Athens Olympics 2004 – A Marathon of Olympic Sport

Yesterday morning began early with the swimming preliminaries at the main outdoor pool at the Olympic stadium. Rumor has it that the place was supposed to have a roof on it, but finding time and resources running out, the ingenious Greeks just decided that it was going to be an outdoor pool and to hell with silly little roofs.

I was disappointed in arriving late and missing the event I really wanted to see – 100 meter freestyle, but it couldn’t be helped. As it was I still saw the 4×200 meter freestyle relays, in which the Americans won by more than a body length.

Afterwards I bought a cheap ticket to the tennis meet and saw American Mardy Fish just beat his Spanish opponent in a really close game on the main court.

It’s interesting that the American spectators are so quiet at these Olympics. I’m not the only one to notice this, there are quite a few on the ship that have mentioned it. There’s no chanting, no large groups of Americans in the stands, no big flags. It’s obvious that American’s are afraid to be Americans outside of the “safe” boundaries of our country. It’s true that we are only a plane ride from the middle east here in Greece, and that the Olympic Games – especially the American athletes – might be a big target for terrorism, nobody can deny that. But I still believe that it’s sad that the world has become such that Americans need to feel they should hide their nationality while traveling abroad. It wasn’t like this 4 years ago when I was last in Europe.

I picked up another cheap ticket for soccer for the evening, so after tennis I left the Olympic Stadium and traveling closer to the coast to get to the soccer venue. At 6pm was the girl’s soccer teams from Mexico and Germany dueling. Germany won by two. Afterwards, for the same 15 Euro ticket, was the men’s soccer match between Argentina and Australia. I thought it would be a good match between the two, and I was hoping for Australia. But Australia ended up being schooled by the Argentinians for 90 minutes with the score 1-0 Argentina at the end. You should have seen the fancy footwork of the Argentinians, juking the defense right and left – they made the Australians look as graceful as a group of stampeding waterbuffalo in heat.

After that I’d been at the Olympics for around 12 hours, 14 if you count the lovely Olympic transportation, and I’d had enough. Today I’m broke and tired and I’m going to sit on my ass and watch The Godfather II. There’s a good chance I may ramp up for a evening in downtown Athens – I hear there are some interesting outdoor bars with the Olympics shown on big screens like a drive-in.