Yiannis Persakis

Bronze medal, April 6, 1896, Yiannis Persakis, triple jump. Athens 1896

At that time there was no special rule for the way the athletes had to perform their jumps, the main thing was that they took three steps. The final in the triple jump has gone down in history for a special reason: It is the first in the modern Olympic Games, it is the event that produced the first winners in the new stages of the institution. So it happened on the first day of the Games in Athens, when the Greek Yiannis Persakis opened the first page of a brilliant story. The competition began at two of the clock in the afternoon, and from the beginning the American James Brendan Connolly showed his superiority. Stable and with jumps over 13.00, he easily set himself apart from the others. Of course he took the victory with a performance of 13.71, while Frenchman Alexandre Tufferi was one meter behind him with 12.70, but an athlete of the Panhellenicos AC. Yiannis Persakis had a better performance than at the Panhellenic Games with 12.44 before the start of the Olympics, but he improved in the final. He finished 3rd with a jump of 12.52 and became the first Greek in history to place in the top three. Connolly was the first athlete to win an Olympic Games final, and of course the first representative of the American continent, while Tufferi was the first European to win an Olympic medal. The final: Connolly (USA) 13.71 Tufferi (France) 12.70 I. Persakis (Greece) 12.52 Szokolyi (Hungary) 12.30 Zoumis (Greece) 12.20