The Hindu : Sport : All work and no play with 100 days left

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, May 05, 2004

Sport

Sport - Sports : General

All work and no play with 100 days left

ATHENS, MAY 4. The sprint to the Olympics is more like an obstacle course.

Frantic work on delayed venues — including the main Olympic stadium — continues in the mud during rainstorms and under spotlights at night. Roads and squares are ripped up for repaving or new rail lines. Cement mixers and cranes snarl city traffic. Whirlwinds of dust spin through many neighbourhoods.

Ready or not, the city's exhausting Olympic preparations will be over 100 days from Wednesday. That's just a bit more than 14 weeks until the opening ceremony. Or 2,400 hours.

For organisers, the Greek penchant for last minute heroics is being followed around the world.

``My major challenge is the same as that faced by everybody else involved in (the) game's preparations: Stay focused and make every minute count because we don't have a moment to lose,'' said the chief Athens organizer, Gianna Angelopoulos-Daskalaki.

For the city's 4 million residents, the frustrations and burdens of living in a giant work-in-progress may get worse before the Aug. 13-29 games begin.

The International Olympic Committee — which is coming for its last major inspection visit May 10 — can only just watch and hope that the Greeks pull it off.

``We won't have much time before the games, that is for sure,'' Denis Oswald, the top IOC overseer of Athens' preparations, told The Associated Press. ``Some time ago, we were also fearing that things would be ready only after the games. Now we are confident that everything will be finished before the games.'' But how soon before the games is still an open question. — AP

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