Multi-billion Dollar Party Over As Olympics Looks To Beijing

by Rob Woollard
ATHENS, Aug 30 (AFP) - Greek taxpayers might disagree when they are paying off the most expensive Olympics ever for the next decade, but others will feel that the Athens Games was 8.7 billion dollars well spent.
The curtain came down on the greatest sporting show on earth here late Sunday, wrapping up a glittering 17-day spectacle which confounded the grim forecasts of disaster that characterised the seven-year build-up.
International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Jacques Rogge broke with the tradition established by his predecessor Juan Antonio Samaranch and refrained from trotting out "the best ever" moniker handed out to previous Games.
But Rogge left no-one in doubt that the IOC was more than happy with Athens` hosting of the 28th summer Games which came home to Greece 2,000 years after the ancient Olympics.
"You have won by brilliantly meeting the tough challenge of holding the Games," Rogge told organisers in his closing speech.
"These were unforgettable dream Games."
When it was over, the Olympic pecking order saw the United States scrape ahead of China in the overall standings, with 35 golds to the 32 won by the world`s most populous nation, who will host the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.
China`s emergence and strong showings by other Asian nations was one of the dominant themes of the Olympics, Rogge said.
"What we have seen here in Athens is the awakening of Asia," Rogge declared.
"The traditional powers of the Olympics will have to work very, very hard to maintain their present positions. This has been an extremely pleasant trend for us to see."
Staged under an unprecedented security blanket that cost 1.5 billion dollars to stitch together, the Olympics passed off peacefully.
The only blemishes to an otherwise flawless security operation were a man dressed as a clown who somehow managed to bounce off a high board during the diving competition and a spectator who rugby tackled men`s marathon leader Vanderlei de Lima of Brazil.
The spectre of doping gatecrashed the party regularly, diverting attention away from the the games even before the opening ceremony.
Drugs were never going to be far away from the headlines from the moment that the IOC forecast in the days leading up to the event that record numbers of cheats would be unmasked.
But no-one could have predicted the doping drama that exploded around Greek sprinters Kostadinos Kenteris and Ekaterini Thanou even before the Games began.
When both athletes failed to appear for a mandatory drug test at the Olympic village on Aug 12, it triggered a sequence of events that led to their exclusion from the games and left a nation in shock.
A mysterious late-night motorcycle crash which investigators now believe was faked and subsequent raids on offices of their coach that unearthed steroids were two of the juicier elements of the tale.
In all, a total of 25 athletes were excluded from the Olympics for doping offences. The hall of shame included three gold medallists.
It also included 11 weightlifters, proving once again that the sport remains the Olympics` red-light district.
Yet however hard it tried, the issue of doping could never completely submerge the sporting drama as the games lived up to its billing as a `celebration of humanity`.
Swimming saw the United States` teenage prodigy Michael Phelps equal the record for winning the most number of medals at a single games, the 19-year-old finishing with eight that included six golds.
While Phelps failed in his bid to equal or better Mark Spitz` 1972 haul of seven golds, his performances speak for themselves.
Not even Phelps though could get the better of Australia`s Ian Thorpe, who underscored his enduring class with victories in the 200 metres and 400m freestyle to become the most successful Australian Olympian of all time.
The athletics competition also threw up some vintage performances, among them Hicham El Guerrouj`s sheer bloody-minded refusal to let the 1,500 metres gold slip from his grasp for the third Olympics in a row.
The king of his event for close to a decade, the 29-year-old Moroccan had been beaten for gold in both the 1996 and 2000 Olympics, on each occasion being left in tears.
Many had predicted more disappointment for El Guerrouj at the hands of Kenya`s Bernard Lagat. But in a thrilling finish El Guerrouj dug deep to end eight years of hurt.
"The last few metres I just refused to let him go," said El Guerrouj. "I was so desperate for the title that I had to hold on. In Sydney I was crying tears of sadness but here I am crying tears of joy."
El Guerrouj confirmed his status as the finest middle distance runner of his generation by adding the 5,000m gold, the first man since the legendary Paavo Nurmi 80 years ago to achieve the double.
But while the likes of Phelps, Thorpe and El Guerrouj got the superstar treatment, the poignant human stories of endeavour that are the Olympics` hallmark were much in evidence.
No-one quite managed to rival Equatorial Guinea`s hapless swimmer Eric `the Eel` from the 2000 Olympics but the cast of no-hopers, prevailing against impossible odds, was as rich as ever.
Iraq provided one of the feel-good stories of the games by reaching the semi-finals of the football tournament to cap an improbable campaign that had seen them overcome the ravages of war just to qualify.
But the Olympic odysseys of other athletes proved more fleeting.
Iraqi judoka Hadir Ali Lazame - born in Baghdad, exiled in Syria and trained in Japan - had come the roundabout way to Athens only to see his opening bout last just nine seconds.
Iraq also boasted a swimmer in the shape of Mohammad Abbas, who realized a dream by competing in the 100m freestyle where he was 63rd out of 69 finishers.
Robina Muqim Yaar was meanwhile part of an Afghanistan team welcomed back into the Olympic fold following the toppling of the hardline Taliban regime in 2001, was eliminated in the opening heats of the 100m.
Not that she cared. In the best traditions of the Olympics, for Lazame, Muqim, Abbas and thousands of others, it was the taking part that counted.
"It doesn`t matter first or last," Abbas said. "The important thing is that we are here."