Honour where honour is due: News of the Olympic Champion Kostis Tsiklitiras from Pylos

Authors

  • Wolfgang Decker Deutsche Sporthochschule Köln, Institut für Sportgeschichte

Keywords:

Kostis Tsiklitiras, Olympic victor, modern victor statue, Pylos, Cultural Club of Pylos NAVARINO

Abstract

Kostis Tsiklitiras, Olympic champion in the standing long jump in 1912, died in 1913 at the young age of 25 years old. He was one of the rare Olympic victors in the sport of track and field of modern Greece. His dilapidated childhood home at Pylos/Messenia (Greece) was renovated after a long struggle of the Cultural Club of Pylos NAVARINO; the club fought for many years against the later owner, the National Bank of Greece. Today, visitors can witness the erected bronze victor statue in the garden of this residency, as with the custom for Olympic victors in antiquity. The history of the Tsiklitiras family is known up until his great-grandfather, who emigrated to the United States of America and returned in 1821 to participate in the Greek war of independence.

Author Biography

Wolfgang Decker, Deutsche Sporthochschule Köln, Institut für Sportgeschichte

Wolfgang Decker, born 1941 in Trier (Germany), studied physical education at the German Sports University Cologne and Egyptology and classical philology at the universities of Cologne and Bonn. He was a professor of sport history at the German Sports University Cologne from 1976 until 2006. His main fields of research include sport in Ancient Egypt and Ancient Greece and the modern Olympics prior to Coubertin. In 1988, Prof. Decker co-founded and assumed co-editor of NIKEPHOROS (Journal of sport and culture in antiquity). He was a guest professor at the universities of Teheran (Iran), Graz (Austria), Athens (Greece) and frequently at the International Olympic Academy, Olympia (Greece). Prof. Decker was also awarded with an Honorary doctorate of the Aristotelian University Thessaloniki (Greece).

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Published

2018-11-01

Issue

Vol. 2 (2018)

Section

Articles