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Source: Greece at the 2008 Summer Olympics

Greece, the previous host of the 2004 Olympics at Athens, competed at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, People's Republic of China. They were represented by the Hellenic Olympic Committee, which announced on July 28, 2008, the 156 Greek athletes to compete in Beijing, composed of 84 men and 72 women, the largest Greek Olympic team ever excluding the home team of the Athens 2004 Olympics. Greece took part in archery, athletics, basketball, boxing, canoeing, cycling, diving, gymnastics, judo, rowing, sailing, shooting, swimming, synchronized swimming, table tennis, taekwondo, tennis, triathlon, beach volleyball, water polo, weightlifting and wrestling.
As the progenitor nation of the Olympic Games, and in keeping with tradition, Greece entered the Beijing National Stadium first during the opening ceremony, led by the judoka Ilias Iliadis, who won a gold medal at the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens.
The Greek team was originally awarded two silver and two bronze medals. In all four medal cases there was participation by athletes who were also medalists at the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens (in the case of groups, at least one of their members was a former medalist).
Alexandros Nikolaidis won a second Olympic silver medal, Vasileios Polymeros was second after his third place in Athens (along with Dimitrios Mougios), while the golden medalist of 2004 Sofia Bekatorou led the yngling class team to the third place. Hrysopiyi Devetzi was third, but eight years later (2016) she was disqualified by IAAF and the IOC and had her Olympic bronze medal annulled due to stanozol use.