My Greek Drama: Life, Love, and One Woman's Olympic Effort to Bring Glory to Her Country

by Gianna Angelopoulos

  At the hospital in Lausanne, I was so weak I could barely move. Over the next day, doctors conducted a battery of tests. When Theodore told me they wanted me to stay in the hospital, that I had some potentially serious medical problems, I refused. I told him that I wanted to go home and see in the New Year with my family. We argued and somehow I summoned the strength to find my driver, whom I ordered to take me back to our chalet. But even though I returned home, I wasn’t really there. I had no strength and felt as if I had no inner core. My emotional pitch, usually so animated—I’m either laughing or yelling—was totally flat. I was frightened that I had turned into someone else completely, a person I didn’t recognize.

  The following day the doctors called my husband with the test results and an ultimatum. “Tell your wife that if she won’t come in by herself immediately, we will send an ambulance to pick her up and bring her here.” I went, and for almost a week I lay there lifeless. I told Theodore—I cried when I told him—that I didn’t want him or anybody in the family to see me like that. Not him, not my mother, not my sister, and especially not our children. Only Lena, my faithful friend who flew in from Athens to be with me, was allowed in my room. More than a week later, when it was time for the children to return to school, Theodore insisted that I let them visit me in the hospital. Lena helped me change into some silk pajamas and a red robe, and, for the first time since I left home, I put on some makeup. Then I put on a brave face. Leave it to the youngest to be so perceptive. When Dimitris saw me, he said: “That’s good. Mommy is wearing her makeup.”

  Soon after, I was capable of rational thought. But the thoughts were not comforting. “Maybe this is the end for me. Maybe they won’t be able to save my life. But I am not going out of this life without the kind of fight I have put up throughout my life.” So I picked up all the pieces of myself and decided to tap all the strength I had found to fight for my country and use it again, now, to fight for myself.

  It was a long struggle, but slowly I improved. Later in the month I was well enough to spend an occasional night in a nearby hotel. Be that as it may, I saw only Lena and I spoke only to Theodore, who was having some health problems of his own—with his heart—and had to remain in Athens, and to my children. I wasn’t ready to talk to anyone else.

  But there are no secrets in this world. Word always gets out. Often it’s not because of whom you talk to, but because of many to whom you don’t talk. Silence from me was like throwing up a red flag. After I refused enough calls, including from the President of the Hellenic Republic, people began to wonder if something might be seriously wrong. They knew that it would take something serious to knock a woman as vigorous as me out of circulation. Inevitably, rumors reached me that I was on my deathbed.

  But if the rumors had ever been true—and obviously I had confronted that possibility—by the time others heard them they no longer were. I was worried, however, that I might never be completely well or completely myself again. I desperately wanted my old life back. By February 2005, I wanted at least to be in Athens for Dimitris’s birthday on the seventeenth since I had already missed Theodore’s and Panagiotis’s birthdays in early February. I had spent more than six weeks in the hospital; the doctors announced I was strong enough to make the trip home to Athens under strict medical supervision. I don’t know how the news got out—maybe from airport sources that knew the Angelopoulos jet was heading to Switzerland and returning almost immediately—but the word was that the plane would be returning to Greece with my “coffin.”

  I was unaware of this dire report when I arrived home. I was so excited to be there that I insisted on taking a short walk so I could just soak in my neighborhood. People were staring at me as if they had seen a ghost. Only later did I understand why they seemed stunned to see me. Clearly they were thinking, “Oh my god, she’s alive!”

  As Mark Twain famously said, “The rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated.” When people felt they could talk to me about what I had endured during my illness, they frequently asked if, in crisis, I had found religion. I’d tell them I hadn’t and that I wasn’t looking for it either. I would never seek a deathbed conversion in hopes of eternal salvation. “The people in heaven would be too boring for me,” I’d sarcastically joke. “I’d much prefer hell, where I know I will at least have some interesting conversations.” When they heard that, they knew I was really back and my old self again.

  AFTER RETURNING TO ATHENS FROM LAUSANNE, I wanted to reinvent my life. I had to learn how to live again, how to accept and even embrace a brand-new life.

  For five years, I had been at the center of everything, surrounded by people and consumed by my work and my mission. I had a thousand things to do and a million things on my mind. Now I had none of that.

  I had plenty of time to think about where the Olympics had left Greece and me. I had had my fill of Greek politics and Greek politicians. What pained me most was to hear their disdainful attitude toward what we had learned and earned through the years on the way to delivering those “unforgettable dream games.”

  _______

  Although ATHOC had no responsibilities beyond the organization of the Games, I was very mindful of legacy considerations and made several workable suggestions to the government. All were ignored by both governments: first by the Socialists and later by the conservatives of the New Democracy.

  I would ask the Ministers, “What is your plan for the ‘next day’ after the Games?”

  They would typically reply, “That’s our job. You deal only with ATHOC.”

  The government had closed its books on the Games. Since it couldn’t deny our Olympic success, it simply ignored it, a conjurer’s trick to, essentially, make the Games disappear from public consciousness and memory. Our state-of-the-art control center, which could have become a national command center for any emergency situation, was dismantled, moved, and reassembled as a run-of-the-mill computer filing and information storage center.

  The new athletic venues went largely unused and were allowed to deteriorate. Our showcase Olympic village lay derelict and abandoned. The absence of long-term planning by the government resulted in the waste of some extraordinary resources. Instead of building on the legacy, the government let it fade away and let the country drift back into the easy and familiar old ways that constituted business as usual. Nobody in the government or even the opposition resisted or seemed the least bit concerned where this might lead.

  Unlike after the bid campaign, when the Simitis government made me an Ambassador-at-Large, the Greek conservative government of New Democracy—the party I once belonged to and ran for—did not publicly honor or acknowledge my Olympic effort. Only the President of the Republic, Costis Stephanopoulos, singled me out by bestowing on me Greece’s highest civilian honor, the title of Commander of the Order of Merit. Regrettably, I could not receive it in person because I had taken ill in Switzerland.

  The politicians had the opportunity to build on an extraordinary legacy. Instead, they ignored it. We passed them the baton and they dropped it. I would prefer to pretend that none of the harsh treatment had bothered me personally. But the words still stung, the wounds still lingered, and the rejection still hurt. To comfort me, a friend put together a notebook filled with stories of all the famous Greeks, beginning with ancient times, who had been betrayed, ostracized, cast aside, or even poisoned. I found myself in some very good company, with people like Socrates, Ioannis Kapodistrias, Phidias, Harilaos Trikoupis, Alcibiades, Eleftherios Venizelos, and countless others. Trust me, it is not a short list.

  Gradually, as my health improved, I reclaimed my life. It was a very quiet and private life, but I didn’t mind that. There were so many things for which I had had no time—reading, practicing yoga, listening to opera, swimming and water-skiing year-round in the Aegean—that I could now enjoy again. For periods as long as two weeks, I never left the house. I could exercise in the open air and was perfectly content. I even found time to study some books about cooking and t
o master a few recipes. One time when I visited Pan in Boston, I insisted—to his amazement—on cooking dinner for him and his friends. When I came out wearing an apron and a Hermes headscarf, his jaw dropped. When I produced filet au poivre flambéed in cognac, he could only say, “Wow!” After the first taste, Pan cheered, “Bravo, Mom!”

  During all the years I worked toward Athens 2004, Lefteris Kousoulis, a trusted friend who—besides offering savvy political counsel—liked to play amateur psychologist, would occasionally check in on me to see how I was doing. Unlike everybody else who asked me that question, he wasn’t concerned with Olympic progress. He was asking how things were going with my family. I was all fired up about the Olympics and he would ask in his calmest voice: “How is Theodore? How are the children?”

  I would get irritated. “Don’t you see what I have on my plate?” Then I’d start talking about this project and that project and all the ups and downs of my Olympic undertaking.

  One time he just cut me off. “Gianna,” he said, “I know your plate is full, but keep in mind that the day after all of this is over, you will be alone with your family. Don’t jeopardize that.”

  He was right.

  Thus, most important of all during this period, I reconnected with Theodore, giving him the attention that he needed and so deserved. For myself, I wasn’t willing to undertake anything new. I wanted to process the past, nurture myself through the early stages of healing, and learn to relax in a fashion that had eluded me throughout my life. Theodore, as he has always been, was understanding and very supportive. “Take your time,” he said. “It will come.”

  I probably was avoiding “garden variety people.” But it was because I was embarrassed to face them. When we had asked people in Greece to make sacrifices and change their daily habits, it was not just for the seventeen days of the Games but in order to change all our lives for the better, for years to come. I had given people hope and, as a result, they had high expectations. It was hard to look them in the eye when, by this time, I knew that we all had been betrayed, that the Greek government had no intention of delivering on the kind of future we had once envisioned for our country. I reread my speeches from the Olympics period and I felt shame.

  In that frame of mind, I felt I had no choice but to reject dozens of invitations from all over Greece—from universities, civic authorities, NGOs, volunteer organizations, and many others—to speak on the Olympic legacy. There was nothing honest I felt I could say to them about the Olympic aftermath. I did agree, however, to speak to a forum at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government on how—almost a decade after I had organized the colloquium “The Greek Paradox”—we had demonstrated that such a paradox did not have to be an eternal condition.

  I also accepted an invitation from former IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch to address a conference in Barcelona on sports culture, where I was also honored for my contribution to the Olympic movement. The most surprising honor, however, came from the Greek Socialists. George Papandreou, who had replaced Simitis as party leader, had invited me to his party’s convention, which was held at an Olympic venue. Though the party faithful knew I wasn’t and never would be one of them, I received a standing ovation from the five thousand delegates.

  Before I became ill, Theodore had flirted with the notion of investing in media. By the end of 2004, he was so distressed by this failure of leadership that he began negotiating to buy a media company—a newspaper and a TV station—so that we might have a platform from which a message of national unity could be preached to try and reinvigorate the Olympic legacy. It didn’t work out. The negotiations fell through.

  By 2006, when one of the few newspapers with close ties to conservatives was up for sale, we bought it. We also established a radio station. We thought we would offer a distinctive voice among the largely leftist media. And unlike other media owners who used their public influence to boost their private economic interests, we had long before chosen to divert our business interests away from Greece.

  At the time we assumed stewardship of the paper, the New Democracy government was undergoing, or at least attempting, a political shift. Traditionally a conservative party, New Democracy was trying to move toward the center in order to more effectively challenge the leftists that had long been dominant in Greek politics. Our intention with the newspaper was to encourage the government in its efforts to be more centrist, open-minded, and progressive. Furthermore, we hoped to invigorate the political debate that, in Greece, too often revolved around personalities rather than ideas. It didn’t work out. The government believed there was no reason to engage a paper that was already on its side.

  We complained repeatedly to the government, and eventually Prime Minister Karamanlis agreed to sit down with somebody from our paper. It wouldn’t be a formal interview, but more of a tourlou, which is a Greek dish in which you throw all the vegetables in the pot and, hopefully, come up with a tasty stew. In this case, we hoped that a wide-ranging discussion might provide fodder for any number of stories. I sent our editor, Yiannis Papoutsanis, to talk with the Prime Minister at the Maximos Mansion.

  When Yiannis was finished, he called me immediately at home. I could tell he was very stirred up, but he wouldn’t talk to me over the phone. It is common to hear Greeks say that someone is listening to every conversation, so we distrust the phone. “I have to come over and meet you in person,” he said. He told about the meeting in his own fashion, slowly, just as it had unfolded. The Prime Minister was in his armchair and Yiannis was perched on the end of a sofa adjacent to him. As the discussion was winding to an end, Yiannis asked the Prime Minister to pick the single moment of his tenure that he would treasure the most once he left office.

  It was what journalists call a “softball” question, one that shouldn’t challenge any politician let alone a veteran like the Prime Minister. It gave him a chance to show his human side while sharing something that was genuinely precious to him. Yet the question seems to have stymied Karamanlis. He pondered it for quite a while before leaning over to Yiannis and twice clapping him on the leg, which suggested he was about to confide something both intimate and of consequence. “My happiest moment,” he said, “will be the moment when I leave this place.”

  Yiannis was absolutely shocked. It didn’t surprise me quite as much, except perhaps that the Prime Minister would admit it. The Greek people had given him a historic opportunity to lead a nation prepared to work differently, with a fresh ethos; competent people who were eager to continue to present a brand-new country to the world. He resented the idea of leading them.

  We bought the newspaper with a lot of grand notions and high expectations that we could once again make a difference in Greece. But it didn’t take us long to discover that we were mistaken. We had entered an alien culture and good intentions weren’t enough. Almost everyone seemed to have his own agenda and appeared largely indifferent to the goals and ambitions of ownership. The journalists proved less than enterprising. A lot of them seemed to be sitting around not doing much of anything. No matter how hard I tried to provide leadership, I couldn’t gain control of the overall operation. I always wound up feeling frustrated.

  The newspaper proved to be a bad move for us, as we never succeeded in becoming a key part of the public discourse. We had no real choice but to close it, which we did in June 2009. We gave generous severance packages to all of the staff at the newspaper. That was something, I am sad to report, that had never been done in Greece before. Additionally, when we sold the newspaper titles and the radio station, all revenues were distributed among the employees.

  Mistakes are unfortunate, but they are more unfortunate when you don’t learn from them. I learned a lot from this one. While I held fast to my belief that I had a lot to offer, I knew it was time to look beyond Greece. I needed to embrace a cause in an arena where true commitment and a passion for action were truly respected.

  The answer for me was to go back to the future, to break out of the con
straints on my thinking and imagination that Greece imposed, just as I had done when I had left the country almost two decades earlier. I needed once again to take a broader, more global view of the issues I cared about, just as I had done more than a decade earlier when I got involved with Harvard’s Kennedy School. The Olympics had fallen into my lap in the first place because I had international credentials and international credibility. And while our Olympic success may have been above all a Greek triumph, it was an international one as well.

  When I got involved with Harvard’s Kennedy School, I was always inspired, moved, and motivated by its motto: “We are shaping the leaders of the world.”

  It was that motto, along with my more recent involvement with one of the great leaders and visionaries of our time, former President Bill Clinton, who reinvigorated my thinking about public service and the role I could play through Harvard and its Kennedy School.

  After eight challenging years in the White House, Clinton had earned the right to take it easy. He could have written his book, given a few speeches, sat on a few boards, and played a lot of rounds of golf. Instead, the former President took his formidable leadership skills and reinvented himself as a problem-solver in a new domain. He founded the Clinton Global Initiative and set about creating new paradigms for the twenty-first century that have demonstrated how change can be accomplished without relying exclusively on government. He had the vision to recognize that NGOs and private-public partnerships and a host of ad hoc alliances might address problems more effectively. I share this mantra as well.

  His message resonates with my pragmatic side. It is not enough to foment lofty intellectual discourse on how government should work. It is far more important to go out and get something accomplished, even if it is on a very small scale. Create something more than an idea; feed somebody, house somebody, inoculate somebody, or educate somebody. Ideas become far more credible—as well as fundable and marketable—once somebody has demonstrated that they actually work.