From his wheelchair, Vasileios Christoforou recounts the story of many an Olympic sailor.

 

Christoforou started sailing Optimists as a 10-year old and went on to sail Laser Radials, Laser, 420’s and 470’s. He was even a sailing instructor for four years, until he dove into a pool that was only three feet deep and suffered a C5 injury in 1999. After recovering enough to sail again and with limited use of his arms, he started training in the 2.4 Meter and finished second in the Greek Paralympic trials in 2003.

 

Christoforou scrambled to put together a host country team in the Sonar for the 2004 Paralympics in Athens. Only sailing five times together, the three-man team was 8^th in the 2004 Paralympics competing at a venue that was only 10 kilometers from Christoforou’s home.

 

Nikolaos Paterakis, who had a cancerous arm amputated when he was six years old joined Christoforou for the 2004 Paralympics and was instrumental in recruiting their third sailor, 29-year old Theodoros Alexas.

 

Paterakis was a Paralympic swimmer and met Alexas while training at the pool. Alexas was able-bodied at the time. After Alexas lost his leg in a motor cycle accident in 2001, Paterakis reached out to him and suggested that he take up sailing.

 

Paterakis and Alexas maintain their upper body strength by swimming everyday.

 

During 2008, they have also been sailing 4-5 times a week. Short on funding, the Greek Sonar team has not traveled to very many regattas this year, but they did purchase new Sonar for the Paralympics.

 

Christoforou said, “We trained hard in Greece. I think that we are good in light air, although we have trained in all conditions. We’ll see.”

 

With 14 Sonar teams competing for a Paralympic medal we will see which have managed to overcome their disabilities, work well as a team and outperform the other at the Olympic Sailing Center in Qingdao.

 

 

There is a separate story about the steering mechanism used by Christoforou, a tetriplegic.  They sailed some fantastic races in this very close regatta.