Keith Duggan Olympic SidelinesDriving down from Schinias early on Saturday morning, where another Irish Olympic story had concluded in pitifully sad circumstances, it became apparent just how crazy and romantic it had been of the Greeks to even try to bid for this carnival.
It had, we wearily agreed, been a bitch of a morning. Reclining in double seats, adjusting the air conditioning, sipping chilled waters and munching croissants, we were unanimous the 6 a.m. start had been the stuff of Olympian valour in its own right, especially considering Sam Lynch and Gearóid Towey had so selfishly let us down. Betrayed us. Laughed at us for setting our alarm clocks so early.
Not much was said as the bus moved on down through the arid white hills outside Athens, from where it is said the gods extracted the marble in ancient times.
Around the Olympic highways and sites, gay IOC banners and the heavyweights of the advertising world conspire to give the surroundings a generic and familiar appearance. But 40 minutes beyond Athens, from the modest Greek interior comes the reminder that this is not a wealthy country. Although parts of the coast line are opulent and breathtaking, the road to Schinias is barren, broken by desolate towns with cut-price thrift shops and local people going about the small chores of life.
The Olympics made no impression here. The hills were decorated with rusting cars and trucks and what looked to have been an abandoned salt-mine and there must have been hundreds of incomplete dwellings, shells of houses that looked as if they had not been worked on in many years.
For all their architectural reputation, the Greeks have a truly cavalier attitude towards their own housing, throwing up a wall this month and a roof the next and coming back to add another piece when money allows. It is an extraordinary thing, to see these incomplete structures that are the opposite of the abandoned homesteads that litter the American west.
Instead, these brick houses, with steel rods pointing to the sky, suggest a future that may never come to pass. It makes you second-guess the Acropolis: is it really mankind's greatest ruin or did Zeus and Sons just lose heart when they set out to build in the first place? It is fairly obvious the Greek government could have put the fantastic billion-dollar investment they have committed to these Olympics to much more sensible use.
The allure of bringing the Games back to its ancient home was, though, a noble notion and for the International Olympic Committee, it provided a stream of those hokey feel-good stories that are its oxygen, Costas Kenteris and Ekaterini Thanou notwithstanding.
Yet for all its marble-cloaked ancient wonders, Athens does not have the same natural advantages as Sydney, its predecessor, enjoyed. With the great coat hanger of its bridge running across Darling Harbour, Sydney held the same magic as a Disney cartoon for children. It met the ultimate IOC criteria in that it bordered on pure fantasy. Athens is not as polished and the powerbrokers of NBC cannot be too happy with the vast chunks of empty seats that are providing the backdrop to American success.
But despite the predictions, the Athenians have mastered the big unwieldy beast of the modern Olympics in their laid back and friendly way.
The Greeks have been poorly served by their European neighbours. The Dutch are here in force but apart from that it is difficult to spot the clusters of nationalities that gathered on every street corner of Sydney - the Irish included.
In fact, for all the worries about terrorism and unfinished hotels, it is the Americans that are the most enthusiastic and plentiful nationality among the tourists. Both at the venues and in Athens's very smooth transport warrens of trams and trains, the Yanks are getting into the spirit of the Games.
In a café yesterday morning, one of those silver-haired, tennis-playing, Calvin Klein-type 50-something American men asked to borrow a newspaper so he could check on the baseball scores. He was out to watch the Games with a Greek-American friend, had spent Thursday night at the gymnastics final to watch the American girl Carly Patterson win gold and was shelling out €200 for the swimming finals last night.
They talked of visiting Ireland, made suitable remarks about the stout and then enquired how many medals had been landed in the name of the shamrock. Both men were genuinely bothered when given an approximate number.
"None at all?" clarified the Greek.
"None."
"Why?" asked Calvin, genuinely mystified and a little bit hurt. The friends looked at each other as if this was one of those world disasters that needed instant action.
It was tempting to try to explain about how Ireland was a misty island inhabited by a small population, to explain about Tommy Walsh and Fermanagh football, to talk about how heartbreaking it had been to watch the Irish rowers out on the water. But it was easier to divert their attention to the American success stories plastered all over the front page of the American newspaper. But on leaving, the simplicity of the question rang with disturbing clarity for hours afterwards.
At the first week of these Olympic Games, we are the pebble thrown into the ocean.
At midnight last night, as the attention moved to the pale, streamlined stadium the Greeks have built, our hopes again centred on Sonia, the arch-beacon of Irish track for over a decade now. The early days of the Games have been calamitous from an Irish perspective, with the luckless Jamie Costin forced home and word that Nicky Sweeney won't even be competing here. This Irish Olympic team was supposed to be a crack commando unit in comparison to the trail of sorrow our athletes followed Down Under four years ago.
At the midway point, after varying degrees of bravery and misfortune, Irish interests have been rapidly pared down. Andy Lee on the canvas. Sonia (or maybe not by this morning). The men's fours. We scan the horizon, hungry, desperate, for some validation of our ability to compete and thrive at international level and then grimace, as the body count grows higher.
You stand beside an Irish athlete who has just got smoked in an early-morning heat and there is a conflict between the natural empathy you feel for someone who has just left his soul in the water or on the track and the venal desire for success.
Then you judge their performance against the other countries and you see how small and insignificant we are in the big picture.
Only once in a generation will we produce a boxer, a runner or an athlete capable of taking on the resources and numbers that the vast nations of the world draw upon. But these are the Olympics and it should not be too much to expect that most of our representatives should be attaining personal bests in competitions. It is, of course, easier to say that than to achieve it.
And Sam Lynch and Gearóid Towey were as admirable in defeat on Thursday morning as they would have been in victory.
But onwards moves this sprawling, imperfect and seductive tribute to human excellence and foolishness. The Olympics is so vast it just gobbles poor old Ireland right up. Maybe Gay Mitchell was right all along. Maybe the only way we can ever hope to cause a splash is to follow the Greeks and try to host the bloody thing.
Sure, it would ruin the country for good but we would be left with one hell of a great baseball stadium.
