My Greek Drama: Life, Love, and One Woman's Olympic Effort to Bring Glory to Her Country

by Gianna Angelopoulos

  The ensuing weeks went by in a haze of hard work and frazzled excitement. The finish line was in sight and we were going to sprint through the tape. Typically, there were countless little headaches. How could there not be with thirty-two distinct athletic venues opening around Athens under ATHOC’s supervision? And then there were media operations at every venue. Each venue required testing of all its systems to make sure it was up and running to our standards. Nobody in the Olympic movement or the press had forgotten or forgiven the failure of a critical IBM computer system at the Atlanta 1996 Games. Untested before the Games, the system, which was designed to distribute official results to the press worldwide, crashed frequently and was painfully slow. Even worse, it was often inaccurate when it was up.

  Per usual, it wouldn’t have been Greece if there weren’t one more political flap that played out behind closed doors. As the Games approached, Karamanlis’s advisers at long last convinced the Prime inister to be more aggressive with his own Olympic aspirations. Why shouldn’t he give the welcoming speech at the Opening Ceremony rather than have me do it? Fortunately, this was not a fight I needed to engage.

  The IOC had its well-established protocols, one of which dictated that the President of the organizing committee had the singular honor of welcoming the world on behalf of the host nation. I had the impression that during the Opening Ceremony the Prime Minister was stewing in his seat while the world rejoiced in a new glory that was Greece.

  The Olympic Opening Ceremony is such a point of pride for the citizens of the host nation and such a touchstone for viewers all over the world that it is inevitably the most worrisome of all of the Olympics’ moving parts. (And that’s not even including the security challenge presented by world leaders and royalty filling the VIP boxes.) Early on, I had sought the advice of NBC sports boss Dick Ebersol on how to divide my budget between the Opening Ceremony and the Closing Ceremony. Ebersol, whose perspective was especially valuable because of his vast Olympic broadcast experience and his deep and abiding love of the Games, responded quickly and unequivocally. “Ninety-ten,” he said. “The Opening Ceremony is a showcase for the world. If the Opening Ceremony does not go well, it will be used against you no matter how well the Games go. If the Games go well, the Closing Ceremony doesn’t matter so much. It’s really just a party for Greece.”

  We had already won the Summer Olympic Games by pledging to present them on a more human scale. Our Opening Ceremony, starting with a heartbeat, would signal our intention to honor that commitment. And Greece boasted an extraordinary heritage, our gift to Western Civilization and one that we believed would resonate with viewers around the world.

  Creating that show—gathering all the people to rehearse in secret, keeping track of all the moving parts—was a task worthy of Odysseus. I had placed the job in the hands of Dimitris Papaioannou, the director of the ceremony, and it proved an inspired choice. Dimitris combined extraordinary creativity and flair with great taste and refinement. He was also blessed with an attention to detail that rivaled my own, an absolute requisite for anyone who hopes to produce this kind of spectacle. I can personally attest to that. I remember standing with him at the stadium exactly one year before the Opening Ceremony—at the exact moment the Games would begin—as he tried to gauge how light from the sky would behave during the production, how it would play off the water and other elements. He wanted to leave nothing to chance.

  He even insisted on coming to my home to check out my wardrobe and choose the outfit that he felt was in harmony with the colors and spirit of his production. He chose a simple off-white—almost faded beige—dress that, by virtue of its fabric and flow, looked like it might have been worn on stage in one of the ancient Greek theatrical performances. I would wear no jewelry except those lucky pearl earrings I had rescued from the floor in Lausanne after we won the Games. Dimitris even coached me on how to ascend the steps to the podium for my welcoming speech. He said it shouldn’t look like I was climbing a mountain. “People don’t want to see a woman who looks exhausted,” he explained. “They want to see somebody poised to open the doors to Greece.” Dimitris was a superb dancer and he taught me how to move so that my feet were essentially moving independently of my head. The effect, he said, would make me “ascend like a cloud.”

  We developed a great working relationship, though in the early days he told friends that he wasn’t sure he would be able to work with this demanding woman. He complained that I constantly badgered him about financial constraints and repeated over and over again the same question: “Is it feasible?” It was, as Dimitris would demonstrate so brilliantly to the world.

  I placed Titos Komninos, an extremely successful Greek CEO, in charge of all other organizational aspects for the ceremony except the production itself. (He was officially our coordinator of the Opening Ceremony.)

  Two days before the Games were to commence, I had the special thrill of visiting the Olympic village for a meeting with our staff and volunteers. It was the first time I had donned their uniform, and the volunteers were both surprised and delighted that I had cast my lot with them. I relished the “wows” that coursed through the huge group assembled there. (IOC President Rogge was so taken with the uniform that he requested one for himself.) The uniforms would quickly become the height of fashion in the city, as off-duty volunteers proudly wore them into restaurants and taverns. The only difference in my outfit was that I had a small bag containing the security phone (to be used for extremely important issues) that could connect me directly to Prime Minister Karamanlis or President Rogge. At that moment, I couldn’t have imagined how soon I would have to use it. Actually, it was the next day.

  The matter involved two Greek sprinters and training partners, Kostas Kenteris and Katerina Thanou, arguably the most illustrious stars on our nation’s Olympic team. At the Sydney 2000 Summer Olympics, Kenteris had sprung a major upset by winning gold at 200 meters. Thanou had surprised everyone in Sydney too, winning a silver medal in the 100 meters behind American Marion Jones.

  Greeks reveled in the triumphs and embraced the runners as national heroes. Few were aware—I certainly wasn’t—that in track and field circles the two were trailed by suspicions. Unfairly or not, suspicion almost automatically attaches itself to any sprinter who has a breakout performance in mid-career—Kenteris was twenty-seven years old in Sydney, Thanou twenty-five—that surpasses all prior achievements. Kenteris repeated his gold-medal performance the following year at the world championships, but the two soon stopped competing on the European circuit, where the prizes are lucrative but the drug testing is rigorous. Shortly before the Olympics, the sprinters had hastily departed Greece for America, somehow avoiding drug testers who had them in their sights in Athens. Though they were required to keep officials apprised of their exact whereabouts, the pair couldn’t be located when drug testers showed up at the address they had provided in Chicago.

  But once they returned to Athens for the Olympic Games there was nowhere to hide. Or so officials believed. Two days before the Opening Ceremony, the two Greek sprinters missed a scheduled drug test, a major violation of their sport’s protocol, and somehow, later that day, wound up in the hospital claiming that they were injured in a motorcycle accident. Nobody could or would explain how the two managed to reach the hospital after this accident. To the IOC, the IAAF, and the international press, the incident was a charade, a transparent attempt to circumvent drug tests with a tale that defied belief. The apparent betrayal stung Greece, and in response, the Greek press was harsh: “Tell Us The Truth,” one local newspaper demanded in large type on its front page.

  The truth would remain elusive. The IOC moved swiftly to boot the Greek stars from the Games.

  I felt shocked and disappointed and that is why I used the phone.

  When I called the Prime Minister to pass on the bad news, he immediately asked, “Can this be managed?” I told him that there was no way this could be kept under wraps. He said, “Okay, let it go.” At that moment,
he and I felt the same hurt all Greeks would when they heard, on the eve of Greece’s proudest moment, that those in whom we had placed the greatest faith had tarnished, had shamed our country.

  Beyond the emotional distress, I had a pragmatic problem. At any Olympic Opening Ceremony, the greatest honor for an athlete is to be chosen as the one who, at the climax of the long torch relay, takes the torch on the final leg, raises it to the cauldron, and lights the Olympic flame that will burn atop the stadium throughout the Games. Muhammad Ali had the honor in Atlanta; four years later in Sydney, runner Cathy Freeman set the torch to the cauldron (and went on to become the only person to light the flame and win a gold medal in the same Olympics). The chosen athlete is a closely held secret, but there had been plenty of press speculation that Kenteris would be the one. And this was, unfortunately, one of those rare occasions when press speculation was correct.

  With Kenteris out of commission and out of the Olympics, we had to make another choice—and swiftly. We needed to find somebody who was telegenic and who could command the stage for what is, without doubt, the most dramatic moment of the evening. In other words, somebody with style and more than a little flair. Eventually we made our choice: Nikos Kaklamanakis, an Olympic gold medalist and three-time world champion in windsurfing whose good looks and charm had served Greece so well seven years earlier during our bid presentation in Lausanne.

  There was only one disadvantage in picking Nikos. The five other athletes were already on hand for rehearsals because they knew they were part of the festivities. At that critical moment, one day before the Opening Ceremony, nobody knew exactly where Nikos was or how to reach him. Then there was a series of frantic calls to try and find his father, who might have the answer. When we finally located his father, he told us that Nikos was out on the water training on his windsurfing board and there was no way to communicate with him. At my urging, his father went out on a boat to try and flag him down. When he finally caught up with Nikos and handed him a phone, I could barely hear him over the sounds of the wind and the sea. But I didn’t need to hear Nikos. I just needed him to hear me. I told him he was about to star in our show and that he needed to get his butt off the water to where we would be waiting to speed him to the stadium for his first and only rehearsal—twenty-four hours before showtime!

  When I got home that evening, my daughter brought me some fresh almonds and walnuts, but I had no appetite. Theodore chided me that I had to eat something to keep up my strength. “Don’t speak to me like my father,” I told him. “Besides, tomorrow I want to feel light.” I actually slept well, though I awoke very early. Everyone had counseled me to stay home and rest up for the big night. So, naturally, I got up and proceeded to the stadium where I could find all kinds of things to worry about. I no longer had to worry about Nikos; he was in place and I had no doubt he could run the required two hundred meters, get up the steep stairs without tripping, and apply the flame to the cauldron. What concerned me, though, was whether the computer technology would work flawlessly. There would be critical moments throughout when we were all subservient to the computer.

  There had been some famous glitches in Olympic cauldron lighting. In 1992 in Albertville, there was a premature conflagration before the torch even touched the cauldron. And in 2000 I had been in Sydney when, for a few seconds, the giant cauldron essentially stalled on its designated course. I remember how everyone seemed to be holding their breath. The Israeli IOC delegate, Alex Gilady, who was seated a few rows in front of me, turned to look at me and tapped the side of his head with his finger. I took that to mean: “You see what can happen. Learn from that.” Sydney officials later determined that some ham radio operator briefly jammed the signal. In Athens we were relying on computers to generate the artistic dazzle, and I couldn’t help but wonder what would happen if the signals were somehow jammed. What were our plan B and our plan C? But everybody kept reassuring me: “Don’t worry, everything will be all right. If the technology fails, we can do everything manually.” With all the tasks assigned, all I had to worry about was my speech (and a possible broken heel, I was thinking!).

  I had declined a teleprompter, certain that I could memorize and deliver my speech in three languages: the official Olympic languages of English and French, as well as Greek, naturally. I had practiced diligently and wasn’t worried about stage fright, which had never been my problem. My worries were about things like a broken heel on my shoe that would make my ascent to the podium treacherous if not impossible. That had been an obsessive concern of mine ever since I had broken a heel during a ceremony welcoming Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands to Athens. Through a very long ceremony, I was forced to pull off the gymnastic feat of balancing myself on one foot despite a cramping leg. Ever since I have carried an extra pair of shoes to every event. But that precaution wouldn’t help if the heel snapped while I was climbing the steps mid-ceremony. Then again, I wouldn’t be climbing; rather, I would be ascending like a cloud. I could only hope it wasn’t a dark cloud.

  Departing the stadium Thursday evening, after the final rehearsal, I bumped into one of the more prominent members of the Greek Olympic team, a former Olympic high jump medalist Niki Bakoyanni (no relation to the Mayor). She had a worried look on her face when she approached me, as if she had something really serious on her mind. It turned out that she was even more worried about the next evening’s events than I was—and I was very anxious. “Madame President,” she said, “I have to confess something.”

  I was puzzled, but encouraged her: “Go on.”

  “I just came from my astrologer.”

  After a long pause, I prompted her, “And …”

  “And my astrologer told me something very bad is going to happen tomorrow.”

  I didn’t laugh at the young woman because everybody had worries. For that moment, I set aside all my own and put on my best Games face. “Don’t be concerned; everything is going to be okay. But there is one thing you have to do.”

  “Yes, what is it, Madame President?” she asked nervously.

  “Find another astrologer.”

  ON AUGUST 13, 2004, the opening night of the Twenty-Eighth Olympic Games, Athens was a flurry of excitement. Huge crowds thronged around the stadium. People from all over the world had descended upon this country and they were buzzing with anticipation in all their many languages.

  I recall, as I was arriving at the stadium, looking out at the huge crowds of Greeks arriving at the same time. They looked so happy and so proud and so carefree. I felt a twinge of envy. I was happy and proud, but not exactly carefree. This was to be my moment, the one to which I had devoted so many years of my life, and I wasn’t sure I was going to get to enjoy it.

  Besides all the worries, I had responsibilities to the VIPs—“Madame President, you must greet him,” “Madame President, you must greet her”—and was saddled with a nervous Prime Minister to boot, who needed constant reassurance because he looked out and saw a stadium that was half empty rather than one that was half full. “Gianna, why is it half empty?” asked Kostas Karamanlis nervously. I patiently explained that every seat had been sold, but because the people were coming by public transportation, as we had requested, and because of the high security, he was going to have to endure a slow, steady procession of fans before the stadium was filled.

  “Are you sure it will fill?”

  “I am sure, and it will start to the exact second. We control everything.”

  In the command center, our “war room,” were COO Marton Simitsek, Creative Director Dimitris Papaioannou, Opening Ceremony Coordinator Titos Komninos, and Venue Manager Thanassis Papageorgiou. They were all fully alert.

  Truth be told, I was ready to cede control for just this one evening. Though I knew every second of the production, I wanted to surrender myself to the moment and experience it, like all the others, in my heart. Before the broadcast began, we had Nikos Aliagas (a famous Greek TV presenter who has made an exceptional career in France) warm up the crowd. During
this time, he performed a small sketch with two workers pretending to be putting the last nails into the stadium. The crowd loved it!

  Once the ceremony began, I tried to soak it all in: the percussive heartbeat countdown; the collective gasp of delight at the sight of the sea of water filling the stadium; the four hundred drums and bouzoukis and their players that ringed the sea; the dueling drums from the stadium to Olympia, connecting (via video) three thousand years of Olympic tradition; the comet that crashed into the stadium floor, igniting the Olympic rings of fire; the enthusiastic reactions of the people in attendance; and the theater of our extraordinary civilization—and its contributions to the world—from ancient to modern times. Dimitris Papaioannou’s vision of Greece’s place in the world was fully realized.

  One of the modern miracles was that more than half a million gallons of water were drained from the stadium floor within three minutes to make way for the parade of nations and athletes. According to Olympic protocol, I walked out into the stadium alongside IOC President Jacques Rogge and the President of the Hellenic Republic, Costis Stephanopoulos, for the presentation of the Greek flag and the national anthem. I was consumed by joy. If you look back at the pictures, the two men wore rather solemn and ceremonial expressions; I, on the other hand, was simply beaming, an emotional blaze radiating through my face. When I returned to my seat, everyone I passed—Queen Sofía of Spain, King Albert of Belgium, Tony and Cherie Blair, Shimon Peres of Israel, President Horst Köhler of Germany, Zanele Mbeki, the First Lady of South Africa, Frederik, Crown Prince of Denmark, and dozens of royals and heads of state—congratulated me. But when I sat down next to the Prime Minister, he remained expressionless. After four arduous years of struggle, doubts, and victories, it seemed that everyone in the world was thrilled to be in Athens, everyone except the Prime Minister, that is.