Athens 2004: The miracle and the trauma
Were the Games worth it? Did they leave the Greek economy and the capital with a legacy or in debt? Five experts challenge the Olympic myths
Greece’s bid to host the 1996 Olympics on the centenary of the modern Games in Athens seemed so ludicrous, it even featured in the verses of a song written by Lina Nikolakopoulou and performed by Haris Alexiou, poking fun at the audacity of such an ambitious undertaking by a country still struggling to join modernity. It was regarded as a “national wager” and we ended up losing it to Atlanta.
However, a combination of wounded national pride led us, in an almost hypnotic state, to enter a new bid for the 2004 Games. When September 5, 1997 rolled around and the city that would be chosen to host those Games was about to be announced, the mood in Athens was almost as ludicrous as Nikolakopoulou’s verse indicated. The scene at Zappeion Hall as former International Olympic Committee president Juan Antonio Samaranch stuttered out the name “Athens” was almost comical: a few dozen people jumping around in joy in front of Theophil Hansen’s grandiose events hall.
Nearly 27 years have gone by since that day and the temptation is great. If we could go back to 1997 would we wish for a different outcome in the contest between Athens and Rome? Asking the same question the day after the closing ceremony of the 2004 Olympics would have seemed disrespectful to say the least. The country was on cloud nine, basking in an unprecedented sense of national confidence. Today, however, that very same question makes sense.
Did we do the right thing by embarking on that adventure? Did we bite off more than we could chew? Is there any truth in the widespread belief that the cost of hosting the Games ultimately led to the collapse of the Greek economy and a decade of austerity?
Dashed expectations
Even though the answer seems obvious to Stathis Kalyvas, he believes that the conversation is less about the Games themselves and more about the dashing of the expectations they cultivated.
“We’re assessing the Games today from a position of knowing how badly their legacy was managed,” says the Oxford University professor of political science. “The Olympic Games gave us the sense that we had jumped category as a country. And it is precisely the refutation of this belief that influenced how we viewed the Games themselves and led to all sorts of misconceptions, such as drawing a link between the Olympics and the economic crisis, for example. If things had gone differently, if we had managed the experience of that very packed period a lot better and, mainly, at the practical level, managed the actual facilities better, we would have a completely different view of the Games’ legacy today. What happened was a kind of psychological shift: Disappointment over the illusion that we had become somehow better turned into disappointment about the Games themselves. It was as if the trauma of dashed expectations cast a pall over the entire experience.”
For Costas Cartalis, a professor at the University of Athens and former general secretary for the Olympic Games at the Culture Ministry during the crucial 2000-2004 period, Greece had to make a bid for the 2004 Games. He believes that the time had come for Greece to have a greater presence on the stage of the Olympic Movement and to contribute to efforts to rein in the uncontrolled commercialization of the Games (as evidenced in Atlanta in 1996).
“In spite of everything, Athens (and Greece) needed a strong presence in international developments, the city needed the glamour of being regarded as an international metropolis and the urban infrastructure was very aged. The Games, therefore, generated the momentum for modernizing the infrastructure and they were welcomed by the majority of the public. Any way you approach the subject, the bid made sense and the timing was right,” he tells Kathimerini.
Reaching ‘maturity’
‘The undisputed Achilles’ heel of the Olympic undertaking was the poor quality of the building stock produced and, above all, the absence of a plan for what was to happen after’
Greece may not have jumped up a category (at least in the long term), but Athens certainly did. Imagine the city without the metro, its extensions, the new airport, the Attiki Odos highway, the tram, the suburban railway, the unification of the key archaeological sites and so much more. Not all these projects were carried out because of the Games, but they certainly were accelerated and completed thanks to them.
The infrastructural legacy is key to the head of the Department of Architecture at the University of Patras, Yannis Aesopos. “For the city of Athens, the 2004 Games marked the beginning of its ‘adulthood.’ From the continuous post-war internal expansion through the reproduction of the small to medium-sized ‘urban unit’ of the apartment building, we transitioned to the introduction of large-scale infrastructure within its fabric, to elements that are homogeneous with international urban planning: highways and metro and tram networks connected to an airport or generic architecture,” he says. “Together with the sports-related projects, these projects formed part of a very ambitious package for modernizing Athens. At the same time, important renovations were carried out in public spaces, urban facades and hotels were restored and new cultural venues were built. Spread out across Attica, all of this transformed Athens’ image into a global metropolis and strengthened its recognizability and attractiveness, setting the foundations for its later evolution into an important tourism destination.”
Asked whether it was the right thing for Athens to bid for the 2004 Games, his answer is an emphatic “yes.” However, he adds, “the undisputed Achilles’ heel of the Olympic undertaking was the poor quality of the building stock produced (with the exception of the buildings designed by Santiago Calatrava) and, above all, the absence of a plan for what was to happen after.”
Cartalis is not so sure. “The answer to the metaphysical question of what the decision would be regarding Greece’s hosting of the Games if we’d known about the state’s failure to exploit all the infrastructure in the post-Olympic period is that, yes, perhaps it would have been different to what was decided in 1996,” he says.
The ‘dishonest myth’
As Greece prepared to host the Games, the undertaking enjoyed an unprecedented degree of public support, in the 80% range (VPRC, 2001-2003). Once the Olympics were over, however, we saw a marked shift in public opinion as we approached the landmark anniversary of 2014. With Greece firmly in the grip of the economic crisis, several online public opinion polls showed that three in four respondents partly blamed the Games for the country’s fiscal derailment.
“It is an absolute myth, and a dishonest one at that,” says Bank of Greece Governor Yannis Stournaras, adding that he was the first minister to defend the Games in Parliament when, in January 2013, at the peak of anti-austerity fever, he had to respond to a question in his capacity as finance minister on the cost of the 2004 Olympics. “I had conducted an extensive analysis based on data from the General State Accounting Office, which completely demolished the propaganda about a fiscal derailment during the preparation for the Games,” he tells Kathimerini.
According to the figures Stournaras had made public at the time, the total gross cost of the 2004 Olympic Games came to 8.5 billion euros, including the expenses covered by the Greek state (from the regular budget and the Public Investment Program) and the expenses of the Athens 2004 Organizing Committee. Around 2 billion euros of that amount was covered by ticket sales, sponsorships, broadcasting rights etc, Stournaras noted. From the remaining 6.5 billion euros, 2 billion euros was spent on the unification of Athens’ main archaeological sites and on hospital upgrades. Therefore, the gross cost of the Games came to 4.5 billion euros and included public infrastructure projects that benefited society as a whole.
“Not only did the Games not destroy us financially, but if it weren’t for the pressure of 2004, a lot of the infrastructure we take for granted today would simply not have been built. Bringing such an ambitious endeavor to fruition was the greatest possible display of the abilities of the country’s human capital. What’s more, all the public investment multipliers worked and, as the Financial Times wrote at the time, we built infrastructure that would normally have taken 25 years in four,” adds Stournaras.
Abandonment
The general director of the Foundation for Economic and Industrial Research (IOBE) and professor at the Athens University of Economics and Business, Nikos Vettas, reminds us that, exactly 10 years ago, IOBE had published a detailed study on the Games’ footprint on the Greek economy.
“The cost and fiscal impact are affected by the model adopted by each city. The Athens Games had a similar approach to Barcelona and Sydney than to Atlanta or London, in that significant investments were made in permanent facilities in order to maximize the long-term benefits for residents and future visitors,” he explains.
As for calculating the gross cost of the Games, which the report put at 8.5 billion euros, he adds that this is greatly influenced by which projects are defined as “Olympic.”
“In any case, the assessment was that on the macroeconomic level, the Games had a positive impact on economic activity and employment, from 2000 all the way to 2013. If the Games had not taken place, gross domestic product in 2004 would have been 2.5% lower and employment would have been down by roughly 44,000 jobs. After 2004, the impact of the demand factors gradually declined, but supply factors extended the positive effects on the economy in the medium term. The abandonment of many facilities reduced GDP by approximately 0.20 percentage points, and the benefit from exploiting the Olympic legacy was limited because of the devaluation of significant projects,” adds Vettas.
