Greeks confident Athens will be ready

The situation is improving as the city prepares for next summer's games.
By TIM DAHLBERG
ASSOCIATED PRESS
ATHENS, Greece -- On a hillside where gypsies used to live outside this ancient city, a concrete maze of buildings is taking shape as workers scurry to finish the dusty road leading to it.
By this time next year, it's supposed to be home to 17,300 Olympic athletes and officials. For now, it's a work in progress, much like everything around Athens.
Throughout the city, cranes litter the sky, roads are torn up and construction stops and starts in fits.
Greece is teetering toward the 2004 Summer Olympics with a $5.1 billion makeover of the birthplace of the modern games.
There's a spanking new airport, a new subway system complete with archaeological displays, and miles of freshly paved roads. A light rail system is being built, and stadiums and arenas seem to be under construction everywhere.
Greeks are confident
Nearly everything is late, after years of delays. But the Greeks are confident it will all be completed by the time the Olympic cauldron is lit next Aug. 13.
"There were a lot of problems when I first came here," Greek sports minister Nasos Alevras said. "These days we feel better. The situation is very encouraging."
The sudden urgency with which Greece is attacking the task has brought smiles to international Olympic officials, who once threatened to take the games away.
Just three years ago, Jacques Rogge was in charge of an International Olympic Committee task force that told bickering organizers and Greek officials to get their act together -- and quickly.
Now, Rogge is the president of the IOC and sees an Olympics that will blend the roots of the games with a modern sports spectacle.
"I'm confident because I know the love for the games that the Greeks have," Rogge said. "They are very capable once they have decided to work very hard."
Resembles a village
Working hard, they are. The $340 million Olympic Village that was little more than a garbage-strewn hillside less than two years ago now actually resembles a village.
But the preparations are causing major disruptions to the lives of Athenians who aren't quite sure what the city has gotten itself into.
"Greece has no need for this," said Stella Alfieri, a former member of Parliament and deputy mayor. "It already has its history and culture that everyone knows. In the end it will have a serious, serious effect on our everyday life."
That effect is visible around Athens, where 20 years' worth of badly needed infrastructure work is being packed into two years to prevent gridlock on streets so crowded that Athenians are allowed to drive their cars into the city's center only every other day.
There's even scaffolding around the Parthenon as the nearly 2,500-year-old landmark gets a facelift.
When it's done -- if it's done -- Athens will host 17 days of competition next summer that officials hope will showcase the city to the world as a major center for tourism and business.
While Greeks grumble about the mess and worry about who is going to pay for it all, the government promises the Olympics will make Athens a better place to live and provide a much needed boost to the economy.
"This will be the center of the world for two weeks," Alevras said. "This is very important for a country that gets a lot of income from tourism."
Indeed, the stakes are high for a country rich in Olympic history yet burdened with the reality of staging the mammoth spectacle the Olympics have become.
Greece has a population of only 10.6 million, and it is dependent on the whims of tourism. Yet it is borrowing some of the billions to stage the games amid worries that the tab could go much higher.
Face challenge
Athens is in a race against time as it frantically tries to get ready for an Olympics that will bear little resemblance to the first modern games it staged 108 years earlier.
It shows at the old airport where workers scurry about retrofitting an old hangar to use for basketball preliminaries. And it's evident at the athletes' village, where 2,300 Greek families will live after the games.
"Greeks are very nervous about the games," said Katerina Barbosa, an executive helping build the sprawling athletes' village. "They were born here and they don't want to have the worst games ever."
There are worries that the frantic rush to finish means Athens will pay a price in slipshod construction. There are also concerns that the venues, such as the rowing center, will serve little purpose after the Olympics.
Rallying around flag
Even so, Greeks are rallying around the flag to show they can pull off the games.
"This will be proof of the capacity of our government and people to make big things," culture minister Evangelos Venizelos said. "It's not easy, but now it's very natural. We didn't have much experience with this before."
Some Athenians, though, worry they will end up being stuck with the bill.
"The Greek people will have to pay for it after the Olympics," 72-year-old retiree Emanuel Manggiros said. "But it has to do with the national pride and I'm proud they're coming back to Greece."