How Greek enthusiasm ensured the success of the modern Olympics

The Games of 1896 and 1906 were Greek proposals, and they saved the Olympics from fizzling out at their inception as a sideshow to expositions and fairs

Twenty years ago this month, Athens hosted the 28th Olympiad, making it one of the most successful Games in modern times. That success was of a piece with Athens’ enthusiastic hosting of the first modern Olympiad in 1896, and a fourth, intercalary Olympiad in 1906, now stricken from the record.

The following editorials were published in the Athens News in 2004. They have been slightly updated.

Opening ceremonies at Athens in August 2004

The hosting of the Games has meant different things to different nations. Adolph Hitler wanted to prove genetic German superiority in 1936. Britain wanted to advertise its revival from World War Two in 1948. Russia showcased communism and its Soviet satellites in 1980. China sees the Games as an emergence from isolation in 2008. New York and London want them as prestige advertising and an engine of re-development in 2012.

The Greeks have only ever wanted to prove one thing – that they are the worthy descendants of the ancient Greeks, whom three centuries of Western scholarship have so idealised and assimilated as to make the Greeks of today seem almost accidental heirs of a vast cultural fortune.

Travellers to Athens since the seventeenth century expressed disappointment at what resembled a village more than the city of Pericles.