Joanna Paliospirou has put us in touch with people who inspire through their personal stories because they have achieved something difficult and admirable despite adverse circumstances.
In her new podcast, she spoke with Stelios Malakopoulos, who after a very serious car accident in 2015, and while he was already involved in sports, had to have both legs amputated.
With the help of medical technology, prosthetic limbs specifically, he not only stood up and walked again, but was named world champion and "the best athlete with a disability in the country for 2020" in the Gazzetta Awards voting.
Only one of his numerous distinctions, at national and international level, he won on February 15, 2020 when, at the SEGAS indoor track day in Thessaloniki, with a performance of 7.10 metres he became the first athlete in history who with a double amputation exceeded 7 meters in the long jump.
What Joanna wrote about Stelios:
"His artificial limbs are his wings!
"What happened to Stelios Malakopoulos could happen to anyone. The point is that everyone reacted in such a BRAVE way!
"The world champion in athletics and holder of the T62 category long jump world record for below-the-knee double amputees is the new guest of Joanna Paliospirou, with the support of MSD GCC!"
Check out her new post:
37-year-old Efi Kakarantzoula was sentenced to 15 years in prison in October 2021 for the attempted murder of Joanna Paliospirou with acid in the Athens suburb of Kallithea in May 2020.
At the time, prosecutor Charalambos Mastrantonakis said the attacker executed her criminal plan “in a calculated manner. She had vile motives, murderous egoism and moral pettiness.”
He stressed that the type of acid that Kakarantzoula used and the way she executed her crime “leaves no doubt about her murderous intent.”
“The defendant did not want to ruin the face of Joanna [the victim], she ruined her life,” Mastrantonakis continued.
“When she threw the acid in her face, she accepted that it could be inhaled, swallowed, find its way to her trachea, and kill her,” he said, adding: “it was revenge that accepted the risk of death.”
Kakarantzoula claimed during the trial that she had no intent of killing Paliospirou.
She explained that stalked Paliospirou after suspecting her of dating a man with whom she had embarked on a sexual relationship in 2018.
She admitted to going to significant lengths to procure vitriol to the survivor’s place of work in an office building, saying she paid a man she met outside a shop in downtown Athens to get it for her.
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