The five cities seeking to host the 2012 Olympics made their media pitch in Athens earlier this week. Paris is seen as the frontrunner, the best networked city in the IOA labyrinth. London is, obviously, the British media’s self-declared favourite, its bid panel headed by Sebastian Coe and only somewhat hampered by the series of romantic scandals the former athlete is enmeshed in. (His current girlfriend is former cricketer Mike Smith’s daughter.)New York is the ‘‘emotional favourite’’, positioning the 2012 Games as the culmination of the post-9/11 rebuilding and healing process. Moscow is the also-ran and Madrid the dark horse.The London presentation included a smart opening speech by Coe and a video message from Tony Blair, attempting to look appropriate for the occasion in a blue Adidas T-shirt. New York used John Lennon’s Imagine as the theme song for its proposal.Moscow was the ceremony’s Calamity Jane. Its video ran twice. The first time the sound was heard but not the background music. The second time the music was heard but not the sound.Paying heed to historyAmong the many cultural events being organised to coincide with the Games is an opera commissioned by the government on the life of Spiridon ‘‘Spiros’’ Louis. An unknown shepherd who stunned the world and saved Greek pride by winning the marathon in 1896, Louis is still revered in a manner difficult to understand if you’re an outsider.Unlike, say, Lala Amarnath — who hit India’s first Test hundred — he is remembered not just as a good sportsman, but a national icon.Indeed, the ancient Olympics and the history of the times are part of contemporary Greece’s collective memory more than, say, Emperor Ashoka is relevant to call-centre India. Even the opening ceremony, which was in some respects speed history of Greece, began with Hercules and legend, moved to the glory of Alexander and Aristotle and the rest of the classics crew, travelled further to the Byzantine empire — and then jumped to the Greek revolution of 1821.The period between the fall of Constantinople — to this day, the seat of the Greek Orthodox Church — in 1453 and the 19th century is the ‘‘lost history’’ of Greece, the ‘‘dark age’’ of Ottoman rule. There was no reference to it at the opening ceremony.As such, the revival of the Olympics in 1896 and Spiridon Louis’s victory were not just the stuff of sport. For Greeks, they were a huge statement on national identity.
