OLY: Farewell to the "Dream Games"

AAP General News (Australia)
08-30-2004
OLY: Farewell to the "Dream Games"

By Mike Hedge

ATHENS, Aug 30 AAP - Greece gave a proud, heartfelt, and possibly permanent, farewell
to the Olympics, one of its gifts to the world.

While International Olympic Committee (IOC) president Jacques Rogge left Sydney in
possession of its "best ever Games" tag, he offered high praise to the Greek organisers
and the Greek people for a Games that "reconnected the Olympic movement".

"Dear Greek friends, you have won," Mr Rogge said.

"You have won by brilliantly meeting the challenge.

"These Games were unforgettable, dream Games."

As full as he was in his praise for the Athens Games organisers, Rogge used his closing
speech to again condemn the drug cheats who left a scar on an otherwise near-faultless
Olympics.

Although 24 athletes failed drug tests in Athens, Rogge said it had become increasingly
difficult to cheat and that clean athletes were being better protected.

Athens organising supremo Gianna Angelopoulos-Daskalaki, the woman credited with rescuing
the Games from the complacency and confusion that threatened to sabotage them, said Greece
had lived up to its obligations.

"We have showed the world the great things Greeks can do," Angelopoulos said.

"The world discovered a new Greece."

Describing the Olympics as the "most powerful source of hope and inspiration for humanity"

she made an impromptu, additional gold medal presentation.

"This belongs to all Greeks," she said.

"Together we told a beautiful story.

"Let us keep the flame of creation burning in our hearts."

Having brought the Olympics home with all the legend and drama of its distant past,
the country that gave the Games life passed them on to a new host, Beijing, that welcomed
them with its own ancient traditions.

The Athens Olympics, so maligned in their creation, but so brilliantly brought into
existence, ended in the main Olympic stadium with a festival of Greek song and dance.

Where the opening ceremony was a technically ambitious cavalcade of the millennia,
the closing combined simple themes in a polished, professional spectacular.

In place of the chain of human achievement reflected in the same arena 17 days earlier,
last night's ceremony focused on humanity and the realities of modern life.

Almost 3,700 singers and dancers began the party, the guests of honour of which were
the thousands of athletes who had spent the previous two weeks starring in the greatest
show on earth.

In return for their efforts, they were entertained tonight by some of Greece's finest
musicians, singers and dancers.

Woven into a ceremony celebrating Greek tradition and community, they ranged from folk
dancers of the "Zorba" era to rock and pop of today.

Along the way they celebrated village life from harvest to feast, including a traditional
Greek wedding, the koudounatoi - bellringers whose job is to wake up nature as winter
ends.

They danced the Tsamikos, described as a "tough and virile dance performed by muscular
men", the Kalamatianos, the circular dance which is Greece's favourite, and the Ballos,
or the Dance of the Islands.

They jumped fires, they performed the Greek blues music known as Rembetico, they even
danced around a ute full of water melons.

The cultural program culminated in the handover of the Olympic flag to Beijing, the
Games host in 2008.

In a glimpse of what is to come, the Chinese produced their equivalent of Australia's
blow-up kangaroos on bicycles, which were previewed in Atlanta.

Only they did it with a magnificent lantern, Chinese opera, Shaolin monks performing
kung fu - and impeccable taste.

As the ideals born 3,000 years ago in Olympia passed to China, a small girl blew out
the Olympic flame, and the Games that were never going to be ready were over.

And having cost around $US7 billion ($A10 billion) to stage, it will be a long time
before their creators can bring them home again.

AAP mh/sp e

KEYWORD: OLY CLOSING NIGHTLEAD

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