people, where world-class athletes are rare. Advertising companies fought over his image and Cyprus has even issued a postage stamp bearing his face.

“People can recognise me now, when they see me on the street they sometimes stop me to have a picture with me or an autograph, and that’s something that really motivates me.” With backing from his family and an handful of corporate sponsors, he will head to the Rio Olympics as part of a small team of Cypriot athletes with everything to play for.

If he comes first in his class, Kontides will become the island’s first son to win an Olympic race since antiquity.

Fourth-century historian Eusebius records that in 180 BC, an athlete from Salamis, a Greek city-state in eastern Cyprus, won the Olympic stadion race-a 600-foot (180-metre) naked sprint. “Pavlos actually proved that it’s possible,” said Olga Piperidou Chrysaphy, director general of the Cyprus Olympic Committee. “Although we are a small country it is possible to achieve a medal.”

Kontides’s success in London has already given Cypriot national pride a boost and prompted the government to pump money into sailing. Cypriot subsidies for sport, already meagre, were hit hard by a financial crisis in 2013. But since 2012, the number of people holding sailing licences has jumped by more than 25 percent to 400. Kontides regularly meets local sailors to give advice. — AFP