The summer of 2014 was amazing for the pole vault young Greek athlete George Triantafyllou. Having achieved a personal record of 4.95m in qualifying trials in Azerbaijan, he managed to qualify to Nanjing 2014 Youth Olympic Games. The 17 year old athlete from the Greek city of Thessaloniki performed well in Nanjing as well. He managed to qualify to the pole vault final and took the eighth position in the ranking.
A few weeks after his participation in the Nanjing Youth Olympic Games, George Triantafyllou spoke to chinaandgreece about his experience. As he says, ‘everything was organised very carefully in Nanjing’. In particular, he is impressed by the opening and closing ceremonies while he has 
personally benefited by socialising with athletes from various parts of the world during their common stay at the Olympic village. For a 17 year old athlete, ‘it is very important to be able to work together and meet international people during such a high level of organization’. From the perspective of George Triantafyllou, the Nanjing Youth Games can now function as a beacon to continue his hard word and manage to represent Greece in the Olympic Games in the future.
