Posted: August 8, 2004

Athletics: Letter from Athens

From David Monti

(c) 2004 Race Results Weekly, all rights reserved RaceResultsWeekly.com

RRW Subscribers:

Your editor has been in the Greek capital now for a bit over 24 hours, and is impressed with what he has seen.

Security is tight, everywhere. At our hotel, a concrete barricade blocks the door and police monitor the lobby. In a few days, the hotel will go through a lock-down, where the rooms will be emptied and all will be searched with bomb-sniffing dogs. After that, all guests will have to pass through a metal detector prior to entering each day. It is much the same at the Stadium, Main Press Center and International Broadcast Center. "Mag and bag," is the watch phrase: magnetic metal detectors and bag searches before entering.

The stadium has been transformed since my last visit in 1997 by the new glass and steel canopies which now cover the two sides of the stadium. The structure is as beautiful as it is massive: two huge arcs running the length of the stadium, from which long cables hang to hold up the canopy. It is breathtaking.

Work continues to finish the stadium and rehearsals are held each evening for the opening ceremonies. The word is that it will be really over the top with a major special effect involving water. We'll see on Friday.

At the athletics venue much of the talk is about the athletes who probably won't appear: Sureyya Ayhan (TUR) who has a knee injury, Torri Edwards (USA) who will probably be suspended for 2 years for taking a banned stimulant, and Cathal Lombard (IRL) who was reported to have had a positive test for EPO.

Transportation has been very good so far. Special Olympic lanes have been striped in Athens's streets allowing official vehicles to skip the slower traffic in the regular lanes. My work bus has been on-time the three times I have used it. So far, so good.

Bye for now,

David Monti