SYDNEY – Can Athens possibly measure up?
A toy wombat, “Oi Oi Oi,” and hospitality that puts Atlanta’s 1996 “Coca-Cola Games” to shame mark these as one of two best Summer Olympics of the past 30.
Already there are very public worries that always-chaotic Athens can not possibly rise in 2004 to the levels of competence and kindness that Sydney brought to its time on the international stage.
Not that everything has gone perfectly. The ugly specter of drugs has once again darkened the bright joy of athletic triumph, with at least seven competitors and coaches getting caught messing with banned substances.
But overall, the days here have been filled with grace and awesome beauty, the pure core of the Olympic movement easily overwhelming the greedy foibles of television networks, a few corrupt officials and cheating athletes.
Let’s start with that wombat. His name is Fatso and he’s the mascot of the irreverent local late night television show “The Dream,” which has special nightly Olympics versions.
Fatso, a brown plush toy with “a fat arse,” was carried onto a medal podium with Australian swimmers early in the games, prompting a warning from the Olympic Committee to keep him away from official events, lest he undermine the marketing power of the official mascots.
Since then, Fatso – there is only one of him – has been photographed with all sorts of celebrities around town, including Billie Jean King.
“The Dream” hosts Roy Slaven and H.G. Nelson have put Fatso up for auction to benefit Olympic charities and it looks likely to register the largest bid at the auction.
Two of the favorite subjects of Slaven and Nelson are the incomprehensibility and homo-erotic properties of Greco-Roman wrestling and what a terrible job NBC is doing at telecasting the games to the United States.
Still, America-bashing isn’t the favorite pastime of Australians. Chanting “Aussie, Aussie, Aussie! Oi! Oi! Oi!” is.
The chant was heard everywhere – from the megaphones of volunteers trying to soothe crowds waiting for trains home from Olympic venues to the lipsticked mouths of bikini-clad young ladies cheering the home team on to a gold medal at the beach volleyball stadium built at the edge of Bondi Beach.
Barcelona, full of gusto and classic beauty, staged a magnificent and magical games that cast a happy spell over all who attended. Atlanta, with its ugly, overly corporate, bombed Centennial Olympic Park, its tight-mouthed residents, unspectacular food, faceless downtown and awful transportation was an embarrassment, despite the on-field accomplishments of Michael Johnson, Carl Lewis and others.
In all the sports, as at every Olympics, there have been some wonderfully surprising triumphs and some shocking disappointments.
The presence of female – and male – American fans wearing little more than bras to the gold-medal game didn’t help the heavily favored U.S. women’s soccer team overcome a spirited squad from Norway.
Super heavyweight American Greco-Roman wrestler Rulon Gardner, a farm boy from Wyoming, scored one of the most stunning upsets of the games by outdueling Russian legend Aleksander Karelin, who hadn’t lost a match in 13 years.
American swimmers Gary Hall Jr. and Anthony Ervin tied for gold in the 50-meter freestyle swim. Michael Johnson repeated in the 400-meter run. Maurice Greene became the official fastest man in the world by winning the 100 meters.
Greek sprinter Konstantinos Kenteris became the first male track-and-field athlete from his country to win a gold medal since the abolition of the stone throw and the standing long jump from competition.
The last still-extant track-and-field event a Greek won was the marathon in 1896. That’s eighteen ninety-six.
Ethiopian 10,000-meter champion Haile Gebrselassie, who ran six miles to school every day from the mud hut where he and nine brothers and sisters lived, won gold by less than a tenth of a second over Kenyan Paul Tergat in a race that’s been called the best 10,000 meters ever run.
No moment was more glorious than the women’s 400 meters final. Every television on this continent was tuned to watch Aborigine Cathy Freeman run for Australia.
Under unbelievable pressure, she circled the track once and crossed the finish line five strides ahead of her nearest competition. Sitting on the track after her victory, Freeman didn’t know whether to laugh, cry or what, the thunder of 112,000 people in the stadium, most ever for an Olympic event, washing through her, pushing into her.
American track-and-field sensation Marion Jones managed to put aside revelations that her husband, burly shot-putter C.J. Hunter, had been forced off the U.S. team because he tested positive for steroids.
Among the many celebrity sightings here, the juiciest was probably the happy couple of Meg Ryan and Aussie Russell Crowe, who were photographed on the balcony of a Sydney apartment and in his sports car.
The glory of these games, the way it has all worked so well, has helped eclipse the bad feeling over corruption scandals at the International Olympic Committee. But there are worries the good feelings could evaporate quickly in 2004 if Athens doesn’t put on a good show.
Retiring IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch – whose long-ailing wife died as these games began – said earlier this year that it is time for the Greek government to take charge of a foundering Olympic organizing effort there.
“There are three phases with organization,” Samaranch said. “The green light is that all is going well, the yellow is that the Games have many problems and the red light is that the Games are in danger.
“We are at the end of the yellow phase. If from now until the end of the year there are not drastic changes, we will enter the red phase.”
For a career diplomat, those are terribly strong words.
Although Athens already has an impressive complex of athletics and swimming venues in place, a quarter of the Olympic facilities have yet to be built, including an Olympic village for an anticipated 16,000 athletes and officials. There is also concern about rail links to major venues.
“We have four hard years of preparations ahead. But what we promise, we deliver,” Gianna Angelopoulous, president of the Athens Organizing Committee, said last week.
There’s been a kind of joke circulating around town here about Athens’ problems.
It is two words long: “Sydney 2004?”