Greece's Olympic spirit dims

The government and ATHOC have launched a barrage of advertising to change perceptions, with slogans such as: "The Olympic Works: They are for us! And they're staying with us!" But the early signs from seven August test events support the skeptics. According to Greek daily Elef-therotypia, a quarter of volunteers who had signed up either failed to show or went AWOL during the first events.

Tassos Telloglou, one of Greece's leading investigative reporters, believes the discontent being witnessed in the volunteer campaign can be traced back to the deal made between the IOC and the government when Athens won the Games in 1997.

Using its income from the commercial exploitation of the Games, the IOC paid close to $1 billion to set up and run ATHOC, which provides planning, expertise, and staff to prepare and stage the event. Greek taxpayers pick up the tab for everything else - from construction of sports arenas to transport infrastructure and security. Part of the winning Greek bid was the assertion that more than two-thirds of the venues were already in place. But inspections later revealed that many of these venues didn't meet the standards of the IOC, which retained most of decisionmaking authority. So now the part that is "staying with us" has more and more to do with handball venues and less to do with metro stations.

In the original bid, plans were laid out to build three much-needed bridges across the city's choked main artery. Only one of these projects made it off the drawing board. A suburban rail network has been been halved, extensions to the metro system have been shelved, and the thousands of trees promised to add greenery to Athens's concrete landscapes are nowhere to be seen.

In the meantime, security costs for the Games have exploded, due to global terrorism concerns after 9/11. Greek appeals to the IOC for help fell on deaf ears, and now the country's total security expenses will reach $600 million, more than double what Sydney spent three years ago.

For Thanos Veremis, director of the state-funded think tank ELIAMEP, the project all adds up to a costly white elephant. "At what price is all this done? he asks. "In a couple of years from now we will face a crisis when works have finished."

The government recently capped official spending for the Games at $5.1 billion. But a senior cabinet minister, speaking privately, said the real figure is closer to $12 billion, almost 15 percent of GDP.

"We were very naive at the beginning," says Telloglou. "A small country is not able to pay for an event of this kind."

Meanwhile, Nikos Haralambidis, director of Greenpeace Greece, says that earlier loud talk of "green Games" has hushed to a whisper. Environmental groups say they gave up trying to work with ATHOC after their input was ignored. "Sydney got six marks out of 10," says Haralambidis. "Athens will only get one."

Page: 1 | 2