141 Days to Athens: Will Sites Be Ready?

Right now, this is a city of girders and mud. It is a construction site in search of an Olympics.

Right now, the most serious Olympic trials are being contested by men and women in hard hats. Their gold medal would be the Games beginning with the focus on competing athletes, not on unfinished facilities.

Make no mistake. The Games will begin here with an opening ceremony Aug. 13 -- Friday the 13th, no less.

The International Olympic Committee runs this train on time. The question is not whether it will leave the station, but what the ambience will be for passengers on the ride.

Three weeks ago, the Athens Organizing Committee (ATHOC) held its fourth and last world news briefing. It was attended by more than 200 print and broadcast journalists. The venues where NBC will take American viewers five months from now to see some of the greatest athletes in the world run and jump, dive and swim, shoot and sail, fence and peddle, were toured and scrutinized.

Questions were asked, construction timetables were discussed, best-case scenarios were addressed. And the conclusion most frequently reached was that this tour was lacking only one thing: Al Michaels, standing in the front of the bus and intoning, every half an hour or so, “Do you believe in miracles?”

That Athens is behind in its building is not a new story. But witnessing first-hand the incredible amount of work remaining in 141 days is certainly an eye-opening experience. A similar tour was taken in February 2000 in Sydney, and all that seemed remaining to be done were curtain hanging and a final coat of wall painting. Here, in some cases, the wall-painting part is missing one key ingredient -- the walls.

The Athens tour did not include two key sites, the swimming stadium and the Olympic Stadium.

The swimming stadium, part of a massive and modern complex that also includes separate venues for water polo, diving and synchronized swimming, was viewed from several hundred yards. But the main swimming stadium had gone to lockdown status for visitors while the Greeks debated spending millions of euros to put a roof over it. The roof was not part of the original bid, but an add-on advocated by the International Swimming Federation (FINA).

The Greeks pointed out that there was no roof overhead for the swimming events in Los Angeles in 1984 and Barcelona in 1992, and that competition there went just fine. The issue is the anticipated stifling heat here in August. Swimmers will stay cool by swimming. But spectators, some fear, will keep the paramedics busy.

Two weeks after the tour, the Greeks announced that, indeed, their Olympic swimming stadium would go topless.

The omission of a tour of Olympic Stadium, traditionally the site of opening and closing ceremonies and the marquee sport of the Games, track and field, threw the conspiracy theorists, also known as journalists, into a frenzy. What’s the matter? What are the Greeks hiding?

The Greeks, replied, reasonably, that with construction continuing, it was too dangerous. They agreed to inspection tours by reporters from main world news services, including Associated Press and Reuters.

A day after the rest of the media departed, AP went in and reported that, while there was no track in the stadium, there also was no field.

Smiling through it all are members of the organizing committee, who are friendly and accommodating and who always see the glass as half full. Questions of progress are answered with assurances that there is plenty of time. The upbeat attitude, nice as it is, has triggered predictable journalist cynicism. One correspondent from Finland said, “They love their artifacts. So they dig for a while, dig up something old, then stop digging for six months so they can look at it.”

A Chinese writer suggested, “Why don’t we just trade? We are ready. Beijing do 2004 and Athens 2008.”

IOC members, who have hovered nervously for the last two years as construction delays and political foot-dragging became the norm, are staying on the high road. Any other approach this late would be public relations suicide.

But their smiles are tighter and their fists are clenched. And their creativity in addressing the next 140 days here is severely tested. One who passed nicely was Kevin Gospar, an IOC member from Australia and the head of the IOC press commission.

In a short speech to the gathered cynics, Gospar said that the group should pay more attention to “what has already been done here, rather than what is left to do.”

He also likened his view of the progress to a silkworm eating a mulberry leaf.

“You watch and watch and you think you see nothing happening,” Gospar said. “Then, the next time you look, it is done, the leaf is gone.”

Gospar also pointed out that the approach to holding an Olympics has changed now; that it used to be that cities had many of the facilities in place and simply upgraded them. Now, he said, cities bid not only to have an Olympics, but to trigger urban renewal.

In Athens, the seven media villages scattered about, plus the huge Olympic village that will house 16,000 athletes, coaches and officials during the Games, will all become residences after the Games. It is fair to say that Athens has undertaken more building than is normal.

Also, it is fair to say that the next five months here will be fascinating. Completing the stadiums and housing and roads and a rail system that is supposed to take spectators to venues near the ocean is only part of the equation. Cleaning up all the junk scattered around by the construction and somehow taking care of all the stray dogs and abandoned cars will be a considerable challenge.

If that isn’t done, NBC may have to keep its cameras on the Acropolis 10 hours a day, leaving the other 14 for the beach volleyball venue, which is finished and perfectly positioned for shots of sun, sand, ocean, yachts and bikinis. Television heaven.

For the positive thinkers, these are not totally uncharted waters. Barcelona appeared to be in trouble at this stage in 1992 and pulled off one of the best Games ever.

Maybe everything will fall into place and this will become, as everyone who cares about the Olympics wants it to become, three weeks of international healing and goodwill through sport.

Maybe it is the top of the stretch and only Athens knows that it is Seabiscuit.

And maybe, when this is all over, Michaels will become the national symbol of Greek pride, appearing on billboards all over the city, wearing a shirt with a silkworm logo.

*

2004 Olympics

* Where: Athens.

* Opening Ceremony: Friday, Aug. 13.

* Closing Ceremony: Sunday, Aug. 29.