It’s Early, but Natives Are Getting Restless

ATHENS —  “These Games are a catastrophe,” said Leo, our taxi driver, as he ferried three exhausted sportswriters to their Athens hotel early Tuesday morning.

A catastrophe? Well, OK, that basketball game against Puerto Rico was pretty bad. And the U.S. gold-medal output has been a little slow.

But a catastrophe?

“Our catastrophe,” Leo said sharply, his tone the verbal equivalent of a 4 a.m. espresso. “Not yours.”

Leo was not happy with what the Olympics have done to his city. In his mind, Athens needs infrastructure improvements a lot more than new kayak, softball and field hockey stadiums.

“We’re going to pay for all this,” Leo said. “Why do we need a baseball stadium? Baseball! I know nothing of baseball. I know nothing. Not innings, not pitching, nothing!”

Leo said he spent several years in the States, living in New York. He has a daughter there.

Maybe he followed the Mets.

Leo was grumbling about so much money being spent on Games that aren’t bringing that much money back into the city.

“We have no tourists now,” he said.

We asked him why.

“I don’t see any preparations for the Olympic Games,” he said. “I see preparations for the Third World War.

“Everywhere you go, you see security, armed guards, barriers, metal fences, zeppelins up there, helicopters, submarines. It’s unbelievable. Unbelievable! Where are the athletes? We have doping, anti-doping control. So who’s going to go there?”

Has Fort Athens scared all the foreigners away?

The empty arena seat has become the unofficial mascot of the Athens Olympics. From the soccer at Karaiskaki Stadium to the archery at Panathinaiko Stadium to the badminton at Olympic Hall, almost everywhere you roam, there’s lots of room to roam.

Even Tuesday’s women’s gymnastics team final, a traditional Olympic glamour event, had rows and rows of vacant seats in the upper deck. Empty seats for Romania-United States, the Yankees-Red Sox of the leotard-and-ponytail set?

Well, to be fair, the locals were distracted. The Greek men’s basketball team was playing Team USA in a group game, and the Greeks had seen the Puerto Rico-United States score. Probably, they had also seen Team USA shoot against Puerto Rico.

Not surprisingly, 12,000-seat Helliniko Indoor Arena was filled to the rafters, 90% of them occupied by Greeks hoping to watch a giant getting kicked again when it was down.

Dream Team? For any scrappy underdog lucky enough to draw this sorry advertisement for the current state of the NBA, the Americans have become the Make Your Dream Come True Team.

Greece had to have liked its chances. Allen Iverson showed up with a broken thumb, injured, he said, in the game against Puerto Rico. (Getting hurt while trying to elude Athens parking attendants would have made such a better story, but Iverson’s sticking to the Puerto Rico thing.) Lamar Odom was taking IVs before the game, trying to cope with a bad stomach.

Somewhat amazingly, Larry Brown wasn’t there with him, hooked up as well.

Greece almost had them. It was a four-point game in the waning seconds when Odom pressured Dimitris Pipanikoulaou into a missed layup, grabbed the rebound, drew a quick foul and converted the free throws that iced the United States’ 77-71 victory.

By that much, the United States, with two Olympic defeats from 1936 through 2000, barely avoided equaling that total in two games in Athens.

A lack of attention to details cost the U.S. women’s gymnastics and soccer teams, although the stakes couldn’t quite compare.

The American gymnasts, defending world champions, committed just enough minor mistakes -- a wobble on the beam, a bobble on the bars -- to let the gold medal slip away to Romania.

“Small mistakes,” Bela Karolyi lamented to reporters. “Small mistakes are to be paid for. And we paid.”

So did the U.S. women’s soccer team in its 1-1 draw with Australia. The Americans couldn’t finish, Cindy Parlow said she couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn, and in the 82nd minute, the U.S. defense flinched and Joanne Peters headed in a cross from Heather Garriock, and there went the United States’ perfect 15-0 record against the Matildas.

U.S. men’s basketball isn’t the only ex-dynasty to have come back to the pack. But the U.S. women’s soccer players can take solace in the knowledge that the draw doesn’t hurt their championship chances. With victories in their first two matches, the United States had already clinched a spot in the quarterfinals against Japan.

The U.S.-Australia Olympic rivalry spilled from the pitch to the pool, with eight swimmers combining for an impromptu re-creation of the Americans’ famous 1984 800-meter freestyle relay victory over Michael Gross and West Germany.

Cast in the role of Gross, the awe-inspiring Albatross: Ian Thorpe, the towering Thorpedo.

Cast in the role of Bruce Hayes, who barely held off Gross’ late challenge on the anchor leg: Klete Keller, who called his desperate down-the-stretch swim “an out-of-body experience.”

In an effort to warm up the squad for the big challenge, the U.S. coaches spoke to their swimmers before the race about the 1984 “Grossbusters” victory.

“They weren’t even born yet [in 1984],” U.S. assistant coach Jon Urbanchek mused. “Michael [Phelps] had said, ‘Who’s this guy named Mark Spitz?’ We don’t teach enough history.”

Tuesday night, the young Americans did more than brush up on their history. More practical than that, they went out and made some.