The big mess twenty years after the Athens Olympics

It's hard to imagine that it was on these grounds that the beach volleyball competitions of the Athens Olympic Games took place twenty years ago.

The fate of this sports site is emblematic of the serious difficulties encountered by Greece in managing the "after" Olympic Games-2004.

For Hellenic Olympic Committee President Spyros Capralos, if there is one lesson to be learned from the Athens Olympics, it is that host cities "should not try to build permanent facilities that will serve no purpose afterwards".

"It's no secret that Greece spent a lot of money to build ultra-modern facilities. But after construction, there was no more budget" to ensure the development and maintenance of the infrastructure, explains the manager in an interview with AFP.

The Athens Olympics cost 8,5 billion euros, according to the Greek Ministry of Finance.

The closure of the Olympic stadium, where the prestigious athletics competitions took place, even had to be ordered by the government last September after the 18.000-ton steel roof failed safety tests.

No maintenance

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis then assured that the stadium, which must reopen by the end of April, “had not been maintained for two decades”.

“I told every sports minister when they took office, ‘please carry out maintenance work’,” sighs Spyros Capralos.

Costas Cartalis, one of the main supervisors for the Greek state during the construction works from 2001 to 2004, believes that the Games were "forgotten, as was the obligation to use the venues".

“It’s a recurring problem with public infrastructure” in Greece, he told AFP.

Contacted by AFP, the public company responsible for finding investors for several former Olympic sites, Hellenic Public Properties, did not respond to an interview request.

However, some sites have been transformed into a shopping center, a university, a police shooting range and offices for civil protection.

On the Athenian coast, in Elliniko, sports facilities, which had been in ruins for years, were demolished to make way for a residential project, a casino and a park.

Twenty years later, the Athens Olympics have remained famous for the legendary delays during their preparation. Scheduling changes, staff shuffles and legal proceedings added to the final bill.

And it was subsequently the training of future Greek athletes which suffered with reduced financial resources.

As the Paris Olympic Games approach, some Greek athletes have complained of having to go and train abroad, due to a lack of good conditions to do so in their native country.

In some cases, training equipment is so outdated that athletes risk injury, laments Spyros Capralos.

These costly Olympic Games also weighed down the debt of a Greece hit six years after the Olympics by an acute financial crisis which forced it to resort to severe austerity plans.

“We can reasonably say that the 2004 Games played a role. Two to 3% of the debt could be attributed to the Games,” said Jacques Rogge, then president of the IOC, in 2011.

Greek debt

“This could have been organized at a much lower cost, but as there were delays, doubling of shifts was necessary, as well as night work, which costs more,” he also explained.

According to the national statistics agency ELSAT, the debt increased by more than 71 billion euros between 2000 and 2005. After the Games and until 2010, it increased by another 145 billion euros.

Nevertheless, according to Costas Cartalis, the Games had a positive effect on the economy.

“The growth in tourism is largely the result of the visibility linked to the Olympic Games,” he notes.

According to the Greek Tourism Confederation, tourist arrivals almost doubled between 2005 and 2017.

But for Costas Cartalis, in the future, the IOC should consider a model like that of the World Cup, where several countries co-organize the event.

Because, “for small countries, it is too heavy a burden,” he judges.