Owing to slight delays in the construction of the Olympic Stadium, the equestrian arena, the soccer pitches, the swimming pool, and the gymnasium centre, this summer's games in Athens will be obliged to pioneer some new and daring events.
And just as the original Olympics paved the way for many new sporting contests, as did their revival at the end of the 19th century, the 2004 Olympics will go down in history as the games which saw a vast new family of innovative sports.
This is because there will, alas, be no roof over the stadium, which means that with a crowd of 80,000 unsheltered people, the mid-day, midsummer temperature will reach about 700 C in the shade, if there was any. But of course, there won't be, and vast numbers of people are expected to pass out, giving a vibrant new meaning to the term "an Olympic heat".
The first new sport for these games will be the stretcher-bearers' sprint, carrying the near-dead from the stands to a resuscitation centre in the heart of the stadium. Death of the patient in the course of this event carries a one-second penalty.
Disposing of the corpse before the finishing line disqualifies. Death at the centre carries no penalty. This event will be for teams of four.
There will also be a 4X4 relay in which the stretcher and the body are handed over to a series of team-mates. If the body is dropped it must be restored fully to the stretcher before the team may resume running. Children are not permitted on the stretchers: any found unconscious in the stands should be left there. Only adults' bodies of at least 12 stone qualify. Patients who get off the stretcher and run alongside it will be presumed not to qualify, and competing teams must go back and find a fresh body.
The sprints and distance competitions have had to be radically revised, because it will be impossible to run more than 100 metres in these conditions. Therefore all races will be of 100 metres, and all competitors will carry parasols. Instead of the 200, 400, 800 metre (et cetera) races, there will be the 100 metres egg-and-spoon race, the 100 metres sack-race, and the 100 metres three-legged race. The 5,000 and 10,000 metres races will be run on some large treadmills in Dmitri Phukopolous's olive-crushing plant in the island of Patacake. The ferry there runs twice a week. Spectators will be able to watch through the doorway.
The greatest excitement is expected in some of the new, calorifically-correct sports such as knitting, teeth-flossing and synchronised toenail-painting, in which few fatalities are expected. Much the same had certainly been hoped of the swimming competitions but, unfortunately, the failure to construct the pool on time has meant some radical changes in plan.
The swimming contests will now be conducted on trolleys in the main stadium. Pulleys attached to the contestants' legs and hands will propel the trolleys forward, while judges will ensure that swimmers are true to the stroke in question. To imitate the turn at the end of the pool, swimmers will roll under their trolleys, turn head-over-heels underneath, and then return to the trolley-top. Officials with watering-cans will trot alongside the contestants spraying them, to give them pool-like sensations.
The air-conditioned venue for the wrestling, weight-lifting and boxing competitions, remains - alas! - incomplete, so some other less heat-creating events will replace them. Shrimping and oyster-opening thus make their Olympian debut. And tiddlywinks is finally managing to overcome the decades of prejudice which has blighted its progress as an international sport. The tiddlywinks contest, in which Luxembourg are hot favourites, will be hosted in a disused tram-shed in Piraeus. In the evenings, by the light of a couple of paraffin lamps, the bridge finals will take place there too, as will the hotly-fought Scrabble and the eagerly anticipated charades contests. Drug-testing is mandatory in these events, under the supervision of the incorruptible IOC narcotics inspectorate led by Michelle de Bruin and Carl Lewis.
But it is to the nearly-constructed main stadium that each dawn the attention of the world will return! Costas will arrive at six to unlock the stadium gate for the 80,000 spectators, while his sister Nana prepares the soft-drinks stand. (She can remove nearly 200 bottle-tops in an hour!) Little Theophilus will run the kebab stand. And see, Uncle Grivas stands poised with his lavatory brush and his little bottle of Domestos beside the single uni-sex loo cubicle, though he has so far been unable to provide it with any paper. He has, however, been in contact with a paper recycling plant run by distant relatives in Chile and hopes to supply every single incoming spectator with an entire sheet for the duration of their visit.
Contestants will change behind the tarpaulin sheets which have been erected beside the track. There are no showers, but access to the swimmers' watering cans can be had when they are not being used to simulate a pool.
Hellenic TV has placed its television camera at the north end of the stadium, opposite the entrance. Viewers at home will thus be able to see all 80,000 spectators file in, one by one. This is expected to take four days.
Once everyone is in place, there will be an opening ceremony of unrivalled splendour, consisting of several fireworks, and a parade of paramedics and heat specialists. And then, let another quadrennial sporting exercise, free of all cynicism, charlatanism and corruption, once again commence!