Greece grapples with Olympic legacy: Decaying facilities and renewed promises

In 2004, Greece hosted the Summer Olympics. It is estimated that 9.2 billion US dollars (8.5 billion euros) were spent organizing the event. After the games' conclusion, some of the facilities built specifically for the occasion found no use and fell into ruin.

“It's no secret that Greece had spent a lot of money in building state-of-the-art facilities. But then after the construction, there was no budget,” admitted Spyros Capralos, head of the Hellenic Olympic Committee, in a conversation with AFP.

Greece failed to capitalise on the legacy of the 2004 Olympics. According to data from the Finance Ministry, the event's organisation cost 6.5 billion euros - reported AFP.

The facilities built or remodelled for the Olympics met different fates. The Olympic complex north of Athens is still used for sports. Some decaying buildings were demolished, and others are used for various purposes, such as a shopping centre, university, or police shooting range.

For instance, several Olympic arenas and training facilities built for the games in Elliniko, south of Athens, which had decayed for years, were demolished. A private infrastructure project is being developed at the site, including housing, hotels, a casino, and a park.

In April, local authorities reported that 314 bombs from World War II were found during construction work in Elliniko. The explosives were discovered at a depth of around two metres under facilities built for the Olympics.

In the autumn of last year, the Olympic Stadium in Athens, which was remodelled for the games, was closed for safety reasons. The venue was reopened in May. Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis emphasised that the stadium "had not been maintained for 20 years."

He also announced the allocation of 44 million euros for the renovation of the entire Olympic complex. "Who doesn’t feel bitterness seeing such important facilities left to decay for so many years?" he wrote on social media.

Greek authorities emphasised that due to the financial crisis that erupted in Greece in 2009, they couldn’t allocate funds for the maintenance of the facilities.

“I've been saying that to every minister of sport when he was taking over, please do some maintenance work in our sports facilities,” Capralos stressed. “Because we do not need new facilities, we need to maintain the existing facilities that we have,” he added.

Costas Cartalis, who supervised the construction phase on behalf of the state from 2001-04, said that the Olympics were “forgotten -- and so was the obligation to utilise the venues.” According to him, this is “a permanent problem with public infrastructure” in Greece.

According to Capralos, Athens's experience shows that in today’s world, host cities for the Olympics shouldn’t build permanent facilities that will not be used after the event.

In 2020, an initiative called “Olympico Vision” was launched in Greece, promoting the idea of making Greece the permanent host of the games, where the ancient Olympics were born. Theotoki Ntolaptsi, the initiator of the action, emphasised in an interview with Greek Reporter that constantly changing the event’s location is a massive waste of money and human effort. She added that the host city or country could be one with even smaller economic capabilities.