Grigorios Lamprakis

Grigorios Lamprakis set the Greek record for the long jump in 1936, and bettered it several times, with his record not being bettered until 1959. As an athlete he won Balkan Games championships in the long jump in 1935, 1937, and 1938, and the triple jump in 1935-36. But this was almost a footnote to his life. During World War II, he was active in the Greek resistance against the occupying Axis powers, and shortly after World War II, Lamprakis graduated from medical school at the University of Athens. He specialized in gynecology but also set up a small private clinic that helped treat indigent patients.

A member of the Pacifist Movement, he was a member of the United Democratic Left, and was elected a member of the Hellenic Parliament in 1961. In that year the Commission for International Détente and Peace (Epitropi gia ti Diethni Ifesi kai Irini – EDYE) was established in Greece, with Lamprakis serving as Vice-President. In April 1963 the EDYE organized a pacifist rally from Marathon to Athina, but the police stopped the rally and arrested many of the protestors who attempted to participate. But Lamprakis had parliamentary immunity and marched the entire course holding a peace banner. It was a banner he had used previously while protesting the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment in Aldermaston, Great Britain. Shortly after his peace walk he was also arrested by the police.

On 22 May 1963, Lamprakis was delivering the keynote speech at a pacifist rally in Thessaliníki, when he was attacked by two right-wing extremists who struck him with a club. He sustained a closed brain injury and succumbed to his injury five days later. The following day in Athina, his funeral sparked a demonstration with half a million people rallying to protest against the right-wing government.

In his honor, the Marathon Peace Rally has since been held annually in Lamprakis’s memory. The Athina Classic Marathon is also run each November in his honor. His life was memorialized by the author Vassilios Vassilikos in the political novel Z, and in 1969 the book was made into a movie by Greek-French director Kosta Gavras. After the military rulers of Greece were ousted in 1974, many streets and other sites, including a football stadium, were named in honor of Grigorios Lamprakis.

Personal Bests: LJ – 7.37 (1938); TJ – 14.19 (1936).