The Olympiad returned to its birthplace under the heaviest-ever
security for a sporting event as the 28th Olympic Games started its
opening ceremony Friday night.
After 108 years away from its ancient birthplace and the city of
their revival, the Olympics returned home at last. This time,
10,500 athletes from a record entry of 202 countries and regions
are competing and four billion people tuned in the live broadcast
of the opening ceremony.
Gone was the question mark hanging on the ability of this nation
of 10 million people to host the Olympics, and everything were in
place at the very last moment.
The Olympics, which runs through to August 29, has 301 gold
medals up for grabs. The United States and Russia are widely
predicted to finish 1-2 overall while China is to slug it out with
Germany for third place.
Swimming is set to upstage athletics as American phenom Michael
Phelps is all out to level or break countryman Mark Spitz's
seven-gold-in-one-games record while dueling with Australian Ian
Thorpe for the best swimmer billing.
The Athens Games will go down in history as the heaviest-guarded
one, with a 1.2 billion euros (US$1.5 billion) Olympic security
package of about 70,000 personnel and a massive array of
surveillance equipment, including a sensor-laden blimp, undersea
sensors and street cameras that have already annoyed the Athens
populace.
As Greek taxpayers started to worry about the long bill, Olympic
chief Jacques Rogge ensured that the Olympics wouldn't lose
money.
Greece's spending on the Olympic Games may rise to seven billion
euros (US$ 8.4 billion), 2.4 billion over the original estimate of
4.6, widening a budget deficit that already exceeds European Union
limits.
Yet the IOC president Rogge said he was confident the Greeks
would stay out of the red because since 1984 the Olympics has been
in profit.
A drug-free Olympics remains a Utopian dream as doping has
already reared its ugly head in this Games. Kenyan boxer David
Munyasia had been sent home after testing positive for the
stimulant cathine while a dozen cheats had been caught when they
were about to leave for Athens.
Greek pride was badly hurt when their two most famous athletes
face expulsion from the Games for missing a mandatory doping test,
which is treated as a failed test according to the IOC's
zero-tolerance policy.
Reigning Olympic 200 meters champion Kostadinos Kenteris, who
had been tipped to light the Olympic flame in the opening ceremony,
and fellow sprinting medallist Katerina Thanou were injured in a
motorcycle crash shortly after missing drug tests.
A Greek Olympic Committee source said the duo, ordered to appear
at a disciplinary hearing next Monday, might pull out of the
Olympics to save their skins for the time being.
(Xinhua News Agency August 14, 2004)