Underdog Top Dog
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

ATHENS, Greece – There is a lot to be said for the Athens Metro system – the lighting is merry and the seating is squishy – but it has one serious disadvantage over the New York subways: no air conditioning. When an Athenian car fills up, it’s only a matter of seconds before it resembles a Russian sauna minus the eucalyptus.
Yet this doesn’t stop squads of helpful youngsters from patrolling the underground system here, offering their support to confused tourists who need to figure out where they’re going and how they’re getting there. The Guardian Angels of Athens might sport an unfashionable uniform of multi-colored polo shirts and fanny packs with special water-bottle compartments, yet they go about their jobs with nothing short of grace, careful not to let the enthusiastic expressions smeared across their sweaty faces fade.
When I asked one such volunteer in the Omonia Station whether she finds her task at all onerous, she smiled and allowed a quick nod. I suggested that she should have demanded a salary for such a taxing summer job, and she politely demurred. “I’m doing it for Greece!”
She’s actually doing it for Athens 2004, the private organization behind the Olympics, but the coming of the games has brought on a flowering of patriotism. The swarms of volunteers exemplify the can-do spirit that’s electro shocked the city of the impossible into the city that made it happen. As if instructed to do so by a personal trainer, the city plastered its streets with huge Olympic promotional posters reading “Impossible is Potential.”
My Omonia station heroine is just one member of a 160,000-strong volunteer chorus chirping “For Greece!” It’s a simple answer, yes, but it’s the one that best explains the success of this year’s games.
Doping scandals and uninspiring ticket sales notwithstanding, the Olympics have worked. When we all got here three weeks ago, the city was ready with glorious stadiums and honest taxi drivers and more than enough outdoor tavernas for all of us to sit and nosh in tandem. The city got down on its knee; it wanted us to have a fantastic time and come back – soon and often.
Petty crime hasn’t been much of an issue; only 300 passports have been reported missing here – a tenth of those taken at the Sydney games in 2000. When a Danish athlete left his medal in a taxi the other day, the driver took no time in returning it (the do-gooder’s reward from the government: commemorative stamps).
The real engine driving the success Olympics can be summarized by the underdog mentality that hangs over this city like an enormous parasol. Everybody from the Greek athletes to student volunteers has been trying to do everything right, if only to prove a point. And yet every time they pulled through, they could barely conceal their surprise. Every day bore occasion to another squirt of celebration.
Satisfying as it is for a New Yorker to witness an American athlete claim a medal, there’s nothing quite as delightful as attending an event where a Greek athlete wins – or even competes. Visiting athletes bring along with them clusters of like-nationed supporters waving cut-out maple leaves (Canada) or delicate folding paper fans bearing enormous red dots (Japan). But it’s the Greek supporters who can turn a stadium into a party. They’re the ones brandishing their blue and white flags and screaming “Hellas! Hellas!” with such conviction that non-Greeks can’t help but join in the fun.
When Greek synchronized divers Nikolas Siranidis and Thomas Bimis won the gold in the 10m platform competition, the event became as emotionally overblown as a Jewish wedding. Upon learning they’d won the gold, the divers, along with much of the audience, cried and danced and jumped and kissed. A few of the divers’ friends rushed from their seats to the poolside for a hug. The excited huddle lost control of themselves and collectively fell into the pool. Oppa!
The fear of a terrorist attack here never amounted to much. At the beginning of the Games, somebody planted a bomb near Silvio Berlusconi’s Italian summer home, but we haven’t had anything nearly as exciting in Athens. Armed guards have to come to wandering around the city listlessly, sometimes trying to engage passersby in small talk to pass the time. The greatest – and only – security breach I’ve witnessed was on the evening the Greek divers won the gold, when a Canadian in a purple tutu managed to sneak from his seat onto the low diving board and fling himself into the water. Indeed, a Canadian journalist I met who came out here to cover security stories told me he’s been left with little to do but file jovial portraits of local athletes – and a hard-hitting piece carrying the headline, “No way to detect a tutu.”
I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel a stirring of vindication every time I witness an American athlete or team come through, but the after-party we have for ourselves in the stadium is always a little disappointing. We play it too cool. We come unprepared. Americans in the crowds win the bah-humbug award. We aren’t prone to have American flags painted on our faces or wear head-to-toe American flag-printed clothing. Our athletes have been warned to keep their victory dances toned down; in other words, being sort-of pleased is OK, but acting too pleased with yourself is not. They might run a lap or two with the American flag, but don’t expect them to be shoving their friends into swimming pools anytime soon.
If New York does win its bid to host the 2012 summer Olympics, the city can learn a lesson of two from Athens. Just so happens New York’s biggest potential problem – being top dog – is, essentially, the very opposite of Athens’s biggest hardship – being the underdog.
While Athens had to spend $12 billion, an unheard-of sum, to host the Olympics, New York won’t have to spend nearly as much to get in shape for the Games. While it stands to be well poised fiscally, though, New York hardly suffers an inferiority complex, and getting people to care enough to offer to help out without compensation is going to be a much more difficult task.
When Mayor Bloomberg was visiting here last week, he said finding 20,000 volunteers for the Republican National Convention had been a cinch and it wouldn’t be much harder to find the 160,000 needed volunteers to make the Olympics work. “It’s just a matter of one phone call and we’d have the volunteers,” he said.
Nobody wants a pessimistic mayor, but the idea of finding New York kids willing to forgo paying jobs in order to spend their summers standing outside stadiums screaming “Welcome to New York!” into megaphones is a bit ludicrous – they’re all too ambitious. Given the choice between standing around in the August heat with nothing to show for it or scoring a job that pays enough money to buy tickets to see the events, well, you know where this is headed.
And the adult professionals here who have taken off the month of August to lend a hand have the advantage of living in a country where it’s customary to go away for one month in the summer, if not more. The doctors and lawyers and journalists I’ve met here who are volunteering say they had no trouble securing one month’s leave at work, but I have a feeling if I told my editors I was going to evaporate for a month to sit inside an information booth, I’d come back in September to find a better reporter at my desk.
New York has a few options. It could raise its projected Olympic spending and pay hourly wages to the people needed to keep the whole thing running.
But even that might not work-most New York kids have their eyes set on summer internships at glamorous places like MTV or Merrill Lynch. Another consideration would be for Mayor Bloomberg to realize all the city’s underdog complex victims are the kids slaving away on their college applications. In exchange for their services, he could offer to whip out his fountain pen and write college recommendations for every single helper bee. That’ll get them working.