[ALBSA-Info] {QIKSH =?ISO-8859-1?Q?=AB?=ALBEUROPA=?ISO-8859-1?Q?=BB?=} Albanians Win Four Medals

[Nikoll A Mirakaj]

Albanians Win Four Medals 

TIRANA, Oct 4, 2000 -- (Reuters) Albanian athletes won four medals at the Sydney Olympics - all for neighboring Greece.

Albanian-born Pyrros Dimas won a gold in weightlifting, Leonidas Sabanis and Viktor Mitrou took silvers in the same sport while Mirela Maniani-Tzelili won a silver for javelin.

Albania's own team of four - one weightlifter, one pistol shooter and two runners - returned empty-handed.

It is saddening but no surprise for sports officials in this impoverished Balkan nation, who are resigned to seeing their finest talent leave home to find better facilities and rewards abroad.

"We should be proud of them anyway," said Gudar Beqiraj, president of the Albanian weightlifting federation. "They have only transferred our culture to another country."

That sympathetic view is not shared by the Albanian media who tend either to ignore the achievements of their expatriate athletes or brand them traitors.

The weekly news magazine Klan this week ran a picture of Dimas on its front cover with the punning headline "A Pyrrhic victory." Inside, it called him a renegade who had denied his roots.

Many Albanians are offended that their athletes changed their names to make them sound more Greek - Dimas, for example, started life as Pirro Dhima.

Born in Tirana, he emigrated to Greece in 1991 and brought that country its first gold medal for 85 years at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. Dimas repeated his triumph in 1996 and this year to become a national hero in his adopted country.

Weightlifting is particularly popular in Albania because it does not require expensive equipment or facilities for training.

No fewer than five members of Greece's eight-man weightlifting team are Albanians who became naturalized Greeks and changed their names.

Albania's best performance in Sydney under its own flag was by weightlifter Ilirian Suli, who ranked fifth in the 77-kg category.

Suli, who won silver in the European championships this year, briefly emigrated to Greece but now lives in Albania.

In a recent interview with Reuters, Suli said his dream is to win a medal at the 2004 Olympics in Athens - for Albania.

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