Neal Collins So now it’s official. Juan Antonio Samaranch closed the Games of the 27th Olympiad by telling the watching world: “These were the best Olympic Games ever. The last 16 days have been a glorious chapter in Australian history.” You can’t help but agree. Pity he couldn’t have tacked on a quick sentence about how unlucky South Africans were not to win a gold medal, but that glaring ommission apart, the closing ceremony was a great bash. Featuring typical Aussie humour – the rampaging tractor driver was a nice touch, as was Fatso, the fat-arsed wombat, who has been something of a hero in Australia. The other great Olympic hero, Eric “the Eel” Moussambayi of Equatorial Guinea, somehow failed to get on the specially elected committee of athletes, but then he’s hardly in the Sergei Bubka class. Still, neither of them qualified for their respective finals, did they? So now we prepare for Athens 2004, where preparations are going even more badly than they did in Sydney. With Atlanta 96 – known in Australia as “The Toilet Games” on the satirical Channel 7 programme The Dream – now mercifully fading in the memory, we could do with a good Games. Perhaps the Lightning Seeds could write them a special 2004 song like The Olympics Coming Home. They certainly need something to lighten things up a bit. The Greeks’ contribution to the closing ceremony was worryingly serious. It was like they’d got all five Olympic rings firmly clenched and weren’t about to let go. Reports suggest that the Greeks, founders of the Olympiad and hosts of the first modern Games in 1896, are seeking a return to the traditional games. So no fun and games, no fat-arsed wombats, no satirical fun-poking. Rubbish. If they really want a return to the original, then all the athletes have to compete stark naked, real pigeons have to be shot, chariots must be raced and fencers must be prepared for blood, not gleaming red lights. Javelins, discusses, hammers? All weapons of war. And let’s not forget, when they held that fateful first festival in Olympia circa 776BC, it was a gathering of arts, plays and sculpture, as well as sport. So come on, let’s have paint lifting, the 1500m dramatic entrance and synchronised chiselling. Old ways? Huh. When the Aussies introduced Sydney at Atlanta four years ago, they wheeled out inflatable kangaroos on bikes. All the Greeks could manage were lots of ladies in long dresses shaking the laurel leaves out of a sheet. If the noise of Sydney has been Oi, oi, oi, then the dominant sound of Athens could be zzzzzz.