FEBRUARY 10 - SPYROS KAPRALO (pictured), the chairman of the Athens Stock Exchange, today won a bitter battle against Minos Kyriakou to become the new president of the Hellenic Olympic Committee.

 

The 53-year-old, a former water polo player who represented Greece in the 1980 and 1984 Olympics, beat Kyriakou by 18 votes to 11.

 

The 66-year-old Kyriakou, one of the richest men in Greece whose Antenna Group is the largest media company in the country, had held the post for four years.

 

The build-up to the election had been overshadowed the discovery of what police believed to be a covert listening device in the Athens office of Kyriakou.

 

The case is still under investigation.

 

Kapralo was the general secretary for the Olympic Games of the Ministry of Culture and then the executive director and deputy chief operating officer for the Athens organising committee in the four-year period in the build-up to the 2004 Olympics.

 

Kapralo, who was also Greece's Chef de Mission at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, was appointed chairman of the Athens Stock Exchange after the Athens Games.

 

Last year he was also elected chairman of the Federation of European Securities Exchanges.

 

After being elected president of the HOC, Kapralo said: "Honouring your trust, I would like to reassure you that I will try with all my strength to live up to this high post of sport.

 

"I request form you to work with us all together with consensus and unanimity, pushing aside whatever differences of the past, far from party blinkers and political expediencies, to enable us to make the Greek Olympic Committee the reality that we are dreaming of and that suits it."

 

Greek sport has been bedevilled by a series of doping scandals in recent years.

 

Kostas Kederis, the Olympic 200 metres champion, and Ekaterina Thanou, who had won the silver medal in the 100m at the Sydney Games in 2000, were both forced to withdraw from Athens on the eve of the opening ceremony after missing a series of out-of-competition drugs tests.

 

Then a number of other top Greeks tested positive in the build-up to the Games, including Olympic 400m hurdles champion Fani Halki, who was banned for two years.

 

She was one of 19 Greek sportsmen and women who  tested positive last year for the anabolic steroid methyltrienolone.

 

Kapralo said: "Our mission is difficult.

 

"Greek Sport has been experiencing a crisis over the past years.

 

"I believe, however, that with methodical and collective work we shall be led to the positive results that we are all seeking."

 

Kyriakou, a member of the ruling Council of the International Association of Athletics Federations, where he sits alongside London 2012 chairman Sebastian Coe, was philosphical about his defeat.

 

He said: "In life there is victory and defeat.

 

"I experienced both the one and the other.

 

"I am looking ahead.

 

"Greek sport is living and will live whether it is Kyriakou or anybody else.

 

"I am leaving satisfied with a very good tenure, from an Olympic Committee that also has a dowry at this moment. - almost 9 million Euros (£7.9 million).

 

"When I took over I found 126,000 Euros (£111,976).

 

"I wish all the best to all."