On the one hand medal winning gymnast Chrystalleni Trikomiti is just an average teenager. But all that changes when she walks into a gym. THEO PANAYIDES meets her
Chrystalleni Trikomiti is 17, in fact she’s barely 17 (she was born November 30, 1993). She likes C.S.I., Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Michael Jackson and her grandma’s ravioles. She’ll sometimes refer to things as being “really wow”. She lives in Aradippou, and has five brothers and sisters (she’s the third oldest). But she also has her own Wikipedia page, and several videos on YouTube – including the dazzling routines that won her two golds, a silver and two bronzes at the 2010 Commonwealth Games, giving Cyprus its first-ever medals in rhythmic gymnastics.
In the videos, Chrystalleni looks regal, queen-like. She steps onto the floor, her hair pulled back, her long neck held very straight as she surveys the crowd with a cool gaze. Then she launches into her routines, rolling a ball across her shoulders or twirling a ribbon into kaleidoscopic swirls of colour. At one point she brings the ribbon up to her shoulder then, in a single firm movement, drops her arm and hurls the ribbon up into the air with all her strength – then drops to the floor, does two somersaults in succession and emerges just where the ribbon is coming down, plucking it from the air with split-second timing. The applause is deafening. “Crowd reacting as though it was a prize-fight,” notes the Australian commentator wryly, already resigned to the fact that Chrystalleni would (and did) beat the Australian gymnast into second place.
In person, sitting at the dining-room table of the house in Aradippou, she’s a lot less grown-up. She’s still poised and elegant, having made herself up for the interview, but she has the sleepy, languid look of most adolescents and her voice, when she speaks, is rather croaky. The shoulders slouch, and she peppers her sentences with “um”s and “I mean”s. She wears bracelets and a pink watch. She looks, in short, like a normal 17-year-old – her composure also tested by the fact that five-year-old Louisa, the baby of the family, is annoyed at being turned away (“What are you doing in the dining room?”) and has just closed the glass door, possibly locking us in.
Apart from the maid, Louisa is the only other person in the house – which is strange at 4pm on a weekday, but actually not so strange because everyone’s at the gym. If you’re looking for a way to reconcile the down-to-earth teenager at the dining-room table with the self-possessed, supremely confident athlete on the gymnastics floor, Chrystalleni’s family is the key to the puzzle. Simply put, the Trikomitis take sport seriously. Of the six kids, only Louisa hasn’t (yet) tried her hand at some physical exercise. The two boys do judo, while the three girls do gymnastics; indeed, Chrystalleni’s older sister Loukia just missed qualifying for the Olympics (presumably Beijing) “by a few thousandths”. Mum also dabbled in gymnastics in her time, while Dad races cars as a hobby – as did Grandpa, who was also into Greco-Roman wrestling.
They’re also, quite obviously, a wealthy family. The house is large and beautiful, flanked by cypress and palm trees. Inside there’s a piano, walls bedecked with paintings, sofas with large soft cushions in leopard-skin patterns. The sign “Beware of the Dog” turns out to refer to a couple of sleek Alsatians. This isn’t just idle gawking; money is relevant, not just because it breeds confidence but also (more importantly) because it buys better training. For the past year and a half, Chrystalleni has been coached by a woman from Belarus whose daughter won silver at the Sydney Olympics. “I knew about the [Commonwealth] Games from long before,” she explains. “I’ve known for two years – well, I didn’t, my parents did – and I started to prepare”. Who pays for the Belarusian coach? “Dad does.” She pauses, conscious of sounding like a child. “My dad does.”
Money helps; so does coaching. But they’re obviously no substitute for talent and application. Chrystalleni’s made impressive sacrifices in the past two years, albeit supported by her school, which consented to her lengthy absences. Last summer – the summer before the Games – was especially hectic. She’d wake up around 6, start the day with a few hours of private lessons (trying to make up for lost school time) then spend eight hours at the gym, with a two-hour break in between. That was her routine all summer long, even weekends, only allowed one week off when she let her hair down and tried to act like a teenager.
Daily training starts with two hours of ballet-style stretching and leaping, she explains (ballet is the basis of rhythmic gymnastics), then she practises her routines for each “apparatus” – hoop, ball, ribbon and clubs – three or four times. In the end, it becomes almost mechanical. After having done these routines four times a day, seven days a week, for a year and a half, “I should be able to close my eyes and do them” – which is as it should be, because technical excellence is almost a given in rhythmic gymnastics. Unlike other sports, you get judged on your whole performance, so intangibles like grace and personality come into play. In Delhi, the crowd loved her. Even on YouTube you can sometimes hear the locals chanting “Cyprus! Cyprus!” It wasn’t (just) because she was technically perfect; it was her style, her character. The audience sensed she had something special.
Trouble is, being judged on intangibles also means it’s easy to be underrated (Chrystalleni wisely notes the importance of going to as many tournaments as possible, so the judges get to know you). The top 24 gymnasts in the world qualify for the Olympics; she’s currently No. 25 – the World Championships in Montpelier next September are her big chance to break into the top tier – but at one point during last year’s Championships she’d risen to No. 20. So what happened? It’s not that she made mistakes, she explains; other gymnasts just got higher ratings, so she ended the tournament at No. 25. Rivalry is fierce, especially between countries (the girls themselves tend to get along, having made many of the same sacrifices). At the European Championships in Italy, recalls Chrystalleni, her closest rival was an Italian girl – and when the time came for her Ribbon routine (her favourite), Chrystalleni was shocked to find that the organisers had put on the wrong music! “Everything went black,” she recalls – but the rules say you can’t stop once you’ve started, so she did her routine, came 11th, and the Italian ended up coming third. Does she think someone may have played the wrong music on purpose, to help the local girl? She shrugs, as if to say ‘Anything’s possible’.
At least she’s now being appreciated on home soil, after her Commonwealth Games triumph. “I’ll never forget, the first days after I came back I was walking down the street and people were asking if I was that girl, and I said ‘Yeah, it’s me’. It was really wow, because people really showed they were proud of me”. Then again, she also ended up coming sixth overall in those European Championships, and nobody cared. “In any other sport, if you say ‘I came sixth in Europe’, it’ll be known,” she points out. “Rhythmic gymnastics doesn’t really exist in Cyprus”. There are only two local athletes in her category – though back when she was seven years old, she recalls, there may have been 50 girls in her class. Blame the long hours, the pressure, or just the reality of living in a small country. In Russia, gymnasts are taken out of school at 12 years old and grow up in special training camps away from their families. “Who would do that in Cyprus?”
It’s remarkable in many ways, the depth and extent of Chrystalleni Trikomiti’s commitment in a place where few people devote themselves to sport so intensely (even Marcos Baghdatis had to grow up in France). “I realised a long time ago that my life is different,” she says – yet she’s really not so different to most of her peers. What’s she like as a person? “I think I’m a very open person,” she replies; “People tell me I’m very sociable”. She has friends, spends hours on Facebook and likes to go to parties. (Does she have a boyfriend? “Um … no.” Is that because of her strenuous training schedule? “Um … no.”) She’s very sporty, having also dabbled in judo and go-karting at competitive level, and likes fishing and water-skiing. She wants to study Law and be a lawyer – very few gymnasts continue past the age of 22 or so – and is currently organising 2011 to ensure she finds time for both exams and tournaments. Probably stick to four hours of training until March or April, then back up to eight. This summer will be just as busy as the last one, with those vital Championships coming up in September. It’s a shame, I sympathise, spending her last high-school summer like that. She shakes her head; “I don’t think about it”.
“All sports, but especially gymnastics which I know about, have soooooo much discipline,” she says, sounding 17 again. Few people could do what Chrystalleni does, even if their bodies were up to it. Once you’re on the floor, you have to be perfect; the pressure is enormous. She’s been doing this since she was four years old – yet she still missed a gold medal in Delhi by (literally) dropping the ball during one routine, maybe the worst mistake she’s ever made in competition. “I’ll never forgive myself,” she says – but of course she does forgive herself, or she couldn’t go on. “OK, I was sad, I was reeaaaally sad, but OK,” she recalls a few minutes later. “Mistakes happen”. Being a top-level athlete is a rare combination, needing both the passion that’ll make you push yourself through hours of training – but also the thickness of skin (or self-confidence) that allows you to handle failure.
“I could be an ordinary 17-year-old,” shrugs Chrystalleni Trikomiti. “Finish school every day, sit at home, watch TV, eat, sit in front of the computer and just let the hours go by”. Being a gymnast makes life more exciting. “I see classmates of mine whose goal is just to graduate from school – and that’s it,” she says. “I’m more… Well, let’s say I set different goals because, I mean, in a few years – 10 years, say – when, God willing, I have a family, after 15 years or whatever… Well, at least I’ll have something to tell people!”
“Now I’m back in school, I don’t feel any different,” she muses. “I mean, usually I just feel I’m a 17-year-old girl going to such-and-such a school. It’s only when I walk into the gym that something changes.” And how.
