Greece's Olympic spirit dims

Aeolos, the Greek god of wind, is clearly not a sports fan. When international competitors tried to christen Athens' Olympic rowing lake last week, he sent ferocious August gusts, known here as meltemia, to blow them right out of the water.

As Denis Oswald, second in command at the International Olympic Committee (IOC), hunkered down in a tent to put an upbeat spin on this disastrous first test event for the 2004 Games, the winds roared so loudly that no one could hear him.

The $91 million rowing complex, built amid strong opposition in the ecologically fragile coastal area of Skinias, was the one place where Athens organizers needed everything to go right. But on this same beach where Persian King Darius's plans for conquering Athens went awry 2 1/2 millennia ago, the IOC fared little better.

With a year to go until the Olympic torch is lit, more and more Greeks are questioning whether they want to bring the Games back to the country where they were born. Soaring costs and broken promises have sent a wave of disillusionment through Greece that could dampen the Olympic spirit. The malaise is most apparent in the shortage of volunteers, whose assistance is crucial to the event's success, organizers say.

The Sydney 2000 Games raised the bar for host cities as IOC chiefs, commentators, and athletes saluted the volunteer corps there, dubbed "47,000 heroes" by the Australian press. Athens set its sights on creating a pool of 150,000 applicants to whittle down to 60,000 trustworthy helpers. But the eager deluge never arrived, and organizers have relied on nearly 30,000 applicants from abroad to boost the ranks.

Olga Kikou, manager of volunteers for the Athens Organizing Committee (ATHOC) remains confident, insisting that a total of 90,000 people have signed up.

"What they don't tell you is that more than half of these will drop out," says Roi Panagiotopoulou, an associate professor of media at Athens University. "The Olympics differ from other mega-events, as they are based on an ideal. They rely on these thousands of crazy people who rush to volunteer," she says. "But in Greece we have no tradition of volunteering."

Olympic planners had to start from scratch to persuade Greeks to give freely of their time, and it has proved a tough task.

"Greeks are smart, and if they felt there was something in it for them, they'd be quick to get involved," says Professor Panagiotopoulou, who has written a history of volunteerism in the Olympic movement. The overnight creation of a corporation like ATHOC, employing more than 2,000 on international-scale salaries, has stirred resentment in a low-wage economy. "No one wants to be the malakas, the sucker, working for free," says Panagiotopoulou.

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