Downey’s Eleven:
To some, Athens 2004 will go down in history as the “Good Seats Available Games.”
Every event is SRO–sitting room only.
Volleyball has had a half-full hall. I saw bigger crowds at my Delta Air Lines gate.
Softball’s ticket sales: 50 percent. Boxing: 40. Table tennis, team handball, weightlifting: 30.
Hot stuff on TV, beach volleyball drew 3,569 Thursday afternoon to a venue with a capacity of 7,424.
(Although a night session did pack ’em in as snugly as an Olympian’s bikini.)
A hot-ticket event at any Olympics, gymnastics is held in an arena that seats 15,079. Tickets sold on Carly Patterson’s gold-medal night: 11,204.
Track and field’s first full day Friday attracted a crowd that you could transport to and from the stadium inside a Trojan Horse.
Swimming and basketball have done best. A hoops session with Euro neighbors like Italy and Spain did a so-so 80 percent business, but a 9 a.m. start affected that.
I think that Greece is doing a great job thus far at organizing and executing these Summer Olympics.
Now it needs to find a way to put some Athenians in the seats.
2. Cheerleaders in thongs–if more, just barely–dance at beach volleyball. High jumper Amy Acuff and other athletes are nude in Playboy. Gold-medal swimmer Amanda Beard is nearly so in Maxim and FHM. Gold-medal swimmer Kaitlin Sandeno and other Olympians posed for Stuff magazine in lingerie.
Forget empty seats–this is turning into the “Girls Gone Wild!” Games.
3. Athens organizers tried to ban this issue of Playboy because the pictures “offended the symbols of the Olympic Games, the Games themselves as an institution and the organizers,” according to Playboy’s legal counsel in this neck of the woods, Stelios Michalopoulos.
Wasn’t it in Greece where the Olympians competed in the buff?
What next–paint pants on all the statues?
4. I met a Finn who told me: “Things look very bad for my Finland.”
“They do?” I asked.
“Since our first Olympics in 1908,” he said, “we have never not won a gold.”
From a high of 15 gold medals in 1920, the Finns have slid to single golds in 1988, 1992 and 1996 and two in 2000. They have been blanked in Athens, and prospects look bleak.
Finnish-Americans, hang in there. There has to be a Paavo Nurmi or Lasse Viren out there someplace.
5. They’re young. They’re restless. They’re focused.
And like most Olympian horses, they will give 110 percent out there.
“My horse hasn’t competed since February, but he gave me all he had to give,” said U.S. equestrian Lisa Wilcox after Friday’s team dressage. “He is not tired, not bored and has a good attitude.”
Attaboy.
Nina Stadlinger of Austria: “I was very tense, and so was my horse. He can feel he is in a big event, and the crowd made him nervous.”
Raphael Soto of Spain: “I have a super horse. He was with me 50 percent. The other 50 percent, I was trying not to disturb him.”
Guenter Seidel of the U.S.: “He pretty much stayed in focus. This is his first Olympic Games. and I must say, he is on the right track.”
6. Send a search party for a Mr. Carmelo Anthony, reputed to be a big U.S. basketball star.
Anthony’s point total in three games is zero. He played just 3 minutes 39 seconds of Game 1, then 5:21 in Game 2 and all of 2:06 in Game 3.
If we get a gold medal, looks like it won’t be from a Denver Nugget.
7. Paul Hamm lost his Olympic credential on the way back to the Athletes Village.
A security guard asked Hamm what was around his neck.
“A gold medal,” he said.
The guard said: “Go ahead.”
8. Absolutely nothing about Michael Phelps in today’s column. You’re welcome.
9. When somebody asked a typically inane question, “If you could have dinner with any three people, who would it be?” U.S. softball outfielder Kelly Kretschman batted it back this way:
“Vin Diesel, Donald Duck and a clone.”
10. A movie marquee in Athens is featuring “The Terminal” with “Tom Xanke.” I don’t know about you, but I have always been a huge Tom Xanke fan.
11. No word yet whether a Los Angeles Times reporter has contacted a Greek buildings commissioner about a rumor of crumbling concrete and “shoddy” construction work at the Parthenon.
