When the International Olympic Committee chose Athens as host of the 2004 Summer Olympics, there were immediate concerns over whether a city still emerging from the 19th Century would be ready to meet the enormous task of staging what the Olympics have become in the 21st.
Five years after that IOC vote but less than two years from the Aug. 13, 2004, Opening Ceremony, the same doubts exist.
When an IOC inspection team arrives Wednesday for one of its periodic checks on Athens’ progress, it will find a city that looks like the world’s largest construction site.
“It’s like the whole of Athens is one [Olympic] venue,” said Gianna Angelopoulos-Daskalaki, president of the Athens Olympic Organizing Committee.
All the digging and accompanying dust seem to have had minimal effect on Athens’ laggard Olympic construction schedule but have added to its lamentable status as one of the most polluted, traffic-snarled, pedestrian-unfriendly and shadeless cities in Europe.
A recent visitor was left to wonder how the city could ever have been chosen as 2004 host, even if it was the home of the ancient Olympics and the first modern Olympics in 1896.
A few hours spent in the ruins of the Agora, or marketplace, provided at least one clue.
Forgive this lapse into Byronesque romanticism, a nearly inevitable reaction to standing amidst the glory that was ancient Greece, with the emphasis on ancient.
One cannot help but feel goose bumps imagining the Olympic torch carried in the darkness up the Panathenaic Way to the Parthenon, like the processions in the ancient Panathenaic Festival, then passing the massive columns of the Temple of Olympian Zeus and the Panathenaic Stadium of the 1896 Games before heading toward the modern Olympic Stadium.
Of course, once the torch gets there, the torch-bearer may have to dodge bulldozers working on a reconstruction project that seems unlikely to be done even months after its projected December 2003 completion. This week, it was reported that the Olympic Stadium’s planned dome may be scrapped because of delays.
Angelopoulos-Daskalaki is fond of saying, “Miracles happen in Greece.” Greek Premier Costas Simitis told Athens Olympic organizers two weeks ago it will be necessary to “take drastic action where needed” to meet construction deadlines.
A gypsy shantytown sits across the road encircling the Olympic complex, which includes the main stadium, pools, tennis courts, gymnastics and basketball arenas and velodrome. The gypsies will be given six months to move before the area is converted to Olympic use, likely for parking and sponsor hospitality.
The shanties represent the overall picture of Athens, and it isn’t pretty.
Athens still is trying to cope with its explosive growth after each of the two World Wars, which turned the city from a backwater of 300,000 people in 1920 to a metropolis approaching 4 million inhabitants.
According to the Greek office of Greenpeace, Athens is the “European Union champion in ozone pollution and one of the worst in pollution of small, pending particles.” Greece’s National Center for Social Research noted a “mere 5 percent” of Athens’ urban agglomeration is used for recreation and sports facilities.
In the face of such evidence, Athens’ Olympic and political leaders look 1,200 miles west to Barcelona, Spain, for hope.
Barcelona suffered four decades of similar neglect and deterioration under the dictatorship of Francisco Franco. Seventeen years after Franco’s death, the 1992 Olympics became key to the transformation of the city, especially its waterfront, roads, internationalization and economic competitiveness.
An economic analysis of the Barcelona Games said the city went from “depression to boom” from the time it won the Olympics in 1986 to 1992. Despite a general economic crisis that followed, Barcelona still is capitalizing on the improved infrastructure and civic image the Olympics catalyzed.
“Barcelona is Mediterranean, it has similarities,” Angelopoulos-Daskalaki said. “The day after, like in Barcelona, we believe will be the same. Athens will be a different city.
“A project that should have been completed in 10 years will be completed for 2004. A project that might never have been completed will be done for 2004.”
Barcelona, like Athens, looked as if it never would be ready for the Olympics.
Former IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch issued stern warnings to Barcelona when it had fallen behind Olympic building schedules. Samaranch went a step further with Athens, saying in April 2000 its Olympic organization was the worst he had seen in 20 years as IOC president.
A month later, the woman called “Mrs. Olympics” was back on the job.
Angelopoulos-Daskalaki had led Greece’s successful bid for the Games, then stepped away as the factions she united to get the Olympics resumed their bickering.
“I was angry at my country,” Angelopoulos-Daskalaki said. “I believed my country can deliver with the right people and the right leadership in place.”
Some Greeks fear the delivery will require 11th-hour deals that will haunt the country. The overall Olympic budget–operations and infrastructure–has doubled since 1997 projections and is believed to be near $6 billion.
“We are worried the government will throw money at construction in the end, and we will have to pay for it for years,” said Nico Pappas, an Athens attorney.
Athens provides an important litmus test for the IOC, which wants to have an Olympics in Africa or South America as soon as feasible. Greece, with 11 million people, is the least-populous host nation since Australia in 1956 and the poorest since Mexico in 1968.
“As a David, not a Goliath of the world, we want to show that the Olympics are not just for people who are very strong and very wealthy,” Angelopoulos-Daskalaki said. “This is something the IOC [also] wants to prove.”
The proof remains absent in many areas. While the Olympic athletes’ village is ahead of schedule, and a new airport and subway lines are up and running, construction of other venues has been halted or slowed by disputes with environmentalists, archeologists and even private pilots. They have fought the closing of a runway at Athens’ old airport, where hangars and runways are to be transformed into venues for seven sports.
The constant battles frustrate Olympic officials like Yannis Synodinos. He grumbles about the archeologists who have tried to stop work at the rowing venue after excavation turned up Bronze Age artifacts.
“No one spent any money on digging there until we did,” Synodinos said.
Construction is far from the only concern. Others are heat, traffic congestion and terrorism.
The coordinated Olympic traffic plan may be hard to enforce in an Athens where people already sidestep odd-even driving restrictions based on license plates by having two cars, one with a plate ending in an even number and another in an odd number.
The 15 arrests since late June of members of the November 17 terrorist group, including its reputed leader, led the Greek government to say the group no longer is a threat to the Olympics after 27 years of killings and attacks.
That may be overly optimistic, given that many young, educated Athenians who reject terrorism still look at November 17 as a Robin Hood because of the group’s philosophical opposition to superpower politics.
“But even for those Greeks who are angry about politics and worry that we will be paying off the Olympics for 30 years, there is something spiritual and symbolic about the Games,” said Demie Hatzi, an Athens TV newscaster.
