With a lot of feeling and risk, Sideris Tasiadis crowned the dance on the waves with an Olympic bronze.

The canoe specialist won the first medal in Tokyo on Monday at the Kasai Canoe Slalom Center for the German Canoe Association (DKV).

At the same time, it was the third precious metal for the entire German Olympic team.

After finishing sixth in the preliminaries and in the semifinals, the 31-year-old from Augsburg paddled on attack and was rewarded again with precious metal after silver in 2012 in London.

The police officer only had to admit defeat to the new Olympic champion Benjamin Savsek from Slovenia and Lukas Rohan from the Czech Republic.

The world number one was 5.45 seconds short of the longed-for gold medal because Tasiadis had problems at gate 19 on his final drive and lost a lot of time there.

Otherwise, he remained flawless and, in front of IOC President Thomas Bach, took the lead after five out of ten starters.

But he had to give up first place again and shiver to the end.

In the end he raised both fists in relief and hugged the ones in front of him.

"Work your life towards it"

As a lucky charm, he had a little plush meerkat from friend Denise's with him.

The mascot named Freddy was just as lucky as his tattoo that he stabbed himself ahead of the London games in 2012.

Motif: the Olympic rings.

“It was a big dream of mine to be able to start there.

You work your whole life towards it.

It brought luck. "

For the renewed coup in the Olympic Canal, he had left nothing to chance.

He wanted to avoid the bitter moments in Rio 2016, when he set the fastest time in qualifying and in the semifinals and then missed the medal in fifth by 46 hundredths of a second with a careless mistake in the upper section of the route.

The old hand, who was born and raised in Augsburg and whose parents come from Komara near Orestiada in northeastern Greece, converted a boat for this purpose. “I just took a kayak and converted it into a C1.” Advantage: It turns better and is more responsive. "I assumed that the routes would get more and more difficult, so you also need a very good boat that turns quickly, it works really well." There was also a new paddle that weighs only 250 grams. The advantage paid off.

Also curious: Tasiadis was the last to get the Tokyo ticket in the four-person slalom team. At the European Championships in Ivrea, Italy, he showed strong nerves and prevailed against world champion Franz Anton from Leipzig. Since then, he has continued to work on technical components and improved many small construction sites. He himself is his greatest critic. He got the finishing touches for Tokyo from the experienced head coach Klaus Pohlen, who recently even acted as Sid's exercise bike, as Tasiadis is called in the team.

Tasiadis sat in the boat for the first time when he was eleven years old. “I had never known the sport before, although I was born and raised in Augsburg. Canoe slalom wasn't really a concept for me ”, he said and added logically:“ Like every young person I was playing soccer on the football field. ”Thanks to his sports instructor Klaus Gebhard, he got into canoe slalom. He led him over.

Already in his youth he learned to paddle under pressure in a playful way. He even made bets with him to motivate him. In order to get the feeling and the eye for the water, Gebhard drove with his protégés to Slovenia or France on wild rivers during the holidays. Even then, Tasiadis learned to drive with foresight. This means that he can work his way through difficult stretches quickly: “It has little to do with canoe slalom. But we learned to read the water. "