Keywords Sports Events

Touchy, but who can blame him? With the start of the Summer Games less than a month away, there's no shortage of finger-wagging critics who wonder whether this small Mediterranean nation of 10.6 million will be ready to host the world. It isn't simply the logistical challenge of erecting sports venues and improving rapid transit. It's about providing security in an insecure, post-9/11 world. But many Greeks, like Panayotis Provos, a 29-year-old agricultural engineer, have faith in their nation. "I don't believe we will have any problem," says Provos. "We are against war, and the Arab people know this."

If only it were so simple. Organizers have sweated over security since the 1972 Summer Games in Munich, when Palestinian terrorists infiltrated the Olympic compound and 11 Israeli athletes wound up dead. Greece's proximity to the Middle East and the troubled Balkans raises special concerns, and its 5,000 islands, extensive coastline and a cranky power grid that failed last week add to the headaches. Security forces have been on alert since last November, when groups purportedly linked to al-Qaeda claimed responsibility for suicide bombings in nearby Turkey that killed dozens of people. Then, in May, domestic extremists bombed an Athens police station.

"The country has done just about everything possible," says Mary Bosi, who teaches international security at Panteion University in Athens. What's more, she says, the Greeks have not gone at this alone. They've created the Olympic Advisory Group, a task force that includes counterterrorism experts from Australia, Britain, France, Germany, Israel, Spain, and the United States. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization will provide AWACS radar surveillance aircraft, and Public Order Minister George Voulgarakis has said Greece will shoot down planes that pose a threat.

The knock against Greece is that many Olympic venues are only now approaching completion, so there won't be time to adequately troubleshoot the elaborate and potentially buggy computer systems. At the main stadium, sun-blackened workers have finally managed to install a technologically intricate roof that had been in doubt, but much more needs to be done - a steady parade of dump trucks still kicks up enough dirt to cause a fine approximation of a desert sandstorm. The road between Athens and Marathon - on which competitors will, yes, run the marathon - is still being paved. In contrast, the rowing venue is just about done and sealed off.

It'll all be fine, assures Regina Desfiniotou, a police major in the Ministry of Public Order's press office. "There is a timetable for everything," Desfiniotou says with the help of a translator, "and we are on schedule for the time being." She's confident in the safety shield being erected around the Games - at $1.6 billion, a Games record, Greece's security budget ought to buy a lot of protection. "Whatever is humanly possible to predict has been predicted," claims Desfiniotou. "We have examined and considered more than 200 extreme-case scenarios."

Exercises to test security teams for radiological, biological and chemical threats have been successfully run, Desfiniotou says. As of July 1, Greece entered a heightened security phase, when 11,000 personnel - including police, armed forces and firefighters - took up their posts at the various Olympic installations and curtailed public access. The balance of the 70,000-strong force is still being deployed. Extra police now patrol busy downtown districts, the teaming ports, and the frequently packed transit system. "There are going to be 70,000 armed officers providing protection," says RCMP Insp. Louis Lahaie, the liaison officer for the Canadian Olympic Committee and Sports Canada in Athens. "They already spent three times what Sydney cost - so far. I have full confidence."

The heavily guarded venues are likely safe, but what about so-called soft targets? There are, for example, dumpsters the size of freezers scattered throughout Athens - it would seem to be almost child's play to plant a bomb. Desfiniotou maintains that's been covered off, too, although she won't say how. "We will do something," she says, "but our approach is we should not disclose or advertise the measures we intend to take for certain things."

A handful of journalists have sneaked onto Olympic construction sites in recent months and written articles about lax security. Greek authorities have responded by, in essence, dismissing the breaches with a "What do you expect? We're not ready yet." One journalist, who asked Maclean's to withhold his name, presented himself to a guard at the main gate of the Olympic Stadium in early June. The reporter had a pass, but it was for entry the next day, he says, a fact the guard missed. "He didn't even get off his chair," says the writer, who entered the site, unescorted, with a large bag and camera. He wandered about, taking pictures, he says, before two guards stopped him and politely but firmly asked him to leave. He kept his film. "If I had a truck," he says, "I think I could have gotten in."

We'll never know, but that seems like a stretch, given Joanna Kourela's experience at the same location only a week later. Kourela, a TV journalist for German and Austrian news outlets, and her cameraman were filming the stadium interior, as per her permit. "I wanted to film more, but they said stop and called in their boss," recalls Kourela. "He was there in two minutes." The supervisor denied her request to film the extra footage.

My own experience was mixed. On one hand, I bumped heads with the Athenian cop. On the other, I easily could have walked into an adjoining building at the same venue. While two guards stood at the front entrance of the two-storey apartment complex, a gaping hole in the chain-link fence and a wide-open side door made it possible to stroll right in. When I questioned Desfiniotou about this the next day, she claimed that one of the many security cameras would have spotted me had I chosen to enter illegally. "It's certain you would have been seen," she says. "You don't have to worry."

There are, officials say, 1,577 surveillance cameras in Athens: 1,026 at Olympic venues, and another 551 along busy streets. They can zoom in on individuals, pick up sound (including conversations) and are equipped with megaphones to broadcast emergency instructions. Some Athenians, like Yanna Kanellopoulou, a 27-year-old actress, think the cameras are a necessary evil, but they raise troubling privacy concerns. "For me, it's dangerous," she says. "They can watch people and you have no choice."

How things change. Dick Pound, an International Olympic Committee member who was on the Canadian swim team at the 1960 Games in Rome, recalls the proverbial good old days, when the only security needed "was to keep the boys out of the girls' village." Those innocent times might as well be ancient history to the Greeks, but somehow, in the post-Euro 2004 euphoria, they now believe they can do anything. Desfiniotou notes security forces have already begun sweeping some Olympic venues for explosives. And Pound, in the past one of the Athens organization's loudest critics, offers an equivocal vote of support. "I think we can have a pretty high degree of confidence," he says, "but nothing's perfect."

Maria Theodoriti, a 43-year-old taxi driver sitting behind the wheel of her yellow cab, has her Jackie-O sunglasses propped atop her head to hold back her shoulder-length, bottle-blond hair. Not to worry, she says. "We are," she notes, "people of the last minute." That's all well and good, but when it comes to security, it's not enough to simply tell the world to chill.

DANYLO HAWALESHKA with KEN MacQUEEN

'Enemy of the Bad Guys'
DICK POUND is a Montreal tax lawyer, chancellor of McGill University, a member of the International Olympic Committee and president of the World Anti-Doping Agency. In his spare moments, he edited or wrote three books being published this year, most recently Inside the Olympics. He also found time to chat with Maclean's Sports Editor James Deacon.

You voted against Athens' bid to host the Games for reasons that turned out to be well-founded, like lousy organization. Are these Games in trouble?

They're probably no worse than we would have expected. I mean, when we voted, in a metaphoric sense, I think the IOC sort of held its nose. We wanted to recognize the role of Greece in the Games.

I'm guessing you left out some juicy bits, but there's enough in your book to make some IOC folks unhappy. Are relations getting frosty?

Well, I've never minded being an enemy of the bad guys. As I look at it, I think my assessment of [former IOC boss Juan Antonio] Samaranch was pretty balanced. It was kind of disappointing the way he killed me at the end, but that's politics.

When you were an IOC vice-president, Samaranch used to give you all the friend-losing jobs, like the Salt Lake City bribery investigation. Is busting drug cheats another great way to make enemies?

Yeah. There are a lot of leaders of sports federations who really are unwilling to come to grips with the whole problem of doping.

You've accused the U.S. of hiding past drug use, and now the THG designer-steroid scandal has fingered some of the biggest names in American sport. Do you feel vindicated?

A little bit, although it's not a situation from which I get a huge amount of satisfaction. I think for the United States, the Balco and THG investigation has been like the Ben Johnson affair for Canada.

Do you see a connection between that investigation and the dismal performances of sprinters Marion Jones and Tim Montgomery at the U.S. Olympic trials?

It's hard to figure. The world record holder [Montgomery] runs practically dead last? Maybe ... well, I won't speculate.

Because we're ahead of the curve on doping, we Canadians tend to think we're lily white. Are we fooling ourselves?

Probably. I don't think any country or any sport is immune from this. But I'd like to think we're better off, and more attuned to the issue, than most countries.

Some people say we should let athletes take any drugs they want, since you can't really have a level playing field - the science of doping usually runs ahead of the science of policing.

That would be reckless and irresponsible, and it still wouldn't be level because there will always be people out there who are willing to sacrifice everything - and that might be life - for one moment of glory.

See also OLYMPIC GAMES.

Maclean's July 26, 2004