SKIP MYSLENSKI Reporter
The past is littered with athletes who failed under pressure, their breakdowns spread across sports from archery to wrestling.
Positioned under the hot glare of the spotlight, they failed or were transformed into churlish, uncommunicative, unappealing oafs.
Michael Phelps was at center stage through the first week of these Games, the spotlight continually trained on him. But a smile jumped onto his face the night he won his first gold medal, and there it stayed, an apt symbol of how he handled his daunting situation.
He was trying to rewrite history. He was constantly pulled, prodded and beseeched. But he never cracked–in the pool or under the peripheral demands placed on him.
His performances were memorable. His eight medals–six gold and two bronze–matched the single-Games record set 24 years ago by Soviet gymnast Aleksandr Dityatin.
But remembered most will be the way he comported himself during his eight days at the vortex, when he could have been pulled apart by the mania around him. Not only did he maintain an affable demeanor despite his hectic schedule, he also radiated joy while attempting a feat never before accomplished.
He had fun.
Phelps displayed the virtue Ernest Hemingway so admired–grace under pressure.
MIKE DOWNEY Columnist
I was sipping a Metaxa, which is a Greek drink that allegedly is a brandy but also could be useful as a NASA space shuttle fuel.
Bill Hancock, who helps run the NCAA Final Four basketball tournament back home, pulled up a chair.
“Did you hear the wild thing that happened at diving?” he asked.
I assured him that at no time in my 11 Olympics had I ever heard a wild thing that had happened at diving.
“A guy in a tutu jumped in,” he said.
OK, that qualified as wild.
Turned out a 31-year-old Canadian had bolted from a seat in the crowd and sprung from a 3-meter springboard while dressed in a blue tutu and white tights with polka dots.
A man in a robe 48 hours later gave the guy five months in a Greek jail. (By far the Olympics’ toughest judge.)
So far, 3-Meter Tutu Diving is not being considered for 2008 in Beijing.
SCOTT STRAZZANTE Photographer
My first Olympics were an incredibly rewarding experience.
I witnessed some of the Games’ most electric moments–the Olympic torch arriving at the Acropolis, Paul Hamm’s fall and comeback, Mariel Zagunis’ fencing gold, Michael Phelps’ unmatched athleticism and Rulon Gardner’s chill-inducing exit from wrestling.
But the single event that defined my stay in Athens happened the morning of Aug. 21. I was sent to Nikala Olympic Hall to photograph Group B of the men’s 85-kilogram weightlifting competition, which included American Oscar Chaplin III. The morning group was the less glamorous prelude to that evening’s marquee event featuring Greek national hero Pyrros Dimas.
As the event unfolded, I was struck by the determination exhibited by France’s David Matam. Something about his maximum effort, while having no realistic chance for a medal, seemed to embody the Olympic spirit.
On Matam’s last attempt to raise 167.5 kg, his personal best, he struggled, reached down for something extra and lifted the weight above his head. As the judges confirmed his successful lift, Matam dropped the weight and then jumped up and down as the bouncing barbell mimicked his action.
Less than an hour later, as I scrambled to catch a bus to my next assignment, I passed the athletes’ exit, where Matam was entertaining three Olympic volunteers. A true Olympian, indeed.
MARLEN GARCIA Reporter
Paul Hamm is not an emotional guy, at least not publicly. He politely answers questions and is businesslike with his gymnastics. That’s why I’ll never forget the look on his face after he fell on his vault landing in the men’s all-around competition.
He was crushed and on the verge of tears. He had never made such a big mistake in a major competition. Hamm dropped to 12th place from first and knew he would be lucky to win a bronze medal.
Others might have given up. Hamm decided a bronze medal was better than none. He performed spectacularly on parallel bars while his top competitors slipped, fell or missed badly on their dismounts in the final rotations.
Hamm had moved up to fourth place when he gripped the horizontal bar, his final apparatus of the competition. He proceeded to give the best performance of his career, hitting three consecutive release moves and sticking a flawless dismount. He earned a score of 9.837 and, more important, won all-around gold by 12/1,000ths of a point, the closest margin of victory in Olympic history.
His emotions poured out–disbelief, exhilaration and relief wrapped up in the expression of a 21-year-old who has devoted himself tirelessly to his sport. He had gone from playing games from ceiling rafters in an old barn in Waukesha, Wis., to an Olympic championship in Athens.
Protests and controversies ensued regarding a score judges gave bronze medalist Yang Tae Young of South Korea on parallel bars, but Hamm’s golden moment cannot be tarnished.
He pulled off one of the most dramatic and improbable comebacks in Olympic history. I’m so glad I was there to see it.
NUCCIO DiNUZZO Photographer
The spectators started making their way up the hill and down into the stadium at Olympia.
Some 15,000 people sat on the grassy slopes. There were no chairs, no scoreboards, no Jumbotrons, no lights, no seats. The washrooms were hundreds of meters away from the action.
This was the place where the Olympic Games originated in 776 B.C. This was the return of the Games to ancient Olympia. Except this time history was being made by allowing women to compete, and it was taking place in the shot put.
The competitors walked past the classical columns, through the archway that still remains and onto the field of play. It was truly a special moment for the athletes. With the temple of Zeus nearby, the historical significance of women competing for the first time made this event so special.
It was a hot, beautiful day, and the crowd enjoyed both the men’s and women’s competitions. And although the shot put event was never contested in antiquity, the setting was the same and the gods undoubtedly were watching over the Games.
And they were happy.
PHILIP HERSH Olympic sports reporter
Since the 1992 Summer Games in Barcelona, Spain, a few U.S. reporters have taken what now is a traditional lap around the Olympic Stadium track late on the night the track and field competition ends.
In an atmosphere of relative calm, it is a chance to freeze mental images that had blurred during the nine frenzied days of competition before roaring crowds.
Saturday night, while jogging and looking up at the strikingly beautiful roof, the image that came back was that of the 10 minutes before the men’s 100-meter final.
It is a time when the runners are getting their game faces on, mentally preparing for a race decided by such small margins–try to imagine 1/100th of a second–that any distraction could be costly.
At that moment, music from the film “Zorba the Greek” came over the loudspeakers, and the 62,000 fans began chanting and clapping to the accelerating rhythm of a Greek dance called the Syrtaki.
The runners could not resist the urge to join in. As the tempo increased, Maurice Greene of the U.S. stuck out his tongue and stomped in front of the blocks, Francis Obikwelu of Portugal turned to the crowd and did a couple of dance steps, Aziz Zakari of Ghana rocked his shoulders and head to the beat and Shawn Crawford chest-bumped with U.S. teammate Justin Gatlin.
The race that followed was stunning. The top four runners finished within 4/100ths of a second of each other in the fastest 100-meter race in Olympic history.
In a sports world of increasing seriousness, it was a flash of joy in the dash. A week later, even those of us running considerably slower could feel it as we crossed our finish line.
TOM HUNDLEY Foreign correspondent
Iraq’s return to Olympic soccer after a 16-year absence fell one victory short of a medal, but it was a giddy ride for a team that still bears the scars of torture inflected by the late Uday Hussein, son of Saddam and the former head of the national Olympic committee.
An hour before a qualifying match against Costa Rica, Karaiskaki Stadium was awash with excitement. Thousands of Iraqi expatriates living in Greece and thousands more from Germany, Belgium and Sweden had converged on Athens to cheer the team and to celebrate the extraordinary happenstance that Iraq, for once, actually had something of its own to cheer for.
The Iraqi fans I spoke with were eager to convey one thought: Whatever the differences may be between Sunnis and Shiites, Christians and Kurds, on this night all Iraqis were one.
The game was a good one. Two Iraqi goals sent the crowd into paroxysms of joy. The victory celebration lasted long into the night.
Some American tourists I spoke to the next day declared that they had been a little alarmed by the mobs of flag-waving young men who poured into Omonia Square screaming “Iraq! Iraq!” No one else seemed to mind.
A victory over Australia put a medal within Iraq’s grasp, but it slipped away with a lose to Italy.
The Olympic spirit is supposed to help bring the nations of the world together.
For a few memorable nights in Greece, it surely helped bring together one very broken nation.
TODD PANAGOPOULOS Olympic photo editor
The enthusiasm and pride the vast majority of Greeks exhibited in insuring the Olympics as well as our time in Greece was fulfilling will be a strong remembrance of the Games. Volunteers, taxi drivers, venue chiefs and Athenians on the street genuinely wanted to know how we were enjoying Greece and to make sure we had what we needed to do our jobs.
The Greek athletes fueled the passion of our hosts with their performances.
Though I was under the grandstands, the usual location of a photo editor on the road, as Fani Halkia of Greece ran away from the field in the women’s 400-meter hurdles to win gold, I could feel the rumble and emotion of the partisan Greek crowd above. When I came up into the stadium a few minutes later to retrieve more digital camera cards, I could still feel the excitement her victory had generated.
The eight-hour curse will be a valuable lesson to carry with us to the Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy. Months ago, while planning our Olympic coverage, the eight-hour time difference between Athens and Chicago appeared to be a blessing. There would be no real deadline pressure to rush our shooting or editing–a dream come true.
It didn’t take long to learn those eight hours would be a curse. As the Athens afternoon wound down into evening, the newsroom in Chicago was just getting going. By the time the late-night events were over, our Olympic photo team already had been working for 15 hours.
DAN MIHALOPOULOS Reporter
In their short-sleeved uniform shirts and royal blue shorts, the party of about a dozen Olympic volunteers stuck out among the sharply dressed crowd at the live-music club on Taki Street.
I had gone to Psirri, a gentrified neighborhood near the Acropolis, to hear rembetika music after a long, hot, dusty day covering the Olympics. Rembetika songs, often described as “the Greek blues” for their bittersweet musings on life and love, have become popular again in recent years with young Hellenes and were featured in Sunday’s closing ceremony.
The music, rooted in present-day Turkey, emerged in the seedy port of Athens during the 1920s among the Greek refugees who abandoned their homes in Asia Minor to escape massacre. Early Greek immigrants to America also loved rembetika. They relished listening to the haunting voices and melodies while they pined for the old country at smoky dens in Chicago’s Greektown and other immigrant enclaves across the country.
But the national tribulations that inspired the music belong to a time now far removed from the young volunteers in Psirri. The party bounced joyously in a line on the small dance floor in front of the band and in the narrow spaces between tables until almost 3 a.m.
I sent a bottle of wine to their table. When they came over to raise their glasses to my health, I congratulated them for their great work at the Olympics and for their obvious pride in being Greek. I also told them in Greek how deeply rembetika could touch their compatriots who live across the oceans.
“This music means a lot to us too,” said Constantina, a college student and volunteer from Larissa, Greece.
She then raised her right hand to her shirt, emblazoned with the olive-wreath logo of Athens 2004, and told me, “These songs are in our hearts.”
