Everywhere in Athens are signs that read, “Welcome Home.” The greeting is not designed for visitors but for an idea and an ideal, both of which might seem foreign and outdated in nearly every other place but Greece.
When the 2004 Olympics open Friday night, with ceremonies that will draw heavily on the myths of prehistory, the Greeks will be trying to convince the world that an ethos of sport they created 2,780 years ago can be meaningfully revived by bringing it back to its roots.
In the process, Greece wants to prove to the world, as it did in playing host to the Olympic revival in 1896, that it should be recognized for more than its ancient glories.
“The 1896 Games were important for two reasons,” said Alexander Kitroeff of Haverford College, author of “Wrestling with the Ancients.” “Modern Greek identity is based on the concept of continuity with ancient Greece, and the 1896 Olympics connected modern with ancient.
“Almost more important was that Greece, a small European country, was playing host to the world–then as now.”
The Games began in 776 B.C. as a small element of a religious celebration at Olympia, 240 miles west of Athens. Now they are a gigantic celebration of sport, which has become a world religion.
The transformation has included going from one event, the stadion run, that was the lone athletic contest in the first 14 Ancient Olympiads, to the 300 events in 28 sports that will take place before the 28th modern Olympiad ends Aug. 29. It has left little place for the ancient notion of competition as a noble struggle in which fair play will be the ultimate victor.
Weighed down by commercialism, corruption and widespread doping by elite athletes–notably, of late, some of the United States’ track and field stars–the Olympics have lurched into the 21st Century, where the fear of terrorism is so great the Greek government is spending $1.3 billion on Olympic security.
Amid it all, there is an obvious appeal to what seem like simpler times, even if it means reaching back to antiquity for inspiration.
“People believe in the Olympics because they refer to some sort of purity in the past that can be a counterweight to the problems plaguing the Olympics in the present,” Kitroeff said. “Athens 2004 is a way to connect with those traditions, even if there are a lot of cynics who think this is all smoke and mirrors.”
So the Olympic torch relay, an idea created for the 1936 Nazi Olympics in Berlin, made its penultimate stop at the Acropolis, leaving the flame burning there Thursday night. The bicycle road races will use a circuit of loops below the Parthenon, greatest of the architectural glories that were Greece. And the men’s and women’s shot put events will take place Wednesday in the stadium at ancient Olympia.
But with the BALCO doping scandal having brought down several Olympic and world medalists, it’s telling that NBC no longer is featuring Marion Jones, star of the Sydney Games, or track and field to promote its 1,210 hours of TV coverage on several over-the-air and cable networks in the U.S. Swimmer Michael Phelps, who has a chance to win gold medals in eight events, is the U.S. face of these 2004 Games.
“This is something none of us is proud of,” said Herman Frazier, a two-time Olympic runner who is chief of the U.S. track and field delegation, referring to the doping problems in U.S. track and field. “It’s unfortunate we end up with this matter taking so much time from sports and athletes in the Olympic Games.”
There will be 10,500 athletes from 202 nations competing in Athens–three more countries than at Sydney in 2000. Kiribati, a South Pacific archipelago, is the newest Olympic nation. East Timor, which competed as a provisional member under the Olympic flag four years ago, has full member status.
Afghanistan’s Olympic committee, banned when the ruling Taliban deprived women of a chance to play sports, was reinstated once the Taliban was overthrown.
Iraq, whose government was ousted by a U.S.-led attack, has athletes competing in Athens despite constant turmoil at home. Soccer player Hadir Lazame will carry the Iraqi flag in the Opening Ceremonies. Iraqi soccer players often were tortured for poor performance under the Hussein regime, when one of Saddam’s sons, Uday, was head of the Iraqi Olympic Committee and soccer federation.
“Through sports, we aim to seize peace,” said Ahmed Al-Samarrai, president of the new Iraqi Olympic Committee. “We want to live like the rest of the world. Risk is everywhere: London, New York, Jordan, but here is something completely different. It is a sports event, a peace event.”
During the ancient Olympics, a monthlong truce was imposed, with some effect, to allow athletes from the frequently warring city states of ancient Greece and neighboring nations to travel safely to and from the Games. The IOC has revived the idea of the Olympic truce, to little effect on the state of the world.
The most significant image related to the truce concept was that of North and South Korea marching together in the 2000 Opening Ceremonies. They will do so again Friday.
When the torch leaves the Acropolis on Friday morning and is carried through the ruins of the ancient agora before moving across the city to the Olympic Stadium, the runners will pass through an Athens utterly changed by the impetus of being Olympic host.
At a cost variously placed between $7 billion and $11 billion, Athens has modernized infrastructure that seemed contemporary to the 1896 Olympic stadium, where the marathons will finish–as the inaugural marathon, for men, did 108 years ago.
Three years ago Athens attorney Nico Pappas said in a Tribune interview, “We are worried the government will throw money at construction in the end, and we will have to pay for it for years.”
The first part of Pappas’ prediction has been realized, as the state spared no expense in finishing work that had been allowed to languish for much of the first six years after Athens was awarded the 2004 Games.
“I think it is worth it,” Athens Mayor Dora Bakoyanni said. “I believe people will admit the city is not only one with ancient monuments.”
U.S. Olympic Committee Chairman Peter Ueberroth, who ran the stunningly successful 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, said Thursday that Athens has “completed the first step in its miracle. . . . The first gold medal has been won already by the organizing committee and people of Greece.”
The ancient Olympic Games lasted 1,100 years before the Roman emperor Theodosius abolished them as pagan rites in A.D. 393. Another millennium and a half passed before a French baron, Pierre de Coubertin, proposed the idea of reviving them in 1900 in his hometown, Paris. The Greeks jumped in and agreed to be hosts four years earlier.
“The Greeks have a visceral relationship with the Olympics,” Kitroeff said. “They are committed to preserving their purity.”
About 245 athletes from 14 nations came to compete in the 43 events of the first modern Olympics. As in the ancient Games, there were no women competitors in 1896. There will be some 4,000 women competitors in 2004.
“I’m excited about being in the birthplace of the Olympic Games and the birthplace of democracy,” said U.S. soccer star Mia Hamm, one of the most renowned female athletes.
Welcome home, indeed. Some ideas change for the better.
Our 10-page Olympic preview, including event capsules and TV schedule, has everything you’ll need to enjoy the Games. Iraqi men’s soccer team stuns Portugal.
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