Sofia Bekatorou

Olympic Medals

1G 1B

Sailing

Gold Medal, August 21, 2004, Sofia Bekatorou – Aimilia Tsoulfa, Cat. 470. Athens 2004

The two girls were the big favorites to win the 470 two person dinghy women event and made sure that the predictions were confirmed early – very early in fact. But Sofia Bekatorou’s back injury and her recovery seemed to be a nightmare. No one could say with certainty that the risk of recurrence had completely disappeared. With insufficient preparation, but with enormous experience and confidence, the Greek boat took the gold medal, and the four-time world champions proved once again their great value. In fact, they did not need to go until the last race to find out their final position. They took the gold medal already on the eve of the closing of the 470 class. The final ranking Greece (Bekatorou – Tsoulfa) 38 points Spain (Dufrense – Azon) 62 Sweden (Torgersson – Zatchisson) 63 Slovenia (Dekleva – Maucec) 65 USA (McDowell – Kinsolving ) 84 Denmark (Ward- Ward) 89 Great Britain (Bassadone – Hopson) 91 Russia (Ilienko – Gaponovich) 94.

Bronze medal, August 17, 2008, Sofia Bekatorou – Sofia Papadopoulou – Virginia Kravarioti, Cat. Yngling. Beijing 2008

After the departure of Aimilia Tsoulfa, Sofia Bekatorou decided to start in Yngling with Sofia Papadopoulou and Virginia Kravarioti. Very quickly the Greek champions found the chemistry of their collaboration and despite predictions to the contrary, they won the bronze medal with absolute fairness. A distinction that could be claimed by other teams until the last race, the 7th race. The girls kept the third place and the bronze medal with great tenacity and will.

Final Ranking: Great Britain (Ayton, Webb, Wilson) 24 points Netherlands (Mulder, Bess, Witteveen) 31 Greece (Bekatorou, Papadopoulou, Kravarioti) 48 Germany (Schuemann, Hoepfner, Bleck) 56 France (Le Heley, Lepesant, Gerecht) 56 Russia (Skudina, Krutskikh, Ivanova) 56 USA (Barkow, Howie, Capozzi) 61 China (Song, Yu, Li) 63

They said..

“The results speak for themselves. We were the best in these games. The gold medal is not just the result of four years of hard work. Until Sydney it was four more years, but there we did not manage to achieve the award. After Sofia’s injury, we worked hard for three months, gained more technical knowledge, and all that made us even more united”

August 21 2004

“Three years ago, no one knew us. But hard work and teamwork and our preparation for those games made the difference and contributed most to our success. Belief helped us reach these heights. We thank everyone who supported us and believed in us.”

August 17 2008