Wednesday, December 03, 2008 : Chrissa Biskitzi talks to Barney Spender about her career and the decision to quit rowing
Four years later in Sydney he was back behind the oar helping Britain's coxless fours to gold and claiming his fifth Olympic gold.
Greece's top oarswoman Chrissa Biskitzi has learned the lesson that it does not pay to make big pronouncements so when she announced earlier this month that she was packing up after 20 years and four Olympics she did not rule out the possibility that it might not be the end.
"You never know what will happen, you are never sure about retiring from something that has been part of your life for the last 20 years," she says.
"I have been thinking about stopping for a while now and I think the time is right. I don't want to change my mind because I want time to think, time for myself.
"I want to do something for me. No more team, no more training, no more wake-up calls, no more strict diets. But I don't know how it will be. And maybe in two years time, if I still have the power and the passion..."
The 34-year-old from Glyfada does not finish her sentence but you are left with the feeling that London 2012 might yet prove to be her swansong. For the moment, though, Biskitzi, the reigning European light double sculls champion with Alexandra Tsiavou, can be billed as a former Olympic oarswoman and someone who has done much to promote the sport in Greece.
"When I started rowing there was not much interest in Greece. I used to go swimming and one day a friend told me that she was going to try it. I said: what is it? And then we both said lets go. When I saw the boats gliding on the water and saw how dynamic it was, I was hooked.
"I started slowly, going two or three times a week and then I got better. I won races and then ended up in the Hellenic championships where I ended up being quite successful."
Her first appearance at the Olympics was in Atlanta in 1996 - at the same time as Redgrave was making his great pronouncement..
"I was very young. I just went along for the ride, to experience the Olympics. I didn't do so well."
Then came Sydney and Athens where she reached the semi-finals on both occasions.
"Sydney was better. I was more mature, stronger but still not good enough. But Athens was disappointing. It was in my home town, all my relatives were there, it had another meaning for me. I came 12th and to be honest I thought about quitting then.
"But I teamed up with Alexandra and we began to get some good results and so we decided to go for qualification for Beijing. Things went pretty well. We reached the final and finished sixth."
One of those key races was the 2006 World Championships when Biskitzi and Tsiavou took the bronze medal. They also won the European championships in 2007, successfully defending their crown in the 2008 event at Schinias.
"The Europeans were a great success for Greece this year, we won five gold medals," she says.
"It is good for the sport to have this success because it forces the television and newspapers to give us some coverage and that then encourages youngsters to come try out.
"In Beijing we had five rowers, maybe in London we can have 10 or 12."
If she is not in a boat herself there is a good chance that Biskitzi will be in the background. Already she has started coaching the juniors at club level ("After Beijing we had 50 kids turn up for training") and she will also be involved in helping her employers the Coast Guard in their sporting endeavours.
"I certainly want to get involved with training the next generation. But it is best for me to start at the bottom and work my way up. And maybe I can help someone else get to the World Championships or the Olympics."
If she sticks by her gunnels, then Greece will have lost one of their finest athletes but there is every reason to believe that, in one capacity or other, we have not heard the last of Chrissa Biskitzi.
This article first appeared in the Athens News (28.11.0)
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