The sprint to the Olympics is more like an obstacle course.
Frantic work on delayed venues — including the main Olympic stadium — continues in the mud during rainstorms and under spotlights at night. Roads and squares are ripped up for repaving or new rail lines. Cement mixers and cranes snarl city traffic.
Whirlwinds of dust spin through many neighbourhoods.
Ready or not, the city’s exhausting Olympic preparations will be over 100 days from Wednesday. That’s just a bit more than 14 weeks until the opening ceremony. Or 2 400 hours.
For organisers, the Greek penchant for last minute heroics is being followed around the world.
”My major challenge is the same as that faced by everybody else involved in [the] game’s preparations: Stay focused and make every minute count because we don’t have a moment to lose,” said the chief Athens organiser, Gianna Angelopoulos-Daskalaki.
For the city’s four-million residents, the frustrations and burdens of living in a giant work-in-progress may get worse before the games begin on August 13.
The International Olympic Committee — which is coming for its last major inspection visit May 10 — can only just watch and hope that the Greeks pull it off.
”We won’t have much time before the games, that is for sure,” said Denis Oswald, the top IOC overseer of Athens’ preparations.
”Some time ago, we were also fearing that things would be ready only after the games. Now we are confident that everything will be finished before the games.”
But how soon before the games is still an open question.
Oswald said all venues must be finished by the end of June. The date applies to the stadium’s new roof, whose two huge arches still must be moved into place. Attempts to glide the two sides into place could begin later this week.
Other key projects under way, including a new tram line and suburban rail, are not expected to be ready until less than a month before the Olympics.
”Our experts who have reviewed these plans say, ‘Yes, it’s feasible. It can be done,”’ said Oswald. ”But as long as it’s not done, you never know if any unexpected difficulty will arise.”
It wasn’t supposed to be like this.
When Athens was awarded the games in 1997, organisers boasted that 70% of the venues were in place. The Athens games, they assured the IOC, would be done on a ”human scale” without grandiose or cumbersome projects.
But the system couldn’t shake its old habits. The Socialist government — which was ousted in elections in March — let three years slip by with little progress on Olympic works.
The IOC began to panic. In 2000, the then IOC president, Juan Antonio Samaranch, publicly scolded and humiliated Athens for delays.
Then came September 11, 2001. The attacks — and later terrorist strikes in Turkey and Spain — turned Athens into the biggest security mobilisation in Olympic history. The price tag has hit $1,18-billion and could rise if threats escalate.
The overall Olympic budget is already $1,18-billion above the planned $5,5-billion.
Fears of terrorism, earthquakes or any other event led IOC officials — for the first time — to take out cancellation insurance.
The $170-million policy was written to give the IOC and affiliated national committees and sports federations have enough money to continue operations.
”We are doing everything which is humanly possible to have the maximum of security,” said Athens Mayor Dora Bakoyianni. ”We have to show that modern Greece is able to organise very good Olympic Games.”
Bakoyianni’s party, New Democracy, inherited the Olympic deadlines along with their election victory in March.
The new government pressed contractors to work around the clock and sign promissory contracts insuring they would be done in time.
The new premier, Costas Caramanlis, took personal responsibility by naming himself culture minister, the official in charge of coordinating all Olympics preparations.
”It is not time to blame or criticise,” said Fani Palli-Petralia, the deputy culture minister. ”Many things could have been done, but at this moment we are focusing on today and we are doing what has to do with today. We are not looking back, only forward.”
Palli-Petralia makes ”raids” — as she calls them — on contractors at night to make sure they are adhering to the tight deadlines.
Every week she tours the most high profile delayed project: the steel-and-glass roof of the main Olympic stadium. The roof, designed by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava, has been so stalled that the IOC once considered canceling it.
Some Athenians wish they would have called off the entire games.
The huge hassles of the preparations have sapped whatever enthusiasm they had for the Olympic homecoming.
”I do not care at all about the games. It would be better to not have them so that we could have our peace,” said Eftihia Liakakou in the seaside suburb of Paleo Faliron, where residents staged protests and waged lawsuits against construction of a tram line they claim will restrict access to the beach.
Liakakou favours the tram, linking the coast with the city centre, but cynically views the Olympic outcome: ”The rich will get richer and the poor, poorer.”
Georgia Leilemidou, who works in a pastry shop in the same neighbourhood, said everyone is questioning whether the Olympic venues will be proud landmarks for Athens or embarrassing symbols of the delays.
”All the works are half done,” she noted. ”Have the venues been done well or are they slipshod?”
She also echoed the universal question in Athens: When will life get back to normal?
”It is a hassle. Athens is an endless construction site,” Leilemidou said. ”When will it end?” – Sapa-AP