November 27, 1956
ROUBANIS OLYMPIC CHAMPION: Melbourne, 26 – The Greek flag was raised today at the Olympic Games for the first time in 44 years in honor of Greek champion Georgios Roubanis, who won the bronze medal in the pole vault at the Melbourne Olympics. Watched by some 110,000 spectators, the five-hour competition was brimming with excitement as it was finally narrowed down to four athletes, including Roubanis. The fact that the competition took place in high winds was even further cause to celebrate the Greek victory. The magnitude of Roubanis’s feat can be fully realized by the fact that of the 14 athletes who took part in the final, none jumped as high. Roubanis’s jump was 10 whole centimeters higher than the official Greek and Balkan records, which he himself holds (4.40 meters). The last medal that was won by a Greek track and field athlete was in 1912, during the fourth Modern Olympics in Stockholm, when the great athlete Costas Tsiklitiras won the gold medal in the standing long jump, which is no longer an event in the competition.
