The XXII Commonwealth Games to a close this week. With large crowds across all the venues, and the English weather behaving itself, the Games were a huge success, and a credit to the host city of Birmingham.

Gymnast Marios Georgiou and Beach Volleyball player Zoe Konstantopoulou were flag bearers for the opening ceremony. For Georgiou, this was just the start of a wonderful Games. First, he helped the Men’s Artistic Gymnastics team win the bronze medal in the Team All-Around competition, before winning an amazing three bronze medals in Men’s Artistic Individual All-Around, Men’s Parallel Bars and Men’s Horizontal Bars.

There was more success for the gymnastics team. In the Horizontal Bars event, Ilias Georgiou (no relation to Marios) took a magnificent gold medal for Cyprus. The excellence of the Men’s Gymnastics team was further demonstrated by Sokratis Pilakouris who took silver in the Men’s Rings event. It was also a very productive Games for Rhythmic Gymnast Anna Sokolova. With a magnificent silver in the Women’s Rhythmic Individual All-Around, another silver medal in the Women’s Hoop, and a bronze in the Women’s Ball, Sokolova helped the Cypriot Gymnastics team to a fantastic haul of 1 gold, three silver and five bronze medals from the programme at the Arena Birmingham.

Elsewhere, successes for the Cypriot team were harder to find. In both Boxing and Badminton, the Cypriot athletes failed to make much of an impression in their respective events. This was also the case in Table Tennis and Triathlon. In Weightlifting, Antonis Martasidis failed to even complete his lifts and did not finish the event. Despite winning bronze in 2018, Alexios Kaouslidis could only finish a disappointing eighth in the Men’s -125kg Wrestling event, while compatriot Charalampos Choiras finished tenth in the Men’s -86kg category. In Beach Volleyball, both the Men’s and Women’s teams managed to qualify for the Quarter-Finals, and will be happy with their performances.

Possibly the biggest disappointment for the Cypriot team in Birmingham was the performance of the swimmers. Not one of their eleven swimmers progressed to a final in their event, let alone challenge for medals. The abysmal performance of the Swimming team at these Commonwealth Games should be a source of great concern amongst the delegation and the Cyprus Swimming Federation.

Another sport in which Cyprus under-performed in these Games was in Cycling. In Mountain Biking, Christos Philokyprou failed to finish in the Cross-Country event. In the Men’s and Women’s Road Races, the Cypriot cyclists both finished well down the field, although there were respectable results for Antri Christoforou and Andreas Miltiadis in the Time Trials.

There was better news from the Cypriot Judo team. Nineteen year old Giorgios Balarjishvili, competing in the Men’s -66kg category, won a brilliant gold medal for Cyprus. It was the first ever gold medal for Cyprus in Judo at the Commonwealth Games. Two other members of the team also reached Semi-Finals.

There were few positives for the Athletics team. Alexandros Poursanidis threw close to his personal best in the Men’s Hammer final to claim the bronze medal. This was the only Athletics medal won by Cyprus at these Games. In the Men’s Pole Vault, Nikandros Stylianou and Christos Tamanis narrowly missed out on medals. In Stylianou’s case, a finish of fourth place was his highest finish from four Commonwealth Games. This was two places higher than his teammate Tamanis. In contrast, both Discus throwers progressed to the Men’s Final but were disappointing, particularly Apostolos Parellis, who could only finish seventh after winning bronze in 2018. Milan Trajkovic narrowly missed out on a medal in the Men’s 110 Hurdles in the 2018 Games, but only finished sixth in Birmingham.

In the Women’s Discus and Hammer events respectively, Androniki Lada and Chrystalla Kyriakou both finished well down the field in the finals. Natalia Christofi and Despoina Charalampous in the Women’s 100 Hurdles and Women’s High Jump events failed to even qualify for the final. Filippa Fotopoulou did manage eighth place in the Women’s Long Jump final.

Following the conclusion of the 2022 Games, Cyprus have accumulated two gold, three silver and six bronze for a total of 11 medals. This led to Cyprus finishing in seventeenth place in the final medal table.
Adam Ioannou