Diamanto Evripidou

Evripidou was the national senior champion of Cyprus in 2016.^[4]

She broke her right leg in May 2016, which took her five months to recover from, and then broke the left in December 2016 or January 2017.^[3][5] Her left leg was very weak after her cast was removed, and she found the experience mentally difficult.^[3] She attributed her frequent injuries to training in a gym with poor temperatures and without a sprung floor as well as overtraining.^[3][6]

Evripidou recovered in time to compete at the 2017 European Championships in Budapest, Hungary, where her best result was place 24th in the ribbon qualifications. Later that year, she competed at the 2017 World Championships in Pesaro, Italy and placed 42nd in the all-around qualification.^[1]

She took a year off from secondary school to increase her training time and lived for six weeks in Larnaca at the house of Chrystalleni Trikomiti, her other coach, to prepare for the 2018 Commonwealth Games. The gym there had sprung floors.^[6]

At the Games, she won six medals, one in every event: four golds in the team, all-around, hoop and ball events, silver in ribbon and bronze in the clubs event.^[2] Evripidou expressed shock at her results, saying, "I came here to win one medal and now I have six." This was the first time Cyprus had won a gold medal in the Commonwealth Games team event.^[7] Her success meant that Cyprus won more medals at a Commonwealth Games (eight) than it ever had before.^[8]

Although she had said her dream was to compete at the 2020 Summer Olympics,^[7] she announced her retirement from competitive sport in June 2019 via her Instagram profile.^[9]

• Diamanto Evripidou on Instagram
• Diamanto Evripidou at the International Gymnastics Federation