Certainly, there is somethingjust and fitting in staging the games here. After all, the Olympics were the creation of Greece, they embodied its finest spirit, their revival took place here a century ago, and Greece deserves to be their venue again. Besides, in its petition, Greece has proposed to free the games of the crass commercialism that has collected around them and, in reviving their ancient spirit, to invoke and promote a new, forward-looking vision of a cooperating rather than a competing world. Certainly, in these respects, the Greek bid must have many supporters around the world.
Under the circumstances it would seem that any Greek who was opposed to holding the games here would be thought anti-social, as if being against playgrounds for children or better health care. And yet in another unholy political alliance such as have cropped up lately, the Alliance of the Left and Progressive Forces has joined with conservative MP Anna Synodinou to turn thumbs down and admit that it’s just too damn expensive. Given the ineptitude of Communists in economic matters, their views might be dismissed, but that great lady of classical tragedy, who has been a parliamentary deputy since 1974, should probably be listened to for she may know better than the rest that elaborate theatrical spectacles often cost a great deal more in reality than they do on paper.
Dr George Kandylis, Professor of City Planning, will have nothing to do with this mean spirited way of looking at things. He has been given the task of preparing the file of Athens’ candidacy for the Games. Far from cutting corners and cheese-paring, his 280-page volume presents not just the details of the presentation of the Games, nor even the substructure that will make the presentation possible, but a huge overall
program that will transform the metropolitan area into an attractive urban habitat for Athenians, and one prays, for hordes of well-heeled tourists for generations to come.
Kandylis’ seven-year plan, which has received official recognition, will particularly astonish those who are familiar with the city and its little drawbacks. The whole Olympiad will gravitate towards four focal points. First, an Olympic Village will be built from scratch at the foot of Mount Parnes with 15,000 dwellings. A second Olympic Village will rise at Kalogreza which will be the main focus of the Games and where the present Olympic stadium now functions. Here, a secondary stadium will be built, four tracks for field sports, a vast complex of auxiliary buildings, and across Kifissias Avenue, a completely equipped press and TV center. A third focal point is roughly the whole historical area of the city integrating with an extensive reforesting program and pedestrian walkways not only the existing monuments but the new Acropolis Museum and the unfinished Hall of Music next to the US Embassy. Here the major celebrations and the award presentations will take place. Finally, there is the Delta-Faliron complex which will be grouped around the already existing Arena of Friendship and Peace and the Karaiskakis Stadium next door.
This, in brief, is what the Athens File calls the substructure. The transformation of the city to make all this feasible is a far more ambitious plan. The extensions to the Athens Metro alone will cost as much as the presentation of the Games. The single Piraeus-Kifissia line will be crossed by another running from Peristeri across to Dafni on the slopes of Hymettus on the other side the valley. Two shorter downtown lines will connect Omonia and Syntagma Squares via Akadimias and another will hook up the Larissa Railroad Station.
There will be also a whole new network of speedways on which, we are told, traffic will circulate at 100 kph. Eleusis, for instance, way to the west, will be connected with Stavros – that is, across half of Attica – and with good reason because the International Airport at Spata is slated to be finished by 1994. The subsidiary airports at Eleusis, Nea Makri, Tanagra and Tatoi will all be utilized.
Spreading out beyond Athens and Attica, much of the country is being zoned in order to help facilitate the hundreds of thousands of visitors. Enthusiasm spread the net even farther when Prime Minister Tzannetakis asked composer Mikis Theodorakis to become the artistic coordinator of cultural events and he accepted. Lassoing Delphi, Epidaurus and, of course, ancient Olympia in the act, he plans to highlight peace, the arts and ancient sport, respectively, at each ancient site. Theodorakis is known to have promotional skills nearly equal to the great Melina, and indeed in a rare spirit of bipartisanship, the prime minister asked her to join the committee and she has agreed.
Now what could ever stop Mikis and Melina riding in tandem? Only money. The bottom line runs 1.3 trillion drachmas (about $8 billion) at 1989 values: 168 billions for staging the Games, 313 billions for the substructure, 775 billions for all the rest. The total, by the way, is about half the immense national deficit (2.5 trillions) and the GNP of Greece is roughly 8 trillions.
It must be said that if a truly large number of citizens got enthusiastically involved and turned the effort itself into a kind of national sport, it could do this country a world of good – get its mind off the sordid recent past, give it a sense of moral purpose, renew its self-confidence and refortify its pride.
“I think there’s money in Greece,” says Mikis bravely. “Besides, we have a wonderful capacity for splurging. So instead of losing it in one way or another, why not place it with the organization of the Golden Olympiad?”
So, if we started with all those patriotic and philanthropic shipowners and each one packed up an economy-size box of Pampers full of bank notes and went down to the Olympic Games Committee Headquarters, no doubt many smaller boxes would follow and the Olympiad Show could start on its road to glory.
