The Sea Within Them

Have you seen the waters off Halikounas beach on Corfu? If you have, you’ll understand why the blue vastness of the sea has always been Spyros Gianniotis’ realm. Stroke by stroke, Gianniotis has carved his name in stone in the annals of Greek swimming. In fact, his name is now synonymous with endurance, strategy and unwavering determination. He was four when he first found himself in Corfu’s Municipal Swimming Pool (which has now been renamed in his honor), and 36 when he retired—at the very top of his game with an unforgettable silver medal in the Olympics.

He loved Olympiacos from his earliest years. He donned the red and white cap for the first time in 1998, and remained part of the Piraeus team for 18 consecutive seasons, playing a decisive role in maintaining their total dominance in the National Championships. As he confessed on the Club’s centenary, “We’ve had some difficult and some glorious moments, but above all else, we’ve made history”.

Although he loved the water and its related activities, it was his mother Brenda Sweeney, a champion swimmer from the UK, who got him involved with the sport on a more systematic basis.

Two generations, one journey. From the first laps in the pool to eternal Olympic glory

Endurance and grit

He started out swimming sprints, but had already moved onto long distances before his teenage years, having been encouraged to do so by his coaches at the time, Kostas Tombrou and Antonis Alamanos. At 16, it was clear his outsize talent had outgrown his island home, and with the wholehearted support of his family, he moved to Thessaloniki by himself to work with Vangelis Voultsos, the coach who would mold him both physically and mentally.

It wouldn’t be long before he got to swim in the Olympics—the first of his five participations. At both Sydney 2000 and Athens 2004, Gianniotis competed in the pool. In Athens, he was applauded for making it into two finals—out of a total of four featuring Greek athletes—in the 400-meter and 1,500-meter freestyle events. He finished 7th in the 400 and 5th in the 1,500.

From 2007 on, he would leave the “protected environment” of the pool behind and venture out into open water. These are extremely demanding events, of course, as the conditions in each race depend on the natural environment in which they are held, there is a lot of—sometimes painful—physical contact between the competitors, and the distance the swimmers are required to cover necessitate a tailor-made strategy for each race.

The disappointment of 2012

The first big wins came quickly, while he also received his baptism of fire at the Beijing Olympics (10th). Between 2011 and 2013, he is the best in the world over 10 km. Over those three years, he wins 7 gold and 4 silver medals in World Championships and World Cups. However, the absolute defining moment of his career would come in 2012, at the London Olympics, when he finished 4th and off the podium. He seriously considers retiring, as he will be 36 by the next Olympics.

Fortunately for Greece, but above all for Gianniotis himself, he reconsidered and went on to participate in the greatest open water race in Olympic history. On that morning of August 16th, an entire country watched Gianniotis inch closer and closer to the medal, stroke by stroke. In a thrilling finish, he crosses the imaginary finish line first and is announced the winner. But after a 15-minute examination of the photo finish, it turns out that while Weertman crossed the line second, he touched the horizontal touch pad first. And that touch verified that an athlete had finished.

Gianniotis had been destined to win that Olympic medal since he dived into the swimming pool on Corfu that first time. If anyone was going to bring home the first Olympic medal in the history of Greek swimming, it was always going to be him. At the same time, Gianniotis remains the oldest swimmer to have ever stood on an Olympic podium.

Wearing the colors of Greece, he won 23 medals all told (7 gold, 9 silver, 7 bronze) in international competitions. With Olympiacos, he played a starring role in all 18 of the Panhellenic Championships the team won during his 18 seasons at the club. For many years, he held the record for the most victories in the event, until he was recently overtaken by another red-and-white, Apostolos Christou.

For a few seasons, the two men swam in the same pools in the national championships and celebrated victories and titles together with Olympiacos, while they were both also members of the Olympic delegation to Rio in 2016.

Under the watchful eye of Nikos Gemelos, their time together was sufficient for Gianniotis to pass on to Christou the mentality of an Olympic champion who wears the cap of Europe’s top multi-sport club.

Apostolos Christou is one of those athletes who embody Olympiacos’ “laurel-wreathed youth”. If the Club’s emblem ever needed to acquire human form, there would be many who argued that form should be Christou’s.

From birth

Olympiacos from birth, he grew up in Piraeus’ Papastrateion pool, having dedicated himself to swimming from a young age. His inclination was for shorter distances and the backstroke, and his talent was obvious from the start. He became a key member of the Olympiacos swimming team, putting in consistently excellent performances and playing a decisive role in the club’s numerous victories in Greece. His individual dominance in the swimming events at the national championships translated directly into valuable points for Olympiacos, consolidating its position as the nation’s undisputed leader in swimming. He wore the red and white cap with pride, contributing to the club’s legacy of excellence and inspiring countless young swimmers from a very young age.

The support he received from Olympiacos as a teenager, at a time when his talent and fame were starting to make waves beyond Greece, would unquestionably prove decisive in his subsequent development. In 2013 and 2014, he dominated the medals in international competitions in his favored backstroke. Then, 2016 brought with it his first Olympic participation, but also the first warning shot when he took bronze in the 100-meter backstroke at the European Championships in London. He would repeat his success in 2018 in Glasgow. He would continue to build up his confidence competing with small or no spectators, due to the restrictions introduced in the light of the Covid19 pandemic. He had now established himself among the backstroke elite: gold in the 50-meter and silver in the 100-meter backstroke at the European Championships in Rome in 2022; two years later in Belgrade, he would convert both into gold.

At Olympiacos

2024 would turn out to be his year. In Doha, he won his first medal at the World Championships, taking the bronze in the 100-meter backstroke. But the climax would come a few months later, on European soil this time, in the La Défense Arena in Paris. On August 1, Christou steps onto the starting block in lane two. Having already come fourth in the 100-meter backstroke, he prepares to race for his first Olympic medal, this time in the 200-meter backstroke. The odds aren’t on his side, because his times in the heats have been mediocre. And yet Christou is in the lead for three quarters of the race, and it will take a courageous final 50 from the Hungarian Hubert Kós to knock him back into second place.

“The medal is a gift for the 100 years of Olympiacos,” Christou would later declare.

It was his first Olympic medal, Greece’s first in the pool in the history of the Olympic Games, and only the second aquatic medal after Gianniotis’ open water silver in 2016. Most importantly, it was an answer to the question that Olympiacos fans around the world had been pondering for a century: “How much do you love Olympiacos?”. That much!