A huge banner showing Fidel Castro at a chessboard marks the Cuban team housing in the Olympic Village.
A red London phone booth and cars painted in the colors of the Union Jack sit in front of the British delegation headquarters. Inflatable kangaroos hang from the Aussies’ apartment balconies.
All three countries–and nearly every other whose athletes have moved into the village north of Athens–also have hung at least one flag to show their national pride.
Small printed signs, in neutral colors with lettering that cannot be read beyond 20 feet, identify only the offices of what will be the largest delegation in the village, the United States Olympic team. Security officials told the athletes not to hang any U.S. flags on the outside of the buildings.
There was one small banner on a U.S. balcony. It shows a flying Canada goose and the legend, “Middle Mississippi River NWR.” It belongs to a man who would consider himself the unlikeliest person to be among the 500 U.S. athletes who will live in the village for the Olympics that open officially Friday night.
So if you ask Middle Mississippi River National Wildlife Refuge manager John Magera what he anticipated the experience would be like, the archer from Carterville in southern Illinois simply shrugs.
“I never really even considered being in a position to stay in an Olympic Village, because I didn’t think of myself as a person to be on an Olympic team,” Magera said.
Magera, father of three and a bow hunter for 25 years, had not shot an Olympic-style bow until a year ago, when he put his two older children, 12-year-old Amanda and 9-year-old Adam, into a Junior Olympic archery development program in Carbondale. He decided to learn about shooting with the Olympic equipment to help his kids master it.
“I never thought I would try it myself but within a few months I realized I was capable of shooting a very good score,” Magera said.
A few small competitions later, Magera found himself in the U.S. Olympic trials, where he stunned everyone by making the 2004 team with a third-place finish. The winner, Vic Wunderle, another southern Illinois archer, was individual silver medalist and team bronze medalist at the 2000 Games.
“It’s a lot to digest,” Magera, 34, said of suddenly winding up in the Olympics. “It’s one of those things if you stop and think about it, it might catch up with you.”
Instead of shooting at deer from 7 yards away in a tree stand, Magera is aiming at targets 70 meters (76.5 yards) away against archers whom he said can hit a quarter at 20 yards “over and over again.”
The other major difference is the physical strength necessary for an Olympic-style archer. A hunter with a longbow will release the arrow as soon it is pulled back to full pressure of 60 to 65 pounds. A competitive archer might hold the 50 pounds of pressure in his recurve bow 10 to 15 seconds to adjust aim. In a four-day tournament, men will pull and hold 15,500 pounds of bow pressure.
“My back and shoulders are so much stronger, I have gained 10 or 15 yards in my golf game,” Magera said.
The Olympics will be only the second international tournament for Magera, who finished 28th of 107 archers in his first such competition last month in Turkey.
No matter where he finishes, Magera may find it hard ever to top the experience of shooting in Athens, where the archery takes place in the elongated marble horseshoe of the 1896 Olympic stadium. Never before has this ancient discipline been given such venerable competitive surroundings.
“Archery should feel honored to have this venue,” Magera said.
He was talking at a table in the international zone at the village, where athletes come to shop, bank, get haircuts, use computers and meet the media. In the Internet cafe a few yards away, athletes from Benin, Latvia, Mongolia, Aruba, Venezuela, Tajikistan, South Korea and Italy were sitting side-by-side at computers.
Magera hasn’t been to any of those places, but the native Texan has been around. He moved 37 times as one of five children of a single mother who scraped up a living by fixing up tumbledown houses, living in them briefly and then selling them. The kids all worked on the projects.
“I lived without electricity, running water, heat and even indoor plumbing for sometimes months at a time,” Magera said. “We almost never had air conditioning or a phone in the house.”
So his Olympic Village apartment, no-frills as it is, seems perfectly comfortable to the 6-foot-4-inch, 200-pound Magera.
Each apartment suite has a small common room and four or five 12-foot-by-12-foot bedrooms with two single beds apiece. The air conditioning works so well some members of the U.S. delegation have turned it off, preferring the cool night air that drifts down from nearby Mt. Parnitha.
Just inside the village’s residential zone, where access is most tightly restricted, is what U.S. Olympic Committee village press officer Doug Haney called, “a reminder of where you are.” Excavation for the village uncovered an aqueduct built in A.D. 125 to bring water from Mt. Parnitha to all of Athens. A sign describing the aqueduct’s history was installed Sunday.
The village sprawls uphill from the international zone to the athletes’ recreation center, with its computers, massage rooms and video arcades. There are video games of each Olympic sport in its 2004 venue, accurate to acoustics reflecting crowd noise as it will be in the venues.
Next to the rec center are an outdoor training track, indoor fitness center and outdoor recreational pool. Monday morning, several athletes were floating on brightly colored inner tubes. The only thing missing from the resort atmosphere was an “umbrella drink,” but no alcohol is allowed in the village.
Adjacent to the village are training sites for 11 sports, including archery, gymnastics, swimming, weightlifting and track and field, meaning athletes can walk to practice if they want.
“Especially after all the hype that nothing would be ready, I expected it to be a nightmare, but it hasn’t been that way at all,” softball player Jessica Mendoza said as she checked e-mail in the U.S. athletes’ lounge.
The women’s softball team arrived July 29, quickly sized up the scope of the village and bought scooters for $25 dollars each. The Dutch athletes have bikes–painted orange, of course.
The U.S. softball players have left the village area only once, for a team dinner in the touristy Plaka area below the Acropolis. They were accompanied by Greek and U.S. security officials.
“It’s really good they are there, but it’s kind of funny too,” Mendoza said. “There were four or five of them, just sitting across from us, looking so obvious.
“It made me wonder what it is like for a person like Chelsea Clinton. Can you imagine that every day of your life?”
In a two-hour walk through the most restricted areas of the village, security was virtually invisible. During that time, two soldiers and one police vehicle were the only moving patrols.
“All of us feel really secure,” said U.S. soccer player Abby Wambach. “You see Greek soldiers with guns in tents (at the entrances to the training complex). You know there is a lot more you don’t see.”
The village, which will become mixed-income public housing after the Olympics, has an air of wonderland. What was a dirt lot Saturday had grass being watered by sprinklers Monday.
“It’s like a college campus where you don’t have to go to class,” Magera said.
“It’s overwhelming walking around,” Mendoza said. “You see countries with only four athletes, and it kind of blows you away.”
Everyone attends a world cultures class without even knowing it.
