Pchab aspires to document the career of the wrestler and weightlifter Panagis Coutalianos, the "New Hercules" of his time. We welcome like-minded souls helping us enrich the historical profile of this great athlete by tracking his adventures around the world.
Pchab aspires to document the career of wrestler and weightlifter Panagis Koutalianos, the "New Hercules" of his time. We welcome like-minded souls helping us enrich the historical profile of this great athlete by tracking his adventures in Europe and North and South America.
Pchab aspires to document the career of wrestler and weightlifter Panagis Koutalianos, the "New Hercules" of his time. We welcome like-minded souls helping us enrich the historical profile of this great athlete by tracking his adventures in Europe and North and South America.

Panagis Coutalianos

The Man

As the strongest athlete of his time, Panagis Coutalianos (1847-1916) is deserving of far more fame than he ever received. Exploiting his profession as sailor, he traveled most of the world, seeking out would-be competitors for public tests of strength in every port. Impossible to defeat in the ring, he overcame dozens of famous strongmen. He shouldered weights that would defeat any modern weightlifter.
Coutalianos was more vulnerable outside the ring, however. Famous athletes shrank from his challenge, avoiding the risk of defeat while maligning or minimizing him in the local press. Panagis grew up in the second half of the 19th century as a Greek in the Ottoman Empire. Nationalism was the dominant ideology of that time, with new nations embracing warfare as the path to successful statehood. Weightlifters and wrestlers became "flag bearers" of their ethnic groups, symbolizing the power of their nation. An athlete who appeared on stage lifting huge weights or winning wrestling matches evoked national pride in his compatriots, and ideally awe in his country’s rivals.
Greece, Coutalianos’s chosen homeland, drew glory and greatness from the distant historical past, but it was a newborn country, small and poor, with a national diaspora then politically insignificant. Greece’s relative obscurity is a key reason Panagis Coutalianos's achievements never earned him the leading place his name deserves in the world sports bibliography. So this blog, by gradually marshalling the historical data that modern digital technology makes accessible, aspires to restore a famous Greek athlete to where he belongs, on the podium of world champion.

The autobiography of Coutalianos, as it was published by his sons in the USA and edited by the scholar G. Kastritsis.

Coutalianos

Introductory statements

Some intresting details “Ι wonder how, without knowing me, you described me so accurately.” Th. Valtinos, Three portraits, ed. Kastaniotis,

Introductory statements

Some intresting details “Ι wonder how, without knowing me, you described me so accurately.” Th. Valtinos, Three portraits, ed. Kastaniotis,

Introductory statements

Some intresting details “Ι wonder how, without knowing me, you described me so accurately.” Th. Valtinos, Three portraits, ed. Kastaniotis,

Latest News

A show that concerns us

Itinerant wrestlers and weightlifters like Coutalianos and the weight of history they carry “…With the wild beasts of my soul set free I will paint one more time, upon you with a black seashell the

Read More

A show that concerns us

Itinerant wrestlers and weightlifters like Coutalianos and the weight of history they carry “…With the

Introductory photo for the Athens Concert Hall performance

A show that concerns us

Itinerant wrestlers and weightlifters like Coutalianos and the weight of history they carry “…With the

Map

The isle of Coutalis (Ekinlik adasi)

Some historical information for browsers The inhabitants of Coutalis settled in various parts of the Greek territory and the USA.

Polish wrestler (painted by Kostas Michos), oil on canvas, 123x83cm/ 2022

Thesaurus (treasure) magazine

An autobiographical version “Hope is the tendency to forget the trap.” Nick Karouzos The old Greek magazine “Thesauros” (December 25,

1870. Panagis in Bordeaux

The wrestling school of Bernard Magnelle and the participation of the Greek athlete in the Franco-Prussian war. “If you look

Τhe novel entitled “Coutalianos” by the author Edmond Laniel.