Special to Page 2
ATHENS, Greece -- I had my thinking cap on in Athens. It was made of a sturdy plastic.
Upon further review of the 2004 Olympic Games host city, I can confidently anoint the hardhat as the official must-have item for Olympic fans this summer. It provides protection from collapsing stadium roof panels and other perilous construction hazards likely to be encountered when the world's elite athletes arrive this August.
Plus, your hardhat can be inverted and used to collect money to help the Greek government pay its $820 million Olympic security bill. A hardhat provides excellent visibility for corporate logos. And, as the accompanying photo proves, it's slimming.
Oh, you could sport one of those souvenir ball caps bearing a laurel wreath motif, sure. But that isn't going to do you a lot of good when a chunk of mortar mix rains down as you are in line to enter the new soccer stadium down by the Aegean coast. (The good news is, that soccer stadium is the only privately-financed venue being erected for the Aug. 13-29 Games, so there will be someone to sue when you trip over a protruding metal rod and impale your stuffed Olympic mascot doll.)
And, yes, the fashion-forward beret was the cool headgear of choice at the Salt Lake City Games. After all, it was a great little cover-up. Why, for the first time, Scandinavian biathletes could go out in public without anyone noticing they were having a bad hair month.
But this summer, in traffic-snarled, punctuality-challenged Athens -- where the new cinematic box office smash is "Three Men and a Shovel" -- I promise the hardhat will be the accessory that has us all queuing up at the official merchandise kiosks.
The Games are 160 days off. This comes as stunning news to some Athenians, who apparently thought they'd been awarded the 2008 Olympic Games. (Those actually belong to Beijing, a city that is ready to go in 2004, as the Chinese mobilize quite well.) Nevertheless, progress -- and cranes and scaffolding and dust -- is in the air in this crowded city, where the ancient Games were born and the modern Games revived. Trouble is, the revival happened in 1896 when the primary audience was other competitors who happened to be walking by.
I have just spent six days, and nights, researching Athens in person; and I can assure you that this destination is a general contractor's dream. Lung surgeons do well here, too, I am guessing. There are no visible smoking bans. The Marlboro Man looks great in a loin cloth, by the way.
What really needs to start smokin' is the pace of the work crews. While Games organizers hasten to point out that 15 venues are completed and 12 more are close, a few Olympic projects still look like construction sites. Because they are. Looking out the other day from a nearby perch at Olympic Park -- north of the city center, where the refurbished main stadium project lies in disarray -- I felt more like Paul Bremer than Dick Ebersol.
At the rate things are going, Bob Vila will emerge as the most powerful man in international sports. All he has to do is apply simple home improvement techniques to the elaborate signature roof designed by the celebrated Santiago Calatrava, a renowned Spanish architect. It looks great on paper.
As we speak, the Olympic Stadium resembles an Oklahoma warehouse after a Category 5 twister has rolled through town. In the same complex, there is a modern new swimming and diving center. It also needs a roof, or else the competitors will resemble skewered lamb in the intense August heat. The first company hired to install the roof apparently didn't employ many competent roofers. Pass the ouzo.
In another part of town, at the site of the former Athens International airport, they've turned the tarmac into venues for baseball and softball, with a canoe-kayak course featuring amphitheatre seating (currently, a towering mound of earth) planned. There is actually a lot of unused space. Maybe they should build another field where the U.S. baseball team can gather to scrimmage and think about how in the name of Abner Doubleday it failed to qualify for the Olympic tournament. Or maybe we put those guys to work on the stadium roof. They wanted the Olympic experience, after all. Let's give it to them.
I just hope when all is said and done that the recently-reinstated Iraqi Olympic team doesn't try to land its team charter at the old airport. Talk about crashing the party.
So our bottom line is this: Athens is in a state of flux. Even the Acropolis has scaffolding. And that ancient marble stadium, surrounded today by apartment buildings, has a barricade out front as a little landscaping goes down. A greatly-anticipated tram and light rail line, both promised as traffic relievers years ago, are works in progress. For now, the projects are traffic makers. People driving by slow down to ponder why it takes one guy to jack-hammer and six guys to watch to get this thing looking like a mass transit system.
There is so much left to do, and now it will it have to be done by a brand new government. Which means, starting today, it might not, in fact, be all right. On Sunday, the party formerly in power (PASOK) was voted out and replaced by the rival party (New Democracy), which means that the whole Olympic preparation burden shifts to a new set of political leaders with five months to go.
Wow, who scripted this thing, Stephen King?
As I climbed the slippery stone steps near the Acropolis last week to take in the view, my mind was racing with pertinent thoughts, including, "Shoulda worn the rubber-soled loafers!" I was contemplating the whole scenario. Athens deserves to host the Games. It is a special place with a unique bond to the Olympic ideal. Plus, when one adds up the traffic gridlocks, the erratic driving, the heavy machinery, the tight construction deadlines (and what this implies for quality and safety), the anticipated seasonal (90-plus degree) heat, the billows of second-hand smoke, and the unavoidable fact that, as far as I can tell, there is only one Starbucks in all of Athens ... the only intelligent conclusion is that the terrorists are likely to summer in Afghanistan.
But just in case, I'm packing that hardhat. What style-conscious infidel would be without one?
Steve Woodward is a frequent contributor to Page 2.