Star Bulk veteran Spyros Capralos — a former athlete and long-standing sports functionary — won a big promotion within the International Olympic Committee (IOC) on Thursday.
The 70-year-old businessman had his term as IOC member extended for another four years and was elected for the first time to the sporting body’s executive board.
More than 90% of delegates voted in favour of Capralos at the 144th IOC Session in Costa Navarino — a Greek resort owned by the Konstantakopoulos family, which controls boxship firm Costamare.
“I am committed to give my best for the Olympic movement and to … support everything the IOC is doing,” Capralos said in a live webcast of the session.
The IOC is in charge of organising the Olympic Games and its executive board consists of 15 members that include the IOC president and its four vice presidents.
The IOC executive board is in charge of managing the sporting body’s affairs, including its administration and finances.
Capralos, a member of Greece’s national water polo team in the 1980 Moscow and 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, has had a long career as a sports functionary as a member of the IOC, president of the European Olympic Committees and president of the Hellenic Olympic Committee.
He had a hands-on, executive role in the 2004 Athens Olympics, serving as deputy chief operating officer of the Games’ organising committee under its president Gianna Angelopoulos-Daskalaki — whose husband Theodore Angelopoulos controls tanker owner Metrostar Management Corp.
Capralos’ high-profile sporting roles did not prevent the economist and MBA graduate from pursuing an equally illustrious business career.
Immediately after the Athens Olympics, he was appointed chairman of the Athens Stock Exchange and chief executive of the latter’s operating company Hellenic Exchanges — posts he held for six years.
Capralos became Star Bulk’s chief executive in 2011.
He switched to become non-executive chairman of its board of directors three years later, as part of the company’s transformation when US investment giant Oaktree Capital Management became the main shareholder.(Copyright)
