National Rythmic Gymnastics Team
Bronze medal, September 30, 2000, National Group competition Team. Sydney 2000
The National Group competitiion Team with Karyami, Aidinli, Georgatou, Pollatou, Christodoulou and Pantazi aimed for the gold medal in Sydney. The bar had been set high by the girls themselves, who had great faith in their talent and abilities.
In the qualification everything went smoothly and Greece collected 39,400 points, a high score that made them favorites for the gold medal.
In the finals, however, everything went wrong from the very begining, our hopes for the gold medal were dashed already in the first discipline, the ten clubs, which seemed to be incredibly heavy due to the restlessness of our girls.
The failuress came and our score was fatally low, 19.550 against 19.700 from Belarus and Russia, who gained an advantage.
In the two hoops- three ribbons, the Greek champions unleashed their rich talent and executed a difficult program flawlessly.
They were rewarded with a high score of 19.733, but the opportunity was lost. Russia took the gold medal with 39.500 points and Belarus the silver medal with the same score. The Greek team deservedly took third place and the bronze medal with 39.283 points.
The final ranking : Russia 39,500, Belarus 39.500, Greece 39.283, Germany 38.899, Japan 38.550, Italy 38.483, Bulgaria 38.432, Brazil 38.266
They said..
Hara Karyami : “The bronze medal is a great success, since it was our first participation in the Olympic Games. However, we won’t hide it, all of us girls wanted the gold, the first place but unfortunately our anxiety led us to make some mistakes which we paid dearly for. We trained every day for 12 months, six hours and everything went perfectly in our training. The mistakes came at the worst possible time.”
September 30, 2000
