A huge TV screen stood in the Panathenaic Stadium. People were getting ready to start their victory processionals. All they were waiting for was the 21-gun salute from Lycabettus announcing the International Olympic Committee’s decision to hold the 1996 Olympics in Athens where, a century earlier, they had been first revived.
The salvo, of course, was never fired and when the news was heard that the bid from Atlanta had won, “the sound of wailing,” as Thucydides noted on a similar occasion “rose up from the city.” What caused great local disappointment in four other cities, was looked upon in Athens as a national catastrophe.
One of the reasons for ethnic shock was massive over-confidence. Government officials and the press had staged a huge promotional campaign at home (rather than abroad) and in the hype obscured the strength of the Atlanta bid.
Earlier this year, the IOC set up an evaluation commission which, after visiting the six contending cities, declared Atlanta the city best equipped technically to stage the 1996 Games. Athens came in last, due mainly to pollution and a poor transportation infrastructure.
If the authorities promoted over-confidence at home, the official delegation that went to Tokyo appears to have been similarly infected. In what the Greek press later called arrogance (but which in other eyes at the time looked merely like provincialism – and sometimes rudeness), the group behaved in a self-congratulatory way, gave press conferences to Greek journalists (which was irrelevant) and little to foreign ones (which wasn’t), socialized mostly with itself, and, on this international occasion held in a country famous for its cuisine, amused itself in Greek-Tokyo tavernas with retsina, tzatziki and taramosalata flown in halfway across the world by Olympic Catering.
The faults of judgement were compounded on the big day. In presenting its official bid, each city was given an hour to state its case and answer questions. Athens grandly felt it needed but 15 minutes, and rested its case.
In the first two of five rounds, Athens led over Atlanta by a few votes. Both cities tied in the third round and then Atlanta pulled ahead. Some believed this was due to increased US lobbying, but an unfortunate statement by a Greek committee member after the Athens presentation – stating that now the remaining four presentations were unnecessary – was an excellent example of hubris which the Olympian Gods are famously known to be touchy about. Then later, the remark by the head of the Greek committee that “Morally, the Games belong to us” was a gaffe of major proportion which was relayed back to other IOC delegates during their Sushi break.
The bad timing was not confined to Tokyo. While the Greek delegation socialists and conservatives alike, was stumbling over itself declaring national unity, it may have been unwise for Andreas Papandreou at home, on the eve of the vote, to attack the government broadside, declaring that; “it should step down from office as soon as possible.”
Members of the IOC, not being the dolts that Mr Papandreou seems to have imagined them to be, might then have begun entertaining doubts about the stability of Greek governments. Six years hence is a long time, and Greek political life has proved to be volatile, to say the least, for the last 25 years.
Wouldn’t it be wiser to choose a city which today gives more assurance of reliability? It would be most unfortunate, during the Olympic Games in Athens in 1996, to have the local electric power company stage daily black-outs as happened during the whole week when the Tokyo ceremony was taking place.
If a major advantage for Atlanta was the possibility of showing live TV coverage on the East Coast during prime time, imagine the nightmare of the TV blacking out entirely in Athens!
In the shock of sudden disappointment, anger and bitterness are human, and Melina, in that catchy way she has, quipped “Coca Cola has won over the Parthenon.” But Greece has not only lost the Olympics but hasn’t gotten back the Parthenon marbles, either. Perhaps there are better means of persuasion than being overbearing.
Some said the future had won over the past; others that the flame of the Olympic Ideal had been extinguished by high-tech. In a cultural context, the Greek claim could not have been better made and the legions who dedicated themselves to it are worthy of highest praise.
Many perfectly patriotic Athenians have felt that having the Olympics here would create an environmental catastrophe, others that it would be a financial fiasco (ie, Montreal), still more that they would have saved the city through major public works. Stiff upper lip and all, responsible ministers vow that these urban projects will go on, anyway.
These promises will be easily tested and fulfilled when, on that fine summer day in 1996, the Greek team travels by the Metro or one of the Athens free-ways to Spata Airport where it will be flying off to lead the ceremonial procession that opens the Atlanta Olympics.”
