Why all Olympic Games should be staged in Athens
The closing ceremony of the Games of the I Olympiad took place 125 years ago this week and was apparently a celebratory extravaganza. Everyone in Athens agreed that this inaugural international sporting spectacle had been a resounding success and, hey, we must do this again. What about every four years? Or five, if there happens to be a pandemic?
That was the PR take, anyway. Actually, the final event staged 125 years ago last
Tuesday was not a triumphant climax at all. It stank out the joint. Literally. The 12-hour cycle race started at 5am in pouring rain and the fans who turned up at Neo Phaliron Velodrome – nowadays the home stadium of Champions League regulars Olympiacos – did not stay long, put off by the monotony of the seven cyclists going around and around and around and the increasingly pungent odour.
Just two finished, “in total distress”. In his book The First Modern Olympics, American author Richard D Mandell revealed:
“Neither had eaten and had only sipped liquid. They were squalid from excreta and delirious from fatigue … their legs swollen gruesomely … both could be heard weeping.”
Austrian Adolf Schmal prevailed, completing almost 200 miles, with Frederick Keeping instantly perfecting the role of plucky Brit with silver. The 12-hour race was never seen, or smelt, again on the Olympics programme.
It was a wretched manner in which to conclude the week-long festival, but no matter, after a day of industrial cleaning, the closing ceremony took place in front of 80,000 people. It was a joyous occasion, with observers reporting that Athens had not witnessed such euphoria on its streets since Pythagoras came up with his belter of a theorem.
The British tennis player, George Robertson, who won bronze in the doubles, was the star of the grand finale, reciting an ode to athletic prowess which he had composed in Ancient Greek – not something one could imagine Dan Evans doing nowadays, but these were different times. King George I of Greece was elated and rose to his feet to declare that, as far as he was concerned, the Olympics should be held in his capital permanently. And who could argue?
The Olympics was gloriously reborn in its original birthplace 1,500 years after being banned by the misery who was Roman
Emperor Theodosius I. Athens possessed the bloodline and it also had the infrastructure after the royals and their backers stumped up 3,740,000 gold drachmas.
Surely it would be a contemptible waste of history and money if the Games went anywhere else? The cheers in agreement that evening were raucously unanimous and so they skipped out into that dark air for a riotous session on the ouzo. See you in 1900. Bring your bicycle clips.
Except one dignitary in that packed citadel cast solely in marble knew differently. Parisian Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the International Olympic Committee, had promised the 1900 Games to his home city to coincide with the World’s Fair, a ghastly overblown affair that was to drone on for five months (even longer than the 2007 Cricket World Cup, which is still believed to be taking place somewhere in the Caribbean).
So, the next morning, De
Coubertin legged it out of town quicker than a Spartan on a plagiarism charge, leaving the poor Athenians with the bill and the unnecessary stadiums. The Olympics did not return for another 108 years and by that time the bidding wars were so corrupt and so political that Theodosius looked very wise indeed.
The IOC has proceeded to go from city to city, raiding the coffers with its shameless bartering of the promotion of peace and the unifying value of sport. It still flogs these myths even now.
At the moment, the Germans and Koreans are furious with the IOC for recently announcing that Brisbane was its “preferred venue” for 2032. Yet those angry countries are still planning to bid regardless, as is Qatar. Why? Because it is the IOC and it is not a done deal until the schmoozing is schmoozed.
Meanwhile, after the 125th anniversary, the Greeks still wonder what it was all for. Acropolis now. It is only fair.