IOC Is Watching Athens Closely

Buoyed by reports of progress in delay-plagued preparations for the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, the International Olympic Committee’s senior leadership nonetheless said Tuesday it is intent on keeping direct and unrelenting pressure on the Greek government and Athens 2004 organizers.

Francois Carrard, the IOC’s director general, said Athens 2004 officials presented a “very, very encouraging” briefing Tuesday to the IOC’s ruling Executive Board, detailing work on several construction projects while outlining a ticketing plan, a $1.7 billion operating budget and a torch-relay route through five continents.

Denis Oswald, a Swiss IOC member who serves as chief liaison to the Athens Games, said progress is clearly evident since September--when he was sharply critical of delays, particularly at key construction zones. “At the Olympic Village,” he said Tuesday, “you can see houses coming out of the ground. As we are very concrete people, we don’t dream. We believe what we can see.”

A “cruising speed” has been reached, Oswald said. Even so, he said that the IOC is asking for daily reports to ensure that the speed does not slow. “I think it’s necessary. Because the delay which has been accumulated in the first years after Athens got the Games [in 1997] is still existing,” he said, adding, “It will be a race against the clock until the end. We cannot waste any day.”

Gianna Angelopoulos-Daskalaki, head of the Athens 2004 organizing committee, concurred that time is of the essence. But she said, “We will be ready. And we will have unique Games. We will have unique, human Games. And we will have unique, Greek Games.”

The Athens report dominated the IOC’s agenda amid a flurry of developments that marked the first day of the Executive Board’s final meeting before convening in Salt Lake City immediately ahead of the 2002 Winter Games.

The IOC expressed satisfaction that the United Nations on Tuesday adopted a resolution that calls for “safe passage” of the world’s athletes to the Salt Lake Games.

In prior years, the UN’s Olympic Games-related resolutions have gone further--to call explicitly for a cease-fire among warring parties. “The political and practical realities of the world have to be taken into account,” Carrard said, a clear reference to the U.S.-led military action after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

With the IOC due to receive a thorough report today from Salt Lake Organizing Committee President Mitt Romney, a briefing expected to be dominated by security issues, the IOC’s athletes’ commission reiterated its support for the Salt Lake Olympics.

Added Carrard, “We have no news of any possible [athlete or team] defections.”

Meantime, the IOC downplayed the possibility of participation at the Salt Lake Games by athletes from Afghanistan. The prospect had been raised in the wake of the fall of the Taliban government.

But Carrard said: “You may well understand that I don’t think, as of now, that priorities in Afghanistan are yet focusing on sport, and more particularly ... on the Winter Games in Salt Lake City.”

In other developments, former IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch made an appearance at the board meeting, appearing hale but clearly having lost weight. Samaranch, 81, served as IOC president for 21 years; he collapsed after his term ended in July and undergoes regular dialysis treatments.

And Carrard sought to derail a plan by a German comedian, Stefan Raab, to take Moldavian citizenship in a bid to compete in cross-country skiing at the Salt Lake Games.

The Games have on occasion become a showcase for the lighter side of sports. There was alleged ski jumper Eddie “The Eagle” Edwards of Great Britain, who appeared in the Calgary Winter Games in 1988. And there was hapless swimmer Eric Moussambani of Equatorial Guinea, who splashed across the pool at the Summer Games in Sydney last year and became known worldwide as “Eric the Eel.”

Those light moments were not, however, deliberately staged. And Carrard said, “We are not encouraging Olympic tourism.”