Grigoris Polychronidis: Paralympic Gold Medallist!
Grigoris Polychronidis gives us many reasons to be proud! His determination, his persistence, his ethos are only some of the elements that distinguish him from the others! Proof … his rich collection of medals and honorary distinctions!
Grigoris was born on 13 August 1981. He has spinal muscular atrophy (SMA II). He graduated from the 12th Lyceum of Peristeri and studied at the Department of Accounting and Finance of the University of Athens. Today he works at the Court of Audit.
He started to play boccia (a Paralympic sport for athletes with locomotor dysfunction) in 2002, with Georgios Tzimas as his coach. He has won eleven gold medals in the BC3 category and eight gold and one silver in the BC3 pair category at the Panhellenic Boccia Championship.
But Greece wasn’t enough for Grigoris and he was set on a course to conquer the world … So, in 2006, at the World Boccia Championship in Brazil he came second in the BC3 category – and two years later in the same category at the Beijing Paralympic Games he again won the silver medal!
Grigoris continues his way to the top with gold medals in many pan-European and world championships, and his highlight was at the 2012 Summer Paralympic Games in September 2012 in Great Britain, where he conquered the top of the world in the BC3 pair category along with Eleni Kordalis and Nikos Pananos, winning the gold medal for Greece! He was the flag bearer of the Greek Paralympic team at the opening ceremony of the 2016 Paralympic Games in Rio.