Ioannis Chrysafis
The work of Ioannis Fokianos especially after 1870, when he undertook the organization of the third Zappeian Olympic Games, marked the first organized efforts for the formation of sports institutions and mechanisms in Greece. His death just a few weeks after the organization of the first modern Olympic Games in 1896 betokened the end of that first era of Greek sport. The following period could be conventionally determined as starting from after the Games until the end of the interwar period. It was a time of irredentist wars (1897, Balkan Wars, World War I, Asia Minor campaign), territorial expansion of the Greek State, political tensions (National Schism, military interventions), economic and social problems (refugees). At the same time, it was a time of change and escalation of the modernization processes in the Greek society. The political prevalence of the Liberals and Venizelos for most of the time expressed to a large extent the dynamics of change. In the field of sport the bearer of those changes was Ioannis Chrysafis.
Chrysafis was born in Athens in 1873. He studied in the Physics and Mathematics faculty of the University of Athens and frequented the Central Gymnasium, which was run by Ioannis Fokianos, and was one of his athletes. What is more, he was one of the athletes who had attended the "school" of gymnasts organized in 1893 and 1894 by the Panhellenic Gymnastic Society and he had been one of the first gymnasts. The same year (1893) he was appointed gymnast in a public school, the Varvakeio Lyceum. At the same time, he worked as a gymnast in the Panhellenic Gymnastic Society, where he made efforts for the adoption of the Swedish instead of the German gymnastic system. The disagreement with the managers of the association, who did not hold with the innovations that were being introduced, and the almost simultaneous split of the Panhellenic Gymnastic Society led Chrysafis to the National Gymnastic Association ("Ethnikos").
There, at a time of genesis for Greek sport due to the preparation of the 1896 Games, Chrysafis was given the opportunity to try his modernizing programme, which aimed at harmonizing Greek sport with the sports, regulations and training systems that prevailed in Europe. Among the remarkable activities of Chrysafis that time was of course the organization of the Tinia (1895), as well as the writing of the books Manual of school Gymnastics (1893) and Sports contests, training and hygiene (1896), which were among the first Greek books on sport. The Tinia, an initiative of the Ethnikos and of Chrysafis, were the first panhellenic games among associations and, at the same time, the first sports games including exclusively internationally recognized contests and regulations. The aim for distinction in the Olympic Games was apparent.
All these led to the involvement of Chrysafis in the organization of the 1896 Olympics. Three years later he would be the first Greek gymnast to be sent abroad for studies. Chrysafis, being an advocate of the Swedish system, chose Stockholm and the renowned at that time Gymnastic Institute of the city, where he studied for two years. Upon his return, in 1902, he was appointed professor in the School of Gymnasts. Over the following years he participated in international sports congresses, he wrote books and translated the regulations of various sports (football and basketball were two of them), and in 1906 he assumed important duties in the organization of the Interim Games.
The political change marked by the Goudi Movement (1909) and the rise of Venizelos to power had constituted the favourable circumstance for a more substantial involvement of Chrysafis in the formation of the sports institutions and even in the role of regulator: in 1910 he became Gymnastics supervisor, in 1914 (in the meanwhile he had fought in the Balkan Wars as reserve officer) he became general supervisor and in 1919 director of the department of Physical Education in the Ministry of Education. During those years he had the possibility to implement his ideas and methods especially in school sport. The proposals of Chrysafis with reference to the restructuring of physical education in schools were included in the broader programme for the modernization of the educational system initiated by Glinos, Triantafyllidis and Delmouzos, which came to be known as "Educational Reform" (1917-1920).
Over the next years and until his sudden death in 1932, Chrysafis played a decisive role both in the law-producing activity in sport, especially school sport, and in the sports institutions, like the SEGAS and the COG. The upgrading of the Didaskaleion of Gymnastics is attributed to him as well as its evolution into the Gymnastic Academy in the early 1930s, which had three-year courses and a programme similar to that of the Institute of Stockholm. At the same time, he achieved the doubling (from 250 to 500) of the organic posts of school gymnasts, an action included in the educational reform of the Minister of Education Georgios Papandreou.
The basic idea that guided the activity of Chrysafis was the beneficial effect of gymnastics on physical growth and on the education of youth, as well as the adoption of sport by broad strata of the Greek society. On the other hand, he attached less importance to competitive sport, namely champion sport. These views are clearly set out in his presentation at the founding meeting of the SEAGS (later SEGAS), when he wished "Émay Greece never have any Olympic winner in any Olympiad, just as long as all the millions of Greeks, free and unredeemed, come in numbers to the gymnasiums to exercise".
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