Now It’s Athens’ Deadline

They turned out the lights in Salt Lake Sunday, which means only one thing in Olympic circles--in 900 days the Athens Summer Games of 2004 are due to open.

Will everything in Greece be ready? No one can offer a definitive answer.

The Greek government and local organizers are, as they candidly admit, engaged in a race against time. They are racing to make up years that were wasted in the planning and construction of roads, rail links and hotels and in such operational concerns as ticketing and test events for the 28 sports on the Summer Olympic program.

In addition, security remains a concern. A domestic terror group, called 17 November, has operated within Greece since 1975 with impunity, killing 22 people, four of them American. No one has been arrested.

Behind the scenes, many of those involved in readying Athens for the Games--scheduled to run from Aug. 13-29, 2004--express considerable anxiety. The IOC is due in Athens in early April for the latest in a series of inspections.

When speaking publicly, the tone runs to confidence that the Games will be safe, the venues ready, the roads paved, the hotel minibars stocked.

“They have now a good cruising speed,” International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge said Sunday. “If they can keep their commitments, they can keep the deadlines--which have been kept the last months--we’ll have good Games, there’s no problem.”

Denis Oswald, a Swiss lawyer who heads a 44-member IOC team called a “coordination commission” that serves both as liaison and inspection crew for the Athens Games, said: “Construction has started nearly everywhere where they are supposed to start. Now we have to monitor how it progresses.”

He added that Greek Prime Minister Costas Simitis “is really aware now of the magnitude of the task, and he’s really pushing the [cabinet-level] ministers.”

Nonetheless, tension between the government--which builds the infrastructure--and the local organizing committee, Athens 2004--which runs the Games--remains evident. The relationship has improved, Oswald said, but is still “not ideal.”

Construction at some sites has, in the past few weeks, inched ahead of schedule--at the Olympic village northwest of central Athens, for instance.

Even so, and even though the IOC has issued repeated warnings over the past two years, construction at other sites remains inexplicably slow.

For instance, at Hellenikon, site of the old Athens airport--the new one opened a few months ago--planes were still flying a few weeks ago onto the runways at what, come 2004, is supposed to be the site of a canoe slalom course as well as some basketball games.

Government officials “confirmed” that construction on the canoe and basketball venues would begin in September, Oswald said.

Athens is still shy about 2,500 needed hotel rooms. Gianna Angelopoulos-Daskalaki, head of Athens 2004, said a few days ago that organizers are considering a plan by which tourists would be encouraged to stay on one of Greece’s celebrated islands and take a short-hop airline flight into Athens for a day or two at the Games.

Road and rail construction remains problematic.

A light-rail system is designed to connect central Athens with venues to the south. The problem that has surfaced in recent weeks is that officials are not sure that even if the tracks are laid on time--and that remains a big if--the rail cars themselves will be in Athens. They haven’t been ordered yet.

“This is the main issue we are facing, the suburban light-rail train,” Oswald said. “I’m not yet sure they will get the rolling stock on time, which would be ridiculous if other things are ready.”

On Kifissias Avenue, a busy thoroughfare that leads directly to the main Olympic complex from the center of town, the original plan was to have five interchanges. Then that was cut to three. At the IOC’s most recent visit, a few weeks ago, it was cut again, to one.

“They will put in place ‘strict traffic management measures,’” Oswald said he has been told. He went on, “This is done at every Olympic Games, so we are not sure it will be suitable. But they are studying solutions to make sure traffic is OK.”

On Feb. 12, Evangelos Venizelos, Greece’s culture minister, just back from a visit to the Winter Games in Salt Lake City, angrily accused the IOC of mistreating Athens. He rejected warnings over infrastructure delays, declaring that Greece was not obliged to build roads just to please the IOC.

The IOC, he said, “acts differently toward a country with 10 million people, which thinks it has to defend itself, and it acts differently toward a superpower ... that controls the world. We have to act with greater dignity and efficiency.”

IOC Director General Francois Carrard responded at a news conference by saying that the IOC treats all Olympic organizers the same. “We don’t have different rules for superpowers and small countries,” he said.

Oswald said Venizelos was “playing with words.”

“You can [express] their commitment in different ways. For example, you can say, ‘We didn’t promise to build a media village.’ But Greece committed to accommodate people from the media. And they have to find a way to do it.”

As for security, the Greek government has promised to spend $600 million securing the Athens Games. Security costs in Salt Lake totaled $310 million. The Greek plan relies extensively on the use of soldiers and security cameras and on extensive cooperation with U.S., British, Israeli and other security forces.

Roughly 40 security officials connected to the Greek delegation, including a key deputy to Michalis Chrysohoidis, Greece’s minister for public order, were here in Salt Lake, observing the presence of F-16s in the sky overhead on routine patrol and of National Guard troops at Olympic venues.

In all, about 80 Greeks were here to study the Salt Lake Games--in effect, a crash course in what amounts to a university of the Olympics, albeit one that is about one-fourth the size. The Winter Games feature about 2,500 athletes, the Summer Games roughly 10,500.

Asked what Greek organizers took to heart as they prepare today to leave Salt Lake City, Spyros Capralos, a senior executive with the Athens 2004 organizing committee, answered: “You learn about crisis, and how the IOC deals with crisis.”