Greek earns an Olympic canoe berth
Christos Tsakmakis was happy to learn on Thursday that he will after all be traveling to Beijing to represent Greece in the C1 (canoe single) event. The Greek champion had originally been left out of the Olympics after losing to his Austrian rival Leopold Fuchs, but the Austrian federation decided the athlete had not fulfilled the criteria for participation in the Olympics, so Tsakmakis will take his place instead. »I could not believe it when they told me,» he said about his initial reaction. He had trailed Fuchs by just one-hundredth of a second in the European slalom championship in Cracow, which also counted toward qualification in the Olympics.