JEFF POWELL: Critics of the Athens 2004 Olympics were expecting 'a building site Games' but Gianna Angelopoulos-Daskalaki ensured that Greece produced a modern miracle

It was 3am of a moonlit night in Athens, just one week before the opening ceremony for the 2004 Summer Games, as the First Lady of the Olympics put on a hard hat and set out to spur on construction workers as they raced to beat that deadline.

This was by no means the first - nor the last - of the many times Gianna Angelopoulos-Daskalaki delivered flasks of coffee and her patriotic message to men and women working around the clock to deliver what a mocking world was calling ‘impossibly Greek.’

Her objective on this particular occasion was to inspire a sprint finish to completion of the new Tram line, which would carry the crowds from the city centre to the Olympic Stadium. The track was still a kilometre or so short of the final stop, which itself was not quite finished.

She stood on a stack of rails and issued an exhortation which translated to: ‘We may be tired but let’s do this for Greece. For our great culture, our people, our national pride.’

Her audience knew the unspoken subtext: ‘And to prove the critics and the doubters wrong.’

They cheered and threw their hats in the air. Bent to the task again. As did the teams working on that stadium and a plethora of other venues. All of which, one by one, came to readiness on schedule. Just in time, many of them. 

Some at which the paint was still drying on the morning of opening day. But on time nonetheless. An accomplishment made very possible by Angelopoulos-Daskalaki dissuading train and bus drivers and builders from joining hotel staff and paramedics in strikes and protests.

All to the chagrin of those around the planet who had spent a year or more predicting ‘a building site Games.’

To the confounding of many abroad who had sniggered behind their hands at the very notion of little old debt-burdened Greece producing a modern miracle. 

Especially those in the US who had used their wealth, power and influence to twist the IOC’s arm into the preposterous awarding of the 1996 event to Atlanta. Rather than to the spiritual and ancestral home of the Olympics on the 100th anniversary of the first Games, which had taken place in the marathon shadow of Mount Olympus and given life to this eternal feast of sporting endeavour.

Having been embarrassed by the backlash to that decision, and then the deadly pipe-bomb explosion with which an urban terrorist rocked Atlanta, the Americans anticipated a debacle on the shores of the Aegean which would relieve their blushes. Had that disaster materialised the very future of the Olympics would have been cast into jeopardy.

The gargantuan cost to any city staging the Games was already giving rise to demands for the quadrennial extravaganza to be consigned to history. A clamour for those billions to be better invested in public works benefitting the needy threatened to be become unstoppable if Athens collapsed into chaos.

The gleeful critics were not alone in expecting the worst. In scoffing when Angelopoulos-Daskalaki won her second bid for Athens to stage the biggest sporting show on earth. 

Miserably, most commentators in Britain and Western Europe joined the chorus of cynics. Happily, they were left choking on their words. Hopefully, they did not allow that bitterness to spoil their taste for some of the most delicious fish to be found in any ocean. Nor sour their admiration for a quite stupendous spectacle.

For the first time since the US and Russia boycotted each other’s Games, every country in the Olympic movement was represented. No matter through which national prism you viewed, Athens 2004 was a triumph.

An opening ceremony of historic, beguiling, haunting, enchanting Greek pageantry was followed by a carnival of sublime athletic prowess amid spasms of the highest drama.

American swimming phenomenon Michael Phelps became the first athlete to win eight medals, six gold and two silver, in a non-boycotted Games.

Moroccan middle distance legend Hicham El Guerrouj became the first winner of both the 1,500 and 5,000 metres since Finnish icon Paavo Nurmi 20 years before. Guerrouj still holds the world records at 1,500 meters and the mile.

Brazil’s Vanderlei Cordeiro de Lima was leading the men’s marathon with ten kilometres to go when he was dragged off the road and into the crowd by Irish priest Neil Horan. He escaped those mad clutches to take bronze and was later award the Pierre de Courbetin medal for sportsmanship.

Usain Bolt gave no hint on his Olympics debut of the fastest-man glories to come as he finished fifth in his 200 metres heat, thus failing to qualify for the second round.

Paula Radcliffe, Team GB’s world record holding favourite for the marathon, suffered a startling collapse when in sight of the Ancient Olympus Stadium which had been brought out of a century of mothballs to provide an awe-inspiring finish for the long-distance runners.

That disappointment apart, there was UK gold to bedazzle. Army Sergeant Kelly Holmes astonished by winning the 800 and 1500 metres, thus earning the honour of carrying the flag at a charmingly folkloric closing ceremony. At the velodrome Bradley Wiggins became the first GB athlete for 40 years to win three medals at one Games – a full set of gold, silver and bronze.

Amir Khan, then a shy teenager who was only the British boxer competing, overcame that sense of isolation to take bronze.

Yet for this English writer, the most glorious contest of all came, of all places, on the rowing lake. Boat races tend to be processional affairs but not in those beautiful surroundings. The global television audience of hundreds of millions gasped in awe as Mike Pinsent won his fourth gold Olympic gold, and first without old partner Steve Redgrave, as he stroked James Cracknell, Ed Goode and Steve Willliams to victory in the coxless fours by an eye-blink of eight-one-hundredths of a second – and a couple of inches - from Canada.

Greece, meanwhile, hauled in its highest medal total since the inaugural Olympics. A nation rejoiced. It's leaders celebrated making a profit, a calculation otherwise beyond the dreams of cities subsequently staging what has become almost obscenely expensive modern Games.

Paris 2024 – in all its terrorist threats, post-election political shambles, suffocating immigration, crime rising on the streets and sewage sinking into the Seine - should be so lucky.

More remarkably at Athens 2004 an influx of foreign tourists and investment almost expunged Greece’s supposedly crippling albatross of national debt.

Furthermore, the First Lady of the Olympics had been planning ahead. Unlike in so many other cities where the venues have been left to ruin, the legacy of Athens finds a majority of its locations in use for sport – not least as stadiums for the their Premier League football teams - or community use.

That Tram line which our group visited in the dead of night now connects the national stadium not only to a downtown charmingly pedestrianised during the Games but also to coastal resorts rejuvenated by the Olympics as well as to many of this city’s ancient monuments. Those Games also brought with them a modern international airport, an improved Metro, an expanded regional rail network and revenue from the tolls for use of a new high-speed ring road.

Not for nothing is Angelopoulos-Daskalaki now Her Excellency The Ambassador At Large For the Hellenic Republic. As such she is about to be honoured by a grateful country at celebrations of the 20th anniversary of the Olympics coming home to their birth-place. Greece will salute her enormous contribution towards restoring the prestige and honour of one of the proudest empires in the history of mankind.

Make that womankind, also, thanks to a charming lady whose hard-hatted defiance saved the Games.