Ιωάννης Μελισσανίδης

Ο Ιωάννης Μελισσανίδης (Μόναχο, 27 Μαρτίου 1977) είναι Έλληνας Ολυμπιονίκης (1996) της ενόργανης γυμναστικής και ηθοποιός.

Γεννήθηκε στις 27 Μαρτίου 1977 στο Μόναχο της Γερμανίας. Σε ηλικία δύο ετών μετακόμισε με την οικογένειά του στη Θεσσαλονίκη. Κατάγεται από την Βυρώνεια Σερρών. Οι γονείς του είναι από τη Βυρώνεια. Το 1996 κατέκτησε το χρυσό μετάλλιο στην Ολυμπιάδα της Ατλάντα. Είναι αξιωματικός της Πολεμικής Αεροπορίας και έχει ύψος 1,69.

Ο Μελισσανίδης ξεκίνησε με ασκήσεις γυμναστικής και κλασικού μπαλέτου στην ηλικία των 9 ετών. Οι γονείς του αν και αρχικά δεν υποστήριζαν την ιδέα του, πείστηκαν και τον πήγαν στο Γυμναστικό Σύλλογο Σπάρτακο Θεσσαλονίκης.

Το 1991 στο Ευρωπαϊκό Πρωτάθλημα Νέων βγήκε 18ος αλλά κέρδισε το χάλκινο μετάλλιο στις ασκήσεις εδάφους. Δύο χρόνια αργότερα, το 1993 πήρε την πρώτη θέση στο Ευρωπαϊκό πρωτάθλημα Εφήβων στο έδαφος και την τρίτη θέση στους Μεσογειακούς Αγώνες στο άλμα. Το 1994 στην Πράγα κέρδισε τον τίτλο στις ασκήσεις εδάφους στο Ευρωπαϊκό Πρωτάθλημα. Την ίδια χρονιά κατέκτησε τη δεύτερη θέση και το αργυρό μετάλλιο στο Παγκόσμιο Πρωτάθλημα μαζί με τον Neil Thomas της Μεγάλης Βρετανίας. Με αυτή τη νίκη ο Μελισσανίδης έγινε ο πρώτος Έλληνας γυμναστής, σε άντρες και γυναίκες, με μετάλλιο σε Παγκόσμιο Πρωτάθλημα. Το 1995 και το 1996, ο Μελισσανίδης δεν κατάφερε να αγωνιστεί σε υψηλό επίπεδο , όπως θα ήθελε ο ίδιος. Στους Ολυμπιακούς Αγώνες του 1996 στην Ατλάντα, ο Μελισσανίδης έκανε την έκπληξη και κέρδισε το πρώτο χρυσό μετάλλιο για την Ελλάδα, στις ασκήσεις εδάφους με 9.850 βαθμούς αγγίζοντας το τέλειο και αναγκάζοντας ακόμα και τους αντιπάλους του να τον χειροκροτήσουν. Συνέχισε να αγωνίζεται και το 1998 στο άλμα κατέκτησε το Ευρωπαϊκό Πρωτάθλημα. Το 2000 παρότι τραυματισμένος αγωνίστηκε στους Ολυμπιακούς του Σίδνεϊ. To 2004, συμμετείχε στους Ολυμπιακούς Αγώνες της Αθήνας, αυτή τη φορά όμως ως λαμπαδηδρόμος στην τελετή έναρξης.

Τα τελευταία χρόνια, ο Μελισσανίδης έχει δραστηριοποιηθεί σε διάφορους κοινωνικούς και αθλητικούς σκοπούς. Είναι υποστηρικτής της Greenpeace ενώ το 2003, υποστήριξε δημόσια την εκστρατεία του Ιδρύματος Μελίνα Μερκούρη για να επιστρέψουν τα Ελγίνεια Μάρμαρα στην Ελλάδα.

Το όνομα του έχει δοθεί σε αίθουσα γυμναστικής στη γενέτειρα του στη Θεσσαλονίκη. Από το 2008, ο Μελισσανίδης ήταν φοιτητής στην Αμερικανική Ακαδημία Δραματικών Τεχνών του Λος Άντζελες. Ήταν επίσης καλεσμένος του Ολυμπιακού ανταγωνισμού στην Κίνα το 2008 και περιόδευσε σε κινεζικά πανεπιστήμια ως εκπρόσωπος της Διεθνούς Ολυμπιακής.

Το 1994 όταν και κατέκτησε το χρυσό μετάλλιο στο Ευρωπαϊκό πρωτάθλημα Νέων στην Πράγα, ο Μελισσανίδης το χάρισε στην οικογένεια του Τούρκου συναθλητή του, Μουράτ Καμπάς που είχε σκοτωθεί σε τροχαίο. Γι' αυτή την σημαντική του πράξη τιμήθηκε με το βραβείο "Ιπεκτσί", την ανώτατη τιμητική διάκριση της γειτονικής χώρας. Ανάλογη ανταπόκριση υπήρξε και από την ελληνική πλευρά, καθώς τιμήθηκε από τον υπουργό Βόρειας Ελλάδας και από τον ΠΣΑΤ.

TLANTA -- Little more than three months ago, Ioannis Melissanidis was running through the streets of his native Thessaloniki with the Olympic torch in his hand and Olympic dreams in his head. 

On Sunday night, Melissanidis became the first Greek gymnast in nearly a century to win an Olympic medal. He did it on the floor exercise, and what made it all the more stunning was that the color of the medal was gold.

Melissanidis, 19, had been one of those rooting for Athens when the centennial Olympics were awarded by the International Olympic Committee. But on Sunday night, it hardly mattered. In his mind, he was in his home country anyway. "Before I saluted the judges to start, I said to myself: 'I'm not in the United States. I'm not in Atlanta. I'm in Athens.' The people were so friendly. I felt like I could have been in Greece."

It was not a memorable night only for Melissanidis. Amy Chow, the first Asian-American women's gymnast to compete in the Olympics, won a silver medal on the uneven bars behind Russia's innovative Svetlana Chorkina. On still rings, Yuri Chechi of Italy won the only medal missing from his considerable collection: an Olympic gold.

Chechi's victory, which he celebrated by pumping his fists and shrieking with pleasure, was certainly emotional. The redhead, whose parents named him after Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, missed the 1992 Games after rupturing his Achilles' tendon three weeks before he was supposed to leave for Barcelona. But the most touching story of the evening was that of Li Donghua, the Swiss gymnast who won the gold medal on the pommel horse.

Li, a former Chinese national champion on pommel horse, left China for Switzerland in 1989 after falling in love with Esperanza Friedli, a Swiss tourist he had met by chance on the street in Beijing. He missed the 1992 Olympics because he had to wait five years to become a Swiss citizen and be eligible to compete internationally for the country.

At 29, he was the oldest male gymnast here, but despite all the waiting and all the injuries he has endured, he managed to win the gold over silver medalist Marius Urzica of Romania and bronze medalist Aleksei Nemov of Russia. As he stood on the medal stand and listened to the Swiss national anthem, he struggled unsuccessfully to hold back tears. "I never gave up," he said. "My wife is expecting a child, so this medal is for my wife and my child."

Chow's silver medal was a blow for technical proficiency. The laconic 18-year-old from San Jose already has had one trick on uneven bars named for her: a back stalder with one and a half twists. On Sunday night, she performed a different stalder move that is expected to be named "the Chow II." And that was hardly the only remarkable trick in her intricate routine.

Initially, the score that flashed on the screen in the Georgia Dome was a 9.825, which would have been good enough for the bronze. But the officials had typed in the wrong score. Chow actually had received a 9.837, which was ultimately good enough to tie her for the silver medal with China's Bi Wenjing.

"I can't believe it," Chow said. "My goal was to make the finals."

Two better-known members of that team -- Shannon Miller and Dominique Dawes -- had less cause for celebration. Both made major errors to finish well out of the medals on vault, and Dawes finished fourth on the bars, which means that she has yet to win an individual medal.

After the vault, Dawes and Miller could be excused for wanting to get out of Atlanta in a hurry. Both had been in contention for all-around medals on Thursday heading into the third rotation before stumbling on the floor exercise. On Sunday night, with flash bulbs flashing in the stands against orders (they affect gymnasts' vision), both stumbled again.

Dawes went first and took a big hop on the landings of both vaults, receiving a combined score of 9.649. She would finish sixth. Miller went later and took a big hop on her first vault, a one-and-a-half Yurchenko, and took a big fall on her second. She would finish last in the eight-gymnast field.

Melissanidis, the son of a Thessaloniki bus driver, was not an unknown, at least not in gymnastics circles. He won Greece's first medal at a world championships in 1994, taking silver on the floor. But he failed to reach the finals in either of the last two world championships, and for all his talent, it appeared unlikely that he could stare down and tumble down an Olympic field that included the defending Olympic champion, Li Xiaoshuang of China, Vitaly Shcherbo of Belarus and Aleksei Nemov and Yevgeny Podgorny of Russia.

As it turned out, Podgorny and Shcherbo would make major mistakes; Li would have to settle for silver and Nemov for bronze.

One of the goals of this second-year medical student is to bring a level of expressiveness to men's gymnastics that it currently lacks. But expressiveness is nothing without difficulty, and his routine had plenty of that, too. "I had to be perfect for Greece," he said.

After his score of 9.850, the only one left who could threaten him was Li, the diminutive Chinese who nipped Nemov for the men's all-around title in the Georgia Dome on Wednesday, Li's routine was clean. His mount and double-layout dismount had plenty of amplitude, but in the judges' opinion, it was not quite enough. The score was 9.837, and Greece had its first Olympic gymnastics medal since Georgios Aliprantis won a gold in 1906 in the long-discontinued sport of rope climbing. The last time Greek gymnasts won medals in the gymnastics events that were contested here was in 1896 when Aristophoulos Petmetsas won a bronze on the horizontal bar and Ioannis Mitropoulos won a gold on the rings.

Unlike Melissanidis, they really were in Athens when they won their medals.