Crowning glory of Athens Olympics

The American swimming champion Michael Phelps gingerly removed his wreath and held it over his heart as The Star-Spangled Banner played during his first gold-medal ceremony. Bulky wrestlers with no hair on their heads have fidgeted under the delicate weight. Equestrians in white riding breeches, cutaway jackets and white gloves had to remove their top hats to accommodate the olive crowns. Badminton victors tried in vain to adjust them without a mirror at hand.

All three medal winners in the women’s 75 kg weightlifting competition doffed their wreaths the moment their award ceremony had finished. ‘‘I thought it would fall,’’ said Udomporn Polsak of Thailand, the gold medallist. ‘‘So I took it in my hand to bring it back to my country.’’

The silver medal winner, Natalia Zabolotnaia of Russia, said: ‘‘I wanted to first get a glimpse of myself in the mirror before wearing it outdoors.’’

But all has not gone perfectly smoothly. On Tuesday, Nicoleta Daniela Sofronie, a 4-foot-9 Romanian gymnast who weighs in at 37 kg, eagerly stretched out her neck for the wreath after winning the silver medal in the floor exercise. To giggles from the crowd, the circumference of the wreath was too big for her head, and it slipped down and rested on her shoulders, a ticklish and silvery necklace.

The wreaths are made in one size only—18 cm, or just a shade more than 7 inches, in diametre—by volunteers from Interflora, a shareholder association of Greek florists that has set up a production line in a warehouse in southern Athens. The group is providing the wreaths at no cost.

‘‘We wanted to show a direct link with ancient Greece,’’ Elias Antonellos, the chief executive officer of Interflora, said. At the original Olympics, more than 2,500 years ago, an olive wreath was the sole tangible reward offered to champion runners and wrestlers.

Olive branches were chosen because of the tree’s association with the Greek god, Zeus. A sacred olive tree was said to grow near his spectacular temple near the arena where the athletes of antiquity sparred. Most of the olive branches for the 5,513 wreaths for the 2004 Olympics come from the Greek island of Crete, where the first olive press supposedly was developed around 1,600 BC.

Antonellos said many athletes appeared to want to save their olive crowns, because they have been calling florists to ask how to preserve them. But the wreaths may lose some of their magic once they leave Greece. Last week, Australian quarantine officials warned that all foreign plants—including wreaths of glory—had to be irradiated upon arrival to kill unwanted bacteria and viruses.

The New York Times