The stirring parade of nations climaxed with the entry of Greece to a thunderous welcome. In every Olympics, the Greek team marches first in the parade in honor of having hosted the first Olympics. The host team marches last. As both the historic and the current host, Greece marched last for the first time in Olympic history. I stood on the podium in the shadow of an olive tree to officially welcome the world to the XXVIIIth Olympiad, to Athens, and to Greece. Such passions were stirring in my soul. I felt as if my very blood were rising through my body and might just explode through my head. That little girl from Crete who had such big dreams had never, in her wildest imagination, conjured up anything approaching that surreal moment.
I didn’t want to think about the seventy-two thousand spectators who filled the stadium seats, the fifteen thousand athletes from 202 nations who filled the stadium field, and an estimated two billion viewers around the world who would tune in to watch part or all of the ceremony. Instead I thought about where we had started out and how far we had come. Instead I thought about all the Greek people who had contributed so much, enabling me the privilege of standing there to declare: “Greece is here! We’re ready! Together we write a new and wonderful chapter in the history of the Games. Olympic Games, welcome home!”
In the stadium, the ovation would turn thunderous as forty-seven-year-old Nikos Galis, revered as the man who transformed Greece into a European basketball power, trotted into the stadium carrying the Olympic torch. He handed the torch to sixty-two-year-old Mimis Domazos, who captained Panathinaikos FC for more than fifteen years and is regarded as Greece’s greatest soccer star. It was then passed to thirty-nine-year-old Voula Patoulidou, who became a national hero when she won gold in the 100-meter hurdles at the Barcelona 1992 Summer Games, the first Greek woman to capture an Olympic medal. Next came Kakhi Kakhiashvilli, the thirty-four-year-old Georgian-Greek weightlifter who had won three consecutive gold medals: the first in Barcelona competing for the post-Soviet “Unified Team,” and the next two in Atlanta and Sydney for Greece. Then the torch was handed off to Ioannis Melissanidis, who as a nineteen-year-old at the Atlanta 1996 Centennial Games stunned the gymnastics world with his gold medal in the floor exercise.
And then Nikos Kaklamanakis, our windsurfer and last-minute savior, was standing there holding the torch, looking as if he had been readying for this moment his entire life. As he ascended the stairs toward the stadium roof, the giant cauldron—designed, like our Athens Olympic torch, to resemble an olive leaf—bent down to meet him. He gently laid the torch inside its lip and, as the cauldron lifted skyward, it burst into flame. Cheers, fireworks, music composed by Shostakovich (our amazingly gifted musical director, George Koumentakis from Crete, had selected the music for the entire ceremony and composed some parts himself) all erupted to bring a glorious evening to its close.
I had to do a press conference afterward and was a bit puzzled as to what I should say. The spectacular ceremony had spoken for itself; any words I could add would not do the evening justice. Then I remembered some advice George Stephanopoulos had offered me before we won the Games in Lausanne. He said it was the same advice he gave Clinton before he won his first presidential election. After you’ve won, he told me, “Tell them whatever you want.” And that night I said what I felt: Greece had without a doubt won over the world.
When at long last I got home, it was almost the mirror opposite of the previous night when I couldn’t eat but had slept surprisingly soundly. Starving, I devoured moussaka, salad, figs, and dessert, but I was simply too exhilarated to sleep. The music, the fireworks, the cheers were all still ringing in my ears. Even if sleep wouldn’t come, I could wrap myself in the comfortable blanket of triumph.
The next morning I went to the shooting event, where the first gold medal would be awarded. For obvious reasons, nobody would entrust me with a gun. So I was armed only with my emergency phone and my contingency plans. And for seventeen days I carried them around without ever needing them. It is a measure of the remarkable performance by our team and our volunteers that not only was there never any crisis, there were never any serious problems either.
I continued to have routine daily meetings at 6:30 am with the IOC Coordination Commission, but no emergency meetings were ever held. After three days, the IOC conceded that things were going so well that the early-morning meetings were unnecessary, so we stopped holding them, something that hadn’t happened in the previous Olympics. Everything proceeded like clockwork, a performance exceeding anybody’s expectations for Greece—even, if I am to be honest, mine. I thought we would be very good. But we were great, virtually flawless. With no reason for me to remain tethered at all times to my office or the operations center, I was freed up to also be a fan. I put everything bad that had happened before the Olympics behind me and set out to enjoy, indeed to revel in, the extraordinary events for which I had worked so hard and suffered so much.
Some of them had extra meaning for me. We had not won the Games based on our Olympic legacy alone, but once the Games were ours, we could imbue them with that glorious connection to our heritage. After three millennia, women got to compete at the birthplace of the Games. The shot put competition was staged amid the ruins of ancient Olympia. The marathon was run from Marathon. One cycling race was competed in the shadow of the Acropolis. And Panathinaiko Stadium was the site of the archery competition. It was emotionally stunning to bear witness to how Greece’s storied past spanned three thousand years to reach out and touch its present.
I may have been the gold medalist among spectators. Besides attending those “historic” sports events, I saw track and field in the Olympic stadium, gymnastics, basketball, tennis, the triathlon, weightlifting, swimming, synchronized swimming, diving, rowing, and softball. At the softball game, I actually got to throw out the first pitch, something that—because softball is not really a Greek game—required a lot of practice. ATHOC’s competition managers at each venue kept me well apprised of any event at which there might be the chance for a Greek medal. Happily, that was more often than anticipated as Greece won sixteen medals—six gold, six silver, and four bronze—in ten different sports, and I was there to celebrate most of them. Among those medalists was our Opening Ceremony hero Nikos, who added a silver medal to his Atlanta gold.
The late American filmmaker Bud Greenspan became famous for the lyricism and emotional wallop of his Olympic documentaries, chronicling the games from Los Angeles in 1984 to Vancouver in 2010. In Athens, he had plenty of dramatic material to choose from. A dry recitation won’t do it justice, but let me just note a few of the highlights and “firsts.”
China won thirty-two gold medals—only three fewer than the United States, at the top of the chart—signaling the dominance that would come four years later in Beijing.
American swimmer Michael Phelps would win six golds and two silvers, another harbinger of extraordinary things to come in Beijing and London.
Israel, Chile, and the Dominican Republic all won first-ever Olympic gold medals.
America’s NBA stars would lose an Olympic basketball game for the first time, and then, quite shockingly, endure a second and a third loss, as Argentina won the gold medal.
The great Moroccan distance runner Hicham El Guerrouj won the 1,500 and 5,000 meters, the first runner to pull off that double since the famed “Flying Finn,” Paavo Nurmi, eighty years earlier.
And forty-two-year-old German kayaker Birgit Fischer won her eighth gold medal in Athens, her sixth Olympic appearance!
It was such an unexpected pleasure for me to be able to watch so many of these events and to be able to smile and cheer just like all the other Greeks there. And it was a healing experience. I received so much affection, appreciation, and admiration from my fellow Greeks as I made my way around the Games that it served as a balm for the emotional wounds of the Olympic wars. People kept coming up to me just to thank me for delivering this treasure to our nation. Some would actually tell me how they didn’t like me at first, but they
had changed their mind when they saw how I stood up to the politicians. “You’ve got balls,” I remember many saying. “We’re proud of you and what you’ve done.”
All those words helped more than they could ever know. Especially because there was one accident that I worried could take on a life of its own.
It is Olympic protocol for the President of the organizing committee to host a private reception for the VIPs on the evening of the first day of competition. Just like when we courted the IOC delegates, Theodore and I decided there was nothing more authentically Greek than to host the people at our home. It was a star-studded cast of guests from around the world—with royals, heads of state, IOC elite, and, naturally, my “friends” in the Greek government. We assembled an absolutely gorgeous setting with a beautifully decorated gazebo set on the lawn as the centerpiece. The meal was fabulous and everything was proceeding perfectly until …
We had decided that we should cap the evening, just like at the Opening Ceremony, with a celebratory fireworks display. The display had been set up in the distance, on a hill beyond a large stand of trees, and the fireworks operators had rehearsed without any problems.
To this day, we are not exactly sure what went wrong. But as everybody stood and watched the fireworks go off, flames engulfed one of the pine trees on the ridge near the launching point. By the time the fire department responded, several trees had been lost. As guests left, offering comforting words, all I could think was that it was not the way I wanted to end a perfect beginning to the Games.
Theodore and I have seen to it that today the trees once again stand tall and there is no evidence of the fire, except for the memory of that near-disaster that is burned into my mind!
Although it did cause a small brouhaha in the Greek press, nothing had changed that night as far as the world knew. I was still being hailed as the savior of the Olympics, the maestro of this extraordinary Greek surprise.
Nevertheless, as the Olympics wound to their end, I became preoccupied with what President Rogge would say at the Closing Ceremony as his epilogue for the Games. His predecessor, Juan Antonio Samaranch, had famously declared every Olympics during his long tenure “the best Games ever.” (That only became noteworthy in Atlanta when he omitted those words from his summation.) Rogge, whose Athens 2004 Summer Games were his first as IOC President, had already indicated that he would not adopt Samaranch’s “best Games” tradition and would say something unique about each Olympics. I was extremely anxious to know exactly what that “something” would be for Athens.
But when I asked Rogge for a copy of his speech in advance, he refused. He told me, smiling, “Gianna, you will hear it when everybody else does.”
Fortunately, one of my most reliable employees, Michalis Zacharatos (whose extreme sacrifices made him a casualty of the 55 percent divorce rate), who was serving as ATHOC’s press spokesman during the Games, came to the rescue. He can be quite charming and is also smart enough to use some of that charm on the secretaries. As we all know, in a lot of large organizations, the secretaries do much of the work and tend to be underappreciated despite knowing an awful lot about what is going on. Michalis told me he had learned from the secretary who had typed Rogge’s speech that, while she couldn’t remember his precise words, he was going to say something very positive about Athens.
That didn’t quite mollify me. I wanted to know exactly what he was going to say. Later, Michalis sidled up to me with a big smile, leaned his head very close to mine, and whispered to me rather conspiratorially. He had apparently spoken to a journalist whose wife was a friend of somebody in the IOC who knew what Rogge would say. Michalis did not tell me—at least not right then—that he had learned it fourth-hand or that it came from a source he regarded as self-aggrandizing and not entirely reliable. He pronounced with every confidence that Rogge would pronounce the Athens 2004 Summer Olympics “unforgettable dream games.”
The next day we, along with all the other privileged parties, secured a copy of Rogge’s speech, which confirmed the superlative that the IOC President would bestow on our effort. But when I met the President on Sunday before the Closing Ceremony, I didn’t let on that I had unearthed his precious secret prior to receiving the official copy. When Rogge relented and shared with me what he would say, I pretended to be surprised, but I didn’t have to pretend to be overjoyed. I could have heard it said a thousand times. I was so relieved that he would sing Greece’s praises to the whole world and thrilled that my Olympics would end on such a high note.
Unforgettable Dream Games!
BEFORE WE COULD GET TO ALL THE SINGING AND DANCING to close and celebrate the Athens 2004 Summer Games, there was some official business that had to occur. I received the Olympic Order in Gold for my service and, for the final time, was privileged to address the world. I ignored protocol and first thanked Theodore and my children, who would never get the recognition I had, but whose sacrifice had made Athens 2004 possible. And I infuriated the government once more by thanking not only its current leaders but also former Prime Minister Costas Simitis. Throughout the Games, the government had refused to acknowledge his contribution, but I would never forget who had given me this chance to fulfill my destiny and all the efforts he had made in support of the Games. Nor that it was Simitis who had devoted eight years to our Olympic effort only to see a new government enjoy a breeze of a five-month run-up to the Games, then try to hoard all the glory.
But all that was just political foreplay. Since this evening’s finale was truly meant first and foremost for Greece, my most important message was aimed at a Greek audience. I had learned all too well the lessons of “the Greek Paradox,” and I knew how easy it would be, especially in the absence of genuine political leadership, for Greece to squander its Olympic legacy. So after speaking in English and French, I switched to Greek to make an urgent plea to my countrymen and women, a message of hope—“the new face of Greece”—tempered by the admonition, “Keep the flame for creativity, effort, and victory burning in our souls.”
As I mentioned in the prologue, near the very end of that night’s celebrations I began to dance the hasapiko. I wasn’t aware that cameras were focused on me, though had I been, I wouldn’t have cared. It was Greece’s moment and my moment and I was going to relish it until the last note of the last bouzouki was sounded. The joy was real, but, as it turned out, short-lived. Some in the press scolded me—“How dare she”—over what they characterized as an indecorous and narcissistic exercise in self-promotion, one that could have been fueled by my post-Olympic ambitions.
It was preposterous. I had endured enough. I didn’t want any part of a system where officials chose to serve themselves rather than the people. I could no longer compete with people whose weapons of choice were betrayal and the savaging of reputations. I had no illusions left. Seven years earlier I had won the Olympics for Greece and went home. I was ready to step out of the limelight and go home to be with my family and—for the first time in years—rest, rest, and rest some more.
But while the focus of the world may leave the Olympic Games rather swiftly, the President of their organizing committee has other obligations. The Paralympic Games lay ahead in September and those too would be a dazzling success. There was no rush to submit ATHOC’s final financial statement—Sydney 2000 hadn’t yet finished its report by then. But I told the accountants I wanted the final report finished—“with everything explained clearly and without a single euro out of place”—in less than a year. Impossible, our accountants insisted, which is always the wrong answer for me. “I’m impatient,” I told them. “I want to finish the story.” By the following March, we had completed our report, returning, as I mentioned earlier, a surplus of 123.5 million euros to the government and closing its books on the Athens 2004 organizing committee.
Almost immediately after the Games ended, I felt a little strange. Nothing I could articulate, but I was not quite myself. Sometimes I felt cold and at other times I would break out into a sweat. My temperament h
ad become a little erratic. I had explosions of temper and, afterward, I would have no idea why I had been so upset about that matter.
In November 2004, the key staff of ATHOC and I traveled to Beijing for a working visit during which organizers of the previous Olympics offer the facts, insights, and wisdom they have accumulated to the organizers of the next Games—what the IOC calls the “transfer of knowledge program.”
When I arrived in Beijing, my symptoms got worse. I felt feverish, and my whole body ached. I arranged to have a massage and the hotel sent an elderly masseuse. She touched me and sensed something was not right. “Oh madame,” she said, “you are very ill.” I was furious that she was talking such nonsense and I was dismissive. I said she needn’t worry; I had but a slight fever, and it was going away. The truth was that I had survived so many years on long hours, little sleep, and erratic eating habits I had convinced myself I was pretty much invincible.
The Chinese masseuse proved to be right and I was wrong. Dangerously wrong. A month later, our family gathered for our first Christmas and New Year’s holidays at our home in the mountains in Gstaad, Switzerland. I was thrilled to have everyone gathered together for our first extended vacation in more than four years. But from the first very day, I didn’t feel right—certainly not well enough to go out skiing. Not even to go outside. I thought perhaps I was having difficulty adjusting to the altitude—something that had never happened before.
But the next day I stayed in bed and barely had enough energy to say hello to the children when they returned from skiing. The following day all I did was sleep. My husband arranged for a doctor to come and take some blood tests. What I didn’t know at the time was that the day after he examined me he informed my husband that he could not take responsibility for my treatment and that I needed to be hospitalized immediately. “Your wife is seriously ill. Her blood is like water.”
My Greek Drama: Life, Love, and One Woman's Olympic Effort to Bring Glory to Her Country Page 26
