Eleftherios Petrounias and Vlasios Maras talked to Sport24 about the performance of the Greek team in qualifications at the European Championships last week. The team finished 17th in the qualification and Petrounias was the only Greek gymnast to make the event finals. Vlasios Maras, a multiple European champion and medalist on high bar, failed to qualify to the HB event final due to a mistake on his dismount. The translation of the interviews was done by Evita.
Each competition in Glasgow has proven to be difficult for Petrounias, who arrived at the European Championships with severe pain on his left shoulder, but he forgot the pain for the 70 seconds that it took him to qualify for Sunday’s final. On his return to the SSE Hydro, where in October of 2015 he got his first Worlds title and he qualified for the Olympics, competing with a cyst in his hand and having lost his father just a few weeks prior, the “Lord of the Rings” showed once more what he’s made of, overcoming more adversities. The 15.133 he got, with a few mistakes and without his usual unbelievably perfect execution, it was still a score that some of his rivals can only dream of.
Petrounias said about his performance: “These past few days a few unplanned things happened with my left shoulder that held me back. The most important thing is that I managed to compete… In order to manage that… you understand that I’ve been in a lot of pain. This injury that I’ve been facing for a long time isn’t worrying, but it prevents me from performing to the best of my ability. I definitely didn’t score as high as I wanted to. But my score was good enough for me to qualify in the final. On Sunday, you won’t see the technical errors that I made now. I’ll be in better condition on Sunday, I’ll execute my program the way I want to and I will defend my title”.
Petrounias also commented on the team’s performance in qualification: “We have an excellent team, but things kind of went south after parallel bars. We broke down. Georgios Chatziefstathiou on floor alone could have scored an extra 3 points and it’s a shame because the execution was not representative of his or the team’s worth. We can do a lot better and I think we can achieve that at Worlds. I am partially happy with what I’m seeing from the other guys but some of the falls we had after the halfway point are troubling me even though we were very well trained because we train with the best! I think it’s just a matter of dealing with the stress and the pressure we’re under”.
Petrounias talked about coming back to the SSE Hydro: “I’m very happy to be here, even though Glasgow is accompanied by pain for me. Now my shoulder is bothering me and in 2015 I had other bigger problems, but it’s beautiful being here at this stadium where a very important moment in my career happened”.
Three unstable steps after his dismount from high bar ruined all the good that Vlasios Maras had achieved in Glasgow and took away his chance of qualifying to another final which would have been his 11th out of his 14 entries in the European Championships. The 35-year-old athlete fell short of qualifying with a 13.433 but he explained that he has no reason to feel disappointed: “My execution on high bar was fairly good, but my dismount sucked. It was a huge mistake that cost me about a point. That one point was more than enough for me to qualify to the final. I’m not sad though because my performance as part of the team was good, both on high bar and vault. What I want to do is to add another element to my program to make it more competitive for Worlds. If I achieve that but underperform there, then I’ll be sad”.
Maras also commented on the team’s performance: “As a team, we did pretty well until we reached floor which is where we ruined everything. It’s not a usual thing, in most competitions, we don’t have as many falls at the end. I could make up excuses for my teammates but this is not the time for excuses. It’s time for everyone to think long and hard about what they did wrong and how they can fix that. I believe that in the future we won’t repeat these same mistakes”.
