On billboards across Athens, weightlifter Pyrros Dimas is featured in sportswear ads under the words, “Impossible is lifting your country.”
Winning a record-breaking fourth gold medal proved impossible for Dimas, 32. But he nevertheless boosted sagging Greek spirits by taking a bronze medal Saturday in what certainly was the last competition of his remarkable career.
Greek spirits were in sore need of a lift after Kostas Kenteris withdrew from the Games last week. The defending 200-meter sprint champion and teammate Katerina Thanou failed to show up for doping control the day before the Aug. 13 Opening Ceremony.
Anxieties heightened further when it was announced Friday that Dimas’ teammate, Leonidas Sampanis, had failed a drug test after earning a bronze medal.
Though Sampanis swore to God and on his children that he had not used banned substances, he was stripped of his medal Sunday.
Dimas is Greece’s biggest Olympic hero since a shepherd named Spiros Louis won the marathon at the first modern Games in Athens in 1896. A new tram service that runs along the seacoast near Athens is called the Pyrros Dimas line.
Born Oct. 13, 1971, to an ethnic Greek family in the southern Albanian town of Himare, Dimas competed for Albania as “Pirro Dhima” until 1990. In Cold War-era Albania, the ethnic Greek minority was discouraged from openly speaking Greek or practicing their Orthodox Christian faith. The Iron Curtain restricted travel across the rugged border between Greece and communist Albania.
With communism’s grip loosening, Dimas and brother Odyssea illegally crossed the frontier in 1991, a path traveled in those days by many Greeks who had been trapped in Albania.
The Dimas brothers were baptized in the Greek Orthodox Church weeks before the 1992 Summer Games in Barcelona, Spain.
Dimas spoke little Greek when first victory in Barcelona gave the country its first gold medal in weightlifting in nearly 90 years. He instantly became wildly popular when he punctuated his winning lift by crying, “For Greece, damn it!”
He won his second gold in Atlanta four years later, setting a world record of 392.5 kilos in his weight class. As if to underscore his dominance, he looked both ways and smiled broadly while holding up the bar in each of his six successful attempts.
Dimas then burnished his reputation as a Greek patriot when he criticized the International Olympic Committee’s rejection of Athens as host of that year’s “Golden Games.”
“I don’t like Atlanta at all,” he said. “If the Games would have been held in Athens, I would have lifted 400 kilos.”
Pyrros mania almost cost Dimas a third gold medal in Sydney four years ago. Overzealous Greek-Australian fans broke his concentration with their shouts of support until Dimas admonished them from the stage, “Hey, let me do this already.”
Moments later a cell phone rang, again shattering his focus and preventing Dimas from completing his attempt before time expired. With one attempt left, he pouted backstage.
Coach Christos Iakovou reportedly slapped Dimas. According to the Greek newspaper Eleftherotypia, Iakovou yelled: “This is no way for an athlete of your caliber to behave. Is this how you will win gold? You’re crying like a little girl.”
Iakovou later said he “had never struck another person that hard.”
The coach’s tough love prompted Dimas to tie his rivals on the final attempt. For the second time in three Olympics, he won gold by tiebreaker because he weighed 16 grams less than his eternal bridesmaid, Mark Huster of Germany.
In his 2004 defeat, though, Dimas’ stature has grown in the eyes of the adoring Greek public.
In his final attempt at the clean-and-jerk Saturday, Dimas put 207.5 kilos on the bar, hoisting the load over his head and nearly extending his arms fully before dropping it and falling back. A successful lift would have earned him another gold.
Ever the showman, Dimas kicked off his shoes when he got back on his feet. He tossed kisses to the roaring home crowd with both hands as he walked off, leaving the shoes on the stage to indicate his retirement.
A standing ovation and chants of “Hellas,” the Greek word for the country, delayed the presentation of the silver and gold medals for nearly five minutes.
Most in the capacity crowd of more than 5,000 broke into the Greek national anthem as soon as the Georgian anthem in honor of gold medalist George Asanidze ended.
“They knew what I’ve been through to get here,” Dimas said. “I’ve suffered with surgeries and other problems in the last few days.”
If this summer’s Olympics were not in his hometown, Dimas certainly would have retired long ago.
He had hardly competed since Sydney and tried to set a record Saturday with his right wrist wrapped in white tape because of an injury suffered in training last week.
By persisting against the odds and his body’s wishes, Dimas gave his countrymen the best reason yet to wave the blue-and-white Greek flag.
For as much as they want visitors to admire their modern transportation system and stadiums, what Greeks want most is for people watching these Olympics around the world to see how fervently they support their own relatively little but highly distinct homeland.
Dimas held the flagpole as if it were no heavier than a toothpick when he led the host nation’s team into stadium at the Opening Ceremony.
“This was my going-away party,” Dimas said. “I am very proud to be Greek.”
