ATHENS, 6 September 2003 — Former IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch, who three years ago warned Athens it risked losing the Games if it did not pick up the pace, said yesterday the 2004 Olympics would be the best for years to come. Six years to the day after awarding the Games to Athens, the first time since their modern revival in 1896, Samaranch praised organizers for catching up after wasting more than three years of preparations.
Samaranch flashed organizers a yellow card in 2000, a step short of stripping them of the Games, after they failed to keep within International Olympic Committee progress timetables. Initial Athens Games preparations were plagued by infighting and bureaucracy and the troubled Olympics have been playing catch-up ever since.
“I am sure that the Games will be the best for many years in Olympic history,” said Samaranch, in Athens to promote his book “Memorias Olimpicas”.
“I personally think that these Games will be a great, great success, both for Greece and also for the Olympic movement.”
He said while the IOC owed Greece a debt, which it paid back by awarding the Games to Athens, organizers had come very close to losing the Olympics.
Athens Games chief Gianna Angelopoulos praised Samaranch’s contribution to getting the Olympics back to the capital. “No-one will forget your faith in Greece to organize the Games and no Greek will ever forget your face when you opened the envelope (containing the winning bid),” she said.
But relations between Greeks and the former IOC chief were not always as rosy as now. Thousands of Greek spectators booed him when he entered the Olympic stadium during the opening ceremony of the 1991 Mediterranean Games in Athens. The Greek capital had just failed to win the nod to host the centenary Games in 1996 when the IOC awarded them to Atlanta.
“I was not well received in 1991 but when asked by reporters about this I said if I were a Greek I would have done the same,” the perky 82-year-old said with a smile. “The Games are a mixture of sports and culture but only Greece has a third dimension and that is history,” he said.
