Chance for Athens to meet the challenge of history

By EUGENE BINGHAM in Athens

Hello, Athens, remember me? I was here about seven weeks ago. You looked a little different then. To be honest, it's hard to recognise you. It's almost as if the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has hijacked the real Athens and replaced you with an imposter.

There's not as much traffic and most of the dusty building work that was going on is finished, despite some dire predictions.

Okay, so there's a bit of scaffolding cluttering up the place, like on those buildings up on the Acropolis. But, hey, if you're doing up something that's been around for so long, you don't want to rush things, Olympics or no Olympics.

And some of those trees that have just been planted around the venues are a little on the small side. I'm sure they'll look lush and healthy next year.

The Athenians I've talked to are a lot more positive and welcoming than they were. Last time I was here, everybody seemed to be eyeing a chance to make a fast buck - like the bar hawker who led a friend looking for a phone to his sleazy establishment and stung him 40 euros ($75).

So, Athens, today is your big day, with the opening ceremony this morning. Can you give the Olympics back the lustre lost through commercialisation and overblown ceremony? It's a big challenge, especially with everyone still talking about what a great job Sydney did.

What will the world think of you and the Olympics, in 16 days' time?

Exactly one month before the Athens Olympics, the president of the organising committee, Gianna Angelopoulous-Daskalaki, made an extraordinary statement.

Interviewed on Greek national radio, she admitted that, back in 2000, there had been a real threat that Athens was going to lose the rights to host these Games. "Yes," she said, "I feared that possibility, as we all did."

The running gag that the Games were going to be switched to somewhere else almost became a shocking reality.

But looking into the face of a huge national embarrassment obviously did the trick. Athens has done in four years what should have taken seven after political inertia turned to urgency.

For Greeks, the fact that they have pulled off the organisation of the Games despite their population (at 10 million, they are the smallest country to host them since the Finns in Helsinki in 1952), is a big deal.

But the biggest driver, the inescapable theme of these Games, is the return of the Olympics to their birthplace, to the city where the first modern Games were held in 1896 and the land in which the ancient Olympics thrived for centuries.

Michael Phelps, the 19-year-old United States swimmer who dares to dream that he will win eight gold medals, this week put it as eloquently as a teenager might: "Getting to be back here where it all started ... I mean, wow. It's a great city, it's a very old city, and it adds to the atmosphere."

Others were better able to analyse the inspiration.

Rulon Gardner, a defending champion in Greco-Roman wrestling, said he was struck by the billboards on the route from the airport which announced to the athletes: "Welcome Home".

"I'm lucky to be able to go out and take part in this sport, especially when we [in the United States] do not have the huge history of other countries," Gardner said this week.

"People think Greco-Roman wrestling is a barbaric sport but [they should] understand that the basic movements are the same as they have been for thousands of years."

Sir Murray Halberg, doyen of New Zealand Olympians, greets each member of the New Zealand team to the village with a reminder of the historic path they are treading. For Valerie Adams, the young New Zealander with an outside chance of a medal in the shotput, having the Olympics in Greece means she will have the opportunity to trace the footsteps of the first Olympians when she competes at Olympia next week.

But to make these Games truly significant, Greece needs to use its unique position to revive the mythical values of the Games - the spirit of humanity and friendship that make them more than just another sports competition.

Greece must convert its historic links into an antidote to the commercial poison turning the Games into nothing more than a marketing opportunity.

The Speaker of the Greek Parliament, Anna Benaki, told the New Zealand team at its ceremony in the allied war cemetery this week that Greece wanted to "reunite the Olympics with Olympic ideals".

Dave Currie, New Zealand chef de mission and a firm believer in the Olympic faith, recognises the conundrum the Games have got themselves into and that Athens has a responsibility to help to solve it.

"You can't be in Greece and not get a sense of the history of the place." He will take about 50 New Zealand athletes to Olympia in the second week of the Games to soak up the sentiments of Olympism.

But Currie thinks the organisers could also take some grand steps. For a start, he would have liked the opening ceremony rescheduled so it was not held the night before competition, preventing most athletes from marching. Fewer than half of New Zealand's competitors were to march into the stadium this morning (NZT).

If organisers were serious about making the ceremony for the athletes, and not just a television event, they could have scheduled it during the day. "That would be a symbolic thing," says Currie.

He is hopeful that IOC president Jacques Rogge, who took over the job after Sydney, will help to revitalise the Games. "Rogge gives you a view that he thinks athletes are the centre of it," he says.

If the athletes are wondering how they might help to improve the image of the Games, the answer lies in urine sample containers.

The issue of performance-enhancing drugs, particularly the Balco scandal that has whacked the US team, overtook security issues as the dominant pre-Olympic story. There is no doubt that athletes in Athens will be caught cheating - it would be a staggering failure of the testing regime if none were detected. But if too many, or any high-profile medallists, are caught it will have a huge impact on the future of the Games. If people cannot believe that winners got to the dais through hard work and talent alone, who wants to watch?

The Games have begun and the question has been posed: Will we look back on Athens 2004 as a turning point in Olympic history - and for better or worse?