Three-time gold medal weightlifter Pyrros Dimas, one of modern Greece’s most distinguished athletes, generated one of a handful of political “cat fights” in the country this week, charging that ruling SYRIZA party is responsible for his move to the United States to assume a consultancy with that country’s weight lifting federation.
Speaking from the United States to a local Athens-area radio station, Dimas said that the day after radical leftist SYRIZA assumed power in January 2015 it cut 55 percent of the Greek federation’s funding.
“It was the only federation for whom they cut 55 percent … they (SYRIZA) saw me as an enemy because I was with another party. It was like they were telling me to pack up my bags and leave. SYRIZA essentially chased me from the country, and the reasons are political.”
Dimas had previous served as a deputy in Parliament elected from a state list with the socialist PASOK party.
