SIDELINE CUT:The Athens Olympics of 2004 proved an exercise in delusion and greatly contributed to the current parlous state of the Greek national finances, writes KEITH DUGGAN

OF ALL the headlines concerning the social unrest in Athens and the parlous state of the Greek national finances, none summed up the situation quite as perfectly as that old reliable of news satire, the Onion. “Greece: 2,500 Years Past Its Prime”, ran the headline.

When the International Olympic Committee awarded the 2004 Olympics games to the city of Athens, it was obvious the pageantry and symbolism of those Games would lean heavily on ancient Greek civilisation. Many felt the Olympics ought to have returned to the city in 1996, for the centennial anniversary of the first modern Games. But the Athens bid was considered flawed, lacking in specifics and a convincing infrastructural plan. And so Atlanta won the bid and responded by staging an Olympics that was internationally lambasted.

Eight years later, the Games finally came home to Greece. As television pictures of Greek citizens protesting on the streets and clashing with police flashed around the world, I couldn’t help but wonder how many Greeks would hand back the temporary shot of national pride that accompanied those Games in return for a cheque recouping the cost. The precise cost of the Athens Olympics has always been a moveable feast.

For three years, it was the most expensive Olympics in history, until China spent a monstrous €28 billion on their fortnight of sporting extravaganza. The Athens Games were supposed to total at €5 billion, according to the predictions of the PASOK socialist government running the country in 2000. But the final cost was closer to twice that and, given that Greece was the smallest nation ever to host the Games, that represented a stunning outlay of finance.

But what it is about the idea of hosting the Olympics that nation after nation finds irresistible? Cost – good sense – cannot compete with the dreamy thought of being the capital of the universe for those two weeks and the “marketing” potential for the host city overrules the hard billions required to satisfy the floating palace of IOC delegates who insist on certain standards for its “family”.

The scale of disruption that hosting the Olympics brings to the lucky city is often overlooked. The East End of London has awoken to a chorus of builders’ whistles and kanga guns for more mornings than its dwellers care to remember at this stage and, even as Britain’s economic forecast continues to blacken, the intensity of that London effort will become more apparent as the 2012 Olympics loom. There is a good chance that because London is such a magnificent city it can probably absorb the Games without having to write blank cheques in order to avoid humiliation on an international scale.

But with money tight, the London organisers are in for anxious times. The Chinese had the last tree manicured months before their opening ceremony. Those of us in the stadium on that muggy night in August 2008 won’t forget it. Putin and Bush were among the world leaders in the Bird’s Nest watching some 2,000 Chinese drummers star in a breathtakingly choreographed show that felt like the apotheosis of international muscle-flexing. It took place, of course, just months before the stock markets of the world began to go haywire. Anthony Lane, an Englishman and film critic with The New Yorker, wrote a letter from Beijing in which he had fun imagining the reaction of Sebastian Coe, head of the London Olympics, as he watched this spectacle of Chinese ingenuity.

“I tried to pick him out among the VIPs on that first Friday but without success. He may have been hiding in the men’s room, calling home to order more light bulbs. You can imagine the rising panic in his voice: ‘They had 2008 drummers all lit up. Yes, 2008. And what have we got so far? Elton John on a trampoline’.”

Sandwiched between the Sydney Olympics, which came close to casual perfection and the Beijing Games, which were relentlessly, frighteningly clockwork-perfect, the Athens Games were quickly forgotten about. Perhaps that is why they have rarely been mentioned in the debates about Greece’s ravaged state.

It should be remembered Athens were never given a fair crack at the Games. No sooner had the last firework in Sydney been extinguished than suggestions began to circulate that the Greeks would not get their act together in time, that the traffic would be chaotic, the weather insufferable and the citizens bad-tempered. In the paranoid mood that took hold after 2001, the Greeks had to cough up for an increased security budget. In the months before the Games began, the Greeks ran pre-inspection tours to prove that the facilities were in place. And they were.

The Athenians ran a very good Games and the Acropolis provided a perfect backdrop for NBC and the other major broadcasters. Locals were friendly and enthusiastic about the Games but in a low-key way, never forgetting the Olympics was a chimera, the most expensive magic show on earth. The low point for the hosts came at the beginning, when their leading athletes Konstantinos Kenteris and Ekatarina Thanou staged an absurd motorbike accident to avoid drug testing. The high point featured the old Olympic Stadium, where the marathon concluded and the staging of some of the field events – throwing and putting – at the Ancient Stadium at Olympia. No city in the world could or even will compete with Athens for that heritage.

But the Athens Games never quite recovered from the bad pre-publicity. The Greeks – the nation that gave the world Archimedes and Plato – were portrayed as slacking in their efforts to have their city ready in time. It was unfair and wrong but it didn’t matter. Once the Olympics was over, Athens didn’t get a backward glance.

Reports would appear at times about the rising cost of the Olympics for Athens. Prior to the Beijing Games, photographs appeared showing some of the Athenian venues in various states of neglect and abandonment – graffiti daubed on walls, facilities empty and rusting and in some cases used as shelter for squatters. The city didn’t know what to do with all these sports facilities. The estimated cost of maintaining them was €500 million and counting.

How sinfully and maddeningly wasteful that must seem to the beleaguered Greeks now. Reluctantly signed up to their austerity bill and facing international loans of €120 billion, the Greeks could use the money it cost to stage those Games. The 2004 Olympics hardly caused the bleak situation in Greece but they contributed to it. A restless mood now governs the former Olympic city and their worried fellow-Europeans look on. This weekend, Britain will fret and ponder how to form a government capable of tackling the worst economic conditions since the post-war period. Meanwhile, the hammers and saws continue at a furious rate.

The Olympic clock is ticking and whatever happens, London must save face. For the Greeks, that never happened. The 2004 Olympics proved to be an an exercise in delusion and it created a debt that has contributed to the scenes in Athens as it is today; a smoking, troubled and flat-broke city.