Madam, - Bringing the Olympics home was always going to be risky - not so much because of the difficulties any country the size of Greece would face in staging the world's greatest sporting event but more because of the nigh impossible task of reconciling and uniting ancient tradition with modern sport.
But we went for it. With the exception of a small, occasionally vociferous minority and despite mounting inconveniences in our daily lives, most Greeks supported the project.
After the opening ceremony, I thought we had made it - or, at least, we had done our best and this appeared to be more than good enough. However, the writing was on the wall. The previous afternoon, on Thursday August 12th, we at Sportline broke the story about the Sydney Olympic champions Kenteris and Thanou dodging a doping test. For about an hour-and-a-half, we were labelled "traitors" by TV channels and suffered vitriolic attacks from news anchor-men - only to see them (once our story was confirmed) competing to claim to be the first TV channel to report the news. The Orwellian, Ministry of Truth notion of "unpatriotic", news as well as the number of viewers who lapped it up, already pointed to a nation in need of a shrink.
We were all pleasantly surprised by Greek citizens' rejection of our two athletes' pathetic story of a motorcycle accident, and by the people's demand for clean Games. But then, last Thursday, the country was humiliated by tens of thousands of fans whose jeering and horrid pro-Kenteris chanting delayed the start of the men's 200-metres final for 15 minutes. For most Greeks, the sense of shame is tormenting and a national apology to the rest of the world should be forthcoming.
And the apology must start with an explanation: the tickets for "Kenteris day" were the first (and for a long time the only ones) to be sold out, apart from those for the opening and closing ceremonies. Many who bought them did so because they wanted to celebrate a national triumph; they may therefore belong, sadly, in a category of people who do not care about the essence of the games, the magic of participating, of being there and applauding athletes from all corners of the earth. In short, people who do not understand the Olympic Spirit even though it is supposed to reside next door.
All nations have in them a Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Greece is no exception: England, for instance, is regularly put to shame by the ghastly side of its "lad" culture, its football hooligans. Nonetheless, this is no excuse and we have to rise to the occasion, even if it is one of sheer melancholy. I suppose my final worry is that we blew it, that the Games homecoming was marred or overshadowed by doping scandals and jeering, idiotic hyperpatriots.
So this is to say we're sorry - and to express hope that the ugly side of the Athens Olympics will not be taken to be synonymous with the Greek national character. That would be hugely unfair to a country and a nation that, over the past two centuries or so, has accomplished a great deal and has stood for values that humanity as a whole holds sacred. Some Greek colleagues will consider this apology to be a hyperbole, which is a Greek word. But so is catharsis., - Yours, etc.,
CONSTANTINE KAMARAS, Publisher, Sportline, (www.sport.gr) ,Athens, Greece.