Captains Who Dropped Anchor in the Right Port

Every sport has its “temples”. In football, it’s Camp Nou or Anfield. In basketball, there’s Madison Square Garden. In sailing, the temples aren’t built; they’re carved out by wind and water. In Greece, if such a temple to sailing exists, it could

Or, to put it another way: If you live in Piraeus, and are born with any interest in sport whatsoever, you’ll be drawn to Olympiacos—it’s almost a law of nature. Not necessarily because you choose it, but because it’s everywhere. On the scarves in the squares and the graffiti on the walls; in the mouths of the people speaking all around you.

If there’s one reason that Hatzipavlis and Bountouris succeeded, beyond skill, luck and perseverance, that reason is Olympiacos.

Ilias Hatzipavlis and Tasos Bountouris, two athletes who made Greece proud in sailing, clearly fall into this category. They’re graduates of a school that produces legends, not just athletes. Which may offer some more profound insights into how to survive in a sport in which your performance relies—to a degree, at least—on factors over which you have no control.

Sailing isn’t like football or basketball, where strength and speed are the ultimate determinants of success. It’s not even like chess, where everything is based on strategy. Sailing is an endless puzzle in which every decision depends on a factor that’s utterly unpredictable: the wind.

Ilias Hatzipavlis knew this well in 1972, when he succeeded in winning a silver medal in the Finn category at the 1972 Munich Olympics.

The races were held in Kiel, with 35 boats in the running. Though considered an outsider, Hatzipavlis made a strong start and remained in first place until the fourth race. But then, in the fifth race, with the wind dying, he didn’t finish in the allotted time, which dropped him down to second place.

In the final race, he needed a top 10 finish to secure a medal. He finished seventh, behind France’s Serge Maury and ahead of the Soviet Viktor Potapov, winning silver.

His success was a milestone for Greek sailing and made Hatzipavlis one of the top Greek athletes of his era.

What the casual viewer doesn’t understand is that second place in an Olympic sailing race doesn’t mean you were “almost first”. It means you were better than dozens of others who had the same chances as you, but made the wrong decisions. It means you made fewer mistakes than all but one of your rivals.

Hatzipavlis was the flag bearer for the Greek delegation at the Moscow Olympics in 1980. He also won a bronze medal at the European Finn Championship in 1974, a bronze medal at the World Star Championship in 1981, and a bronze and two silvers at the Mediterranean Games, in the Finn category once again.

Hatzipavlis had a unique gift: he could read the wind, not as a natural phenomenon, but as a language. As something he could interpret, understand and—within limits—exploit. Which is how he became Olympiacos’ first great sailing hero.

Tasos Bountouris, on the other hand, had something different: persistence.

If Hatzipavlis was the sailor with an eye for the main chance, Bountouris was the man who never stopped chasing an Olympic medal.

Some people are born for sports where victory is immediate, tangible, quick. A goal, a knock-out, a 100-meter sprint final. But then there are those who choose (or are chosen by) sports where success is less easy to pin down and arrives slowly, agonizingly, almost existentially.

Bountouris belongs to that second category. Six Olympic Games.

Ponder this: being on the ultimate sporting stage six times over—racing, waiting for the wind, the swell, the perfect moment. Spending your 24-year career in a world that’s powered by gusts of wind and has a scoring system that no non-initiate can really understand.

The bronze medal came in Moscow in 1980. On paper, this was the climax, the culmination. But for Bountouris success was never momentary. It was something that had to be built piece by piece, regatta by regatta—like an eternal journey across an endless sea.

Bountouris didn’t win because he was in perfect physical condition. He won because he never gave up.

Tasos Boudouris is identified with the sea and Olympiacos.

But there’s always a price to pay when a life is dedicated to sport.

In 2020, Bountouris had a serious traffic accident. His bike was completely wrecked and he fell into a coma. Suddenly, the athlete who had survived storms at sea, who’d battled the wind and the waves, found himself fighting the hardest battle of them all.

And, in the way that only people like Bountouris can pull off, he came back from the brink.

Because that’s sailing’s most fundamental lesson: no matter how many times you’re buffeted by the waves, what matters is whether you can keep on sailing.

If there is a single reason why Hatzipavlis and Bountouris succeeded, apart from skill, luck and perseverance, it was Olympiacos.

Not just as a club, though; as an entire culture. Olympiacos was more than just their team; it was the mold that made them who they are. Because it’s an organization which, more than any other in Greece, has taught its athletes that success isn’t just about the final score, it’s about the mindset.

Winning is being able to keep on fighting, no matter how hard the battle, how powerful the opponent, how much the odds are stacked against you.

And that’s something that sailing, like Olympiacos, teaches best.

Ilias Hatzipavlis retired from competitive sailing in 1988. Tasos Boundouris, despite accidents and challenges, remains close to the sport.

Hatzipavlis retired for competitive sailing in 1988. For Bountouris, sailing is still very much part of his life, despite the accidents and the challenges. In fact, their story, too, has no end.

Because every time a young kid gets into a dinghy, every time a boat with the Olympiacos emblem sets sail, it embarks on a new adventure. The sea, like the Legend, never ends.