While my committee assumed responsibility for everything once the Games started, the government had the responsibility for all the security tenders and contracts. That didn’t keep the problem from intruding into my job frequently, however, and consuming disproportionate amounts of time. Some meetings on security issues were essential. Others were a waste of my time, requiring me to parry the absurd demands of certain Western powers that made it all too clear they didn’t trust Greece to protect their people.
Here’s an example of what I had to put up with. Shortly before the Games were set to begin, the US Ambassador to Greece, Thomas Miller, informed me that former President George H.W. Bush would be attending the Opening Ceremony. That was no problem; he would be most welcome. What was a problem was that they wanted a large armed security force of US Secret Service agents in the stadium with him. All I could envision was a little Greek boy bursting his balloon and American agents opening fire. I said, “Mr. Ambassador, this is not going to happen.” Then I said to my staff in rapid-fire Greek—the Ambassador might have understood a few of my choicer words—“Take this jerk out of here or he will be the first victim.” He then took the matter to the new government of the New Democracy party that was more closely aligned with US interests than the Socialists had been. But when the ambassador met with the new Foreign Minister, Petros Molyviatis, he was once again rebuffed. Later, when Molyviatis described the meeting to me, he was actually trembling with anger over what he considered the arrogance and insult of the American demands. “I never lose my temper, but I wanted to take this man by his neck and throw him out,” he confessed.
I’d never know where the next headache was coming from—or from whom. I remember an IOC meeting in Prague in June 2003, where Israeli representative Alex Gilady challenged our transportation plan, disputing some of its projections for the Games. Gilady was a powerful figure in the IOC and, though he had not voted for Athens, had always been helpful to and supportive of me personally. So I was surprised when, in front of all the IOC members, he disputed our carefully calculated estimate that during the Games it would require just seventeen minutes to transport IOC delegates from the Hilton Hotel, where they would be staying, to our main Olympic Stadium. It turned out that, in the spring of 2001, Gilady had been in Athens to watch a basketball game between Israeli and Greek teams at the very same time Pope John Paul II was visiting the city. “Do you know how much time it took me to get to the stadium?” he asked. “It took me forty-seven minutes, which means your research is wrong.”
Gilady got more and more animated and red in the face as he complained about this impending transportation crisis. I seldom get caught unprepared, but I must have appeared blindsided because one of my people, Yiannis Pyrgiotis, slipped me a note saying, “You must answer him about this.” So when Gilady finally wound down, I said: “Mr. Gilady, I do not understand your impatience. You know that Athens will have a transportation plan in place that will allow athletes, the media, and the IOC to go faster than all other traffic. But more important, Mr. Gilady, I know that in August 2004 you will make it in seventeen minutes because then you will be the pope in Athens.” I knew the “crisis” had been averted when even Jacques Rogge, the very buttoned-up Belgian who had succeeded Samaranch as IOC President in 2001, began to laugh heartily.
Theodore and I had witnessed Rogge’s cool demeanor in extremis during what was supposed to be a low-key, get-acquainted dinner on his first trip to Athens as IOC President. The visit came at a time when relations between the IOC and the Greek government were very tense. It was just one year after the IOC had threatened to remove the Games from Athens, and the committee was continuing to pressure us to proceed more swiftly. With ATHOC moving forward at last, the Greek public was becoming increasingly angry over what they saw as the IOC’s bullying tactics.
Following meetings with the Prime Minister and other key government officials, Rogge dined with Theodore and me at his hotel, the Astir Palace. We were chatting amiably when I glanced across the table at Rogge and saw that his face was turning red and he seemed to be having difficulty breathing. I was about to scream, “Get a doctor!” when Rogge rose out of his seat and forced his arms into his belly, somehow performing a Heimlich maneuver on himself. A big piece of lobster went flying out of his mouth and across the table. I don’t know whether Rogge, a surgeon by training, saved himself or whether a higher power had intervened. All I know is that for quite a while afterward I was the one who could barely breathe. The words Primo Nebiolo whispered to me on the curb in Monte Carlo echoed in my mind. I thought, “If Rogge had died, you know what they would say in the press: ‘Gianna killed him!’”
AS THE WRECKAGE OF THE OPERATION I HAD INHERITED was being transformed into something that resembled our original Olympic dream, the people who were responsible for the transformation were suffering from overwork. In the frenzied pursuit of our goals, I myself lost sight of my own physical and emotional needs. I had never concerned myself too much with—indeed I was foolishly oblivious to—the toll that four years of unrelenting work, anxiety, and conflict was taking on me body and soul.
There certainly were plenty of clues that I was paying a price for my commitment. For example, at some point, I—a woman with a lifelong habit of drinking coffee from morning to night—stopped drinking coffee altogether because I no longer required any additional stimulation. Actually, I couldn’t handle any more. I had overdosed on “natural caffeine” and I could feel it coursing through my body. That enabled me to work ridiculous hours, but not to get the sleep I needed. I began to think I was bionic. Looking back at those final months counting down to the Games, the only thing that reminds me I slept at all during that time is the memory of having so many nightmares.
I wasn’t bionic, however; I had betrayed my body, something that would be proven some months later.
Even worse, I had betrayed my heart. From the start, Theodore had been my greatest ally and booster, the one person I trusted with my secrets, my dreams, my greatest hopes, and my worst fears. But I actually couldn’t find time to tend to his emotional needs. I was flying high and he felt he was getting lost in my shadow. Even though I had a sense that he was depressed and that things between us were frayed, I felt helpless to do anything about it. When Theodore tried to broach the subject with me, not an easy thing for him to do, my mind was elsewhere. I couldn’t listen to Theodore’s frustration. All I could do was vent my own while asking for his comfort, understanding, counsel, and sympathy. Though I heard him clearly, I was struck by the realization that even if I wanted to deal with it, I was incapable of doing so. I was so focused on my Olympic task—and had to remain completely focused in order to succeed—that I couldn’t allow myself to be distracted. I simply couldn’t deal with what Theodore needed or wanted. I couldn’t change a thing …
I eventually confronted our problems when I met with a psychologist, a University of Athens professor I knew who somehow got me talking. But what he told me—“To Theodore, you are still his beloved wife, the love of his life, and he wants you back”—only made me furious. “Do you have any idea what I’m going through?” I told him. “I can’t even sleep anymore and you expect me to hold his hand to reassure him that I am his beloved wife. I am!” To this day, I feel a chill when I recall what he said next. “Then you are in real danger of having your marriage fall apart. Is it really worth it?”
There were so many things on my shoulders and so many things going through my mind: organizational issues; battles with politicians, the IOC, and the media; and many personal issues. I felt that I was falling emotionally and physically.
Still and all, it took more than that psychologist’s warning to command my attention. I was rambling on to Theodore about some problem I would face at some event during the Olympics when he let slip that he would probably not be there. I didn’t understand what he meant so I took his words literally, responding that naturally he would be invited and attend. “No,” he said. “Probably, I will not be there. This
is your show; you don’t need me.” In that moment, the enormity of what he was saying finally sunk in. And I knew that I needed professional help in order to save what was more important to me than even the Olympics—my marriage and my relationship with my children.
Fortunately, I was not too late. As hard as it was, I invented a modus vivendi …
I was hardly alone at ATHOC in my physical and emotional woes. The divorce rate among the Olympic committee staff was some 55 percent. “The General,” a powerful physical specimen who had been a top shot-putter as a young man, would say it took him four years after the Games before he fully regained his strength. And Lena, my right hand who on top of all her administrative duties did her best to take care of me, suffered a stroke just two months before the Games. Against doctor’s orders she returned to work after only fifteen days of recuperation. The only concession she allowed to her health was that she worked a normal shift. I would have to add three more assistants—my daughter Carolina, Evelyn Kanellea, and Vassilis Dimitropoulos—to fill the void and get me through my never-ending workday. Weeks before the Games, Carolina, already an Olympic volunteer, was at my side constantly. She was invaluable because she understood what I needed: immediate answers to all my questions. I needed her to be knowledgeable, to be calm, and to present me with straight answers. To me “I don’t know” is only an acceptable answer for the briefest period of time. If you don’t know the answer you’d better go and find out as quickly as possible.
Back in 2000, during the first stressful months of building the organization, I received a wake-up call from Carolina when she asked me, “Mom, what are you doing there?”
I was tempted to answer her question with technical details and began explaining, “I have just arrived from a meeting with the Prime Minister and—”
“No, Mom,” she interrupted, “what are you doing there? Forget about me. I’m going to college. Dad is always traveling. It’s my two brothers who need you right now. We are a family that’s falling apart.”
“Carolina,” I told her, “it’s complicated and too hard to bring the boys here right now with the house so small—”
“Mom,” she interrupted again, “what do you want? The megahouse or the family? You have to bring the boys to you now.”
I believe every mother is the cornerstone of every family. In my case, I had another cornerstone, my own mother. The strict Marika Daskalaki proved to be the most supportive, most understanding, most loving, and sweetest grandma I could have ever imagined, for my kids and for me and for Theodore. Her unreserved love and care, I have to say, saved my kids during the endless absences I had to endure. She was the guardian angel of my family. I owe her a lot.
Despite any personal adversity, I never stopped driving everyone just as hard as I drove myself. Some people quit because of the stress. But I believed in leadership by example, and those who stayed saw me giving 200 percent and tried to match it.
I recall hearing a story that when in the midst of World War II Winston Churchill heard that British Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery had said, “I neither drink, nor smoke. That’s one reason why I am 100 percent fit,” the Prime Minister immediately replied: “Well, I both drink and smoke. And I am 200 percent fit!”
I stayed the course and I stayed on message. One message, one inviolable rule, had primacy: Stay on budget! I knew that everyone was watching, especially my “allies” who were scrutinizing our operations looking for and hoping for mistakes. Any fiscal errors on our part and they would have real ammunition to use against me instead of the adolescent invective that characterized their personal attacks to that point. This started from the very top, and my CFO, Theodore Papapetropoulos, made sure every single manager became aware of it. I found dozens of ways to say the same thing: “Don’t forget about the budget”; “Are we within our budget on this?”; “Don’t go one euro over”; “One euro over and they will hang all of us”; “Play it safe and make sure we come in one euro under.”
I followed my own edict. I remember our volunteers telling me that while everything was wonderful, there was one slight problem. They were being fed meager meals of sandwiches and beverages, along with two bottles of water. We told them the truth. We had had to dress them, train them, and transport them, and we only had so much money with which to feed them. During the final year, we delayed hiring some employees for months to save on salaries. The rest of us were working 24/7 to compensate. But somehow it came together. ATHOC ultimately finished with a large surplus—123.5 million euros out of a 1.9 billion-euro budget—and I proudly delivered that check to the government after the Games. What we accomplished with our budget is a great success. To me, however, the professional opportunity that we gave to so many people and what we accomplished with our human capital were even more important.
_______
In recent years, many people in Greece have criticized the 2004 Olympic Games as being a major cause of the current economic and political crisis. This is wrong. The economic crisis has much deeper economic, social, and political causes, many of which were discussed in the 1995 symposium I cochaired at Harvard and referred to earlier in this book. What is worse, pointing a finger at the Olympics reveals a much deeper social, psychological, and identity crisis in Greece. Playing this blame game has slowly—dangerously, I would say—annihilated all the values that bound Greek society and its traditions together. Greeks smiled in the face of adversity when we struggled to put on the Olympic Games. Today, empty gazes and melancholy prevail.
True, the infrastructure costs ballooned. Truer still, price-gouging and major inefficiencies predated our Olympics. Construction companies were rumored to win contracts based partly on their political ties. They never completed public works on time and on budget.
Indeed, Greece paid a huge price for launching its Olympic effort three years late.
The Games added an enormous number of projects of all sizes to the mix. And depending on when they began, these projects had to be completed in four, three, or sometimes merely two years, without any deadline flexibility. While special laws were passed to expedite the EU’s lengthy tender procedures, very few Greek government Ministers had experience dealing with such matters. Many projects became bloated with unnecessary side deals, projects that really had nothing to do with the Olympics but were deemed “Olympic-related” by the government so as to satisfy its electoral constituencies all over Greece. It was all about votes.
Moreover, Greece, being a small country, had only a handful of construction companies that could handle the multitude of projects under such time constraints.
And they took advantage. They seemed to behave in an orchestrated way; they had the government over a barrel and used their position to influence tenders and pricing and to exploit the government’s inefficiencies.
It happened that tenders would produce no response until the price went up to a level the companies considered acceptable. The government simply didn’t have the experience, the knowledge, the clout, or, perhaps, the political will to stand up to these business coalitions, especially since the media were often party to that orchestration.
We were at the mercy of the construction companies and they didn’t have any mercy. All time-sensitive projects eventually required double- and, later, triple-shifts to ensure completion. Suppliers felt free to overcharge for materials and shipping. Cost overruns were huge. And rumors were rife that they were compounded by kickbacks to compliant government officials. As if Greece wasn’t already paying enough, the government offered special “bonuses” to the contractors if they delivered their projects on time and to specifications.
The clock was ticking for the Games and the infrastructure costs were already an issue.
I suggested to the Prime Minister that he examine the possibility of private finance initiatives, a method of co-funding public infrastructure projects with private capital. Later the projects would be passed over to private enterprise for a fee. But Simitis would have none of it. “We can’t do tha
t,” he told me. “What would the public and media say?”
Sadly, the media wasn’t saying much about how some of our original plans—the projects as described in the bid file we presented to the IOC—were being altered. Venues were scattered throughout the city and the country with no rhyme or reason except politics. There appeared to be no concern for their viability, as no long-term feasibility studies were conducted. At one point, there was even a ludicrous proposal to build an artificial island off the coast near the old airport and then put a sports venue there. Three new soccer stadiums were planned for cities that already had soccer facilities that could have been renovated to meet our needs.
The IOC, which had been an ally in getting the organizational effort moving, was no help in curbing these excesses. I had disputes with the IOC and international sports federations about budget concerns, but all they were concerned about was getting the best sporting venues and infrastructure built. My mantra for ATHOC had been stay on budget, while every other key player—the government, the IOC, the sports federations—was caught up in a mentality of “spend, spend, spend.”
On top of all those issues, there was the impact of the 9/11 attacks; Athens would end up spending some $1.5 billion on security, six times the amount spent at Sydney 2000, the last pre-9/11 Olympics.
In addition to the escalating costs, security issues dealt the Athens Games another major blow. Hysterical Western media, at times driven by special business interests and lobbying groups, portrayed Athens as an unsafe city: wide open, unprepared, and thus ripe for terrorist attack. The characterization wasn’t remotely accurate; Athens was more prepared for terrorism and far safer than some previous Olympics had been. But those dire warnings wound up deterring tourists and corporate groups that had been expected to attend the Games, a blow to both our pride and the economy of the Games. These “scare” stories seemed particularly unfair, as they came primarily from the United States, England, and Australia. After all, even before 9/11, America had suffered a terrorist bombing at the 1996 Atlanta Games.
My Greek Drama: Life, Love, and One Woman's Olympic Effort to Bring Glory to Her Country Page 23