Olympic Gold and Silver Medalist winning windsurfer Nikos Kaklamanakis has charged that former defense minister Akis Tsochatzopoulos, now jailed on charges of a massive money laundering and bribery scheme, ordered him cut from Greece’s 1988 team going to Seoul and replaced him with the son of a friend of the former minister.
Kaklamanakis, then 19, had qualified for the team but the Greek Olympic Federation sent another athlete in his place, someone he said he had beaten in 13 of 14 races and was chosen only because of political intervention that may have cost Greece a chance at a medal. Kaklamanakis won gold at the 1996 games in Atlanta, and silver at the 2004 games in Athens.
In an interview with the newspaper Proto Thema, he needed body guards to protect him while he worked out because he feared for his life. “In 1988 I was a 19-year-old boy and a politician crushed me like an ant,” he said. “As I learned later, the former technical advisor of the Greek Windsurfing Federation said that my withdrawal was not his decision but a Tsochatzopoulos order. He (minister) was a friend with the other athlete’s father.”
The athlete who replaced Kaklamanakis finished dead last in a field of 36 windsurfers. In 2000, just before the Olympics in Sydney, where he was the flag bearer for Greece, he said he was threatened again for speaking out against corruption in Greek athletics.
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