No race in this pace (Only two of the 29 Olympic venues in Athens have been completed )

ATHENS, Greece ? They are called kompoloi, or worry beads. They have been a part of Greek culture for centuries.

They are strands of 15 or 20 beads loosely strung on a chain that Greek men rub incessantly with their fingers and flip into their palm, creating a click-clacking sound as the beads smack together. "In moments of nervousness, confusion, impasse and vexation," a Web site devoted to worry beads explains, "(they) can give calm and peacefulness."

The Olympic Games return to Greece one year from today, or are supposed to at least. After numerous delays, organizers finally held the year's first test event last weekend, at the rowing venue because, the joke goes, they didn't have to build the Aegean Sea.

But there were the notorious August winds at Schinias Beach, which were so strong that the course was shortened one day and several shells sank. There were the Ukrainian and Korean rowers who were missing for several hours when their bus got lost on the way from the airport to their hotels. There were the policemen who didn't know how to operate the screening and communications equipment. There were the volunteers, 24 percent of whom simply didn't show up.

And there was the entire German team, which packed up and went home after 63 members got salmonella food poisoning after lunch at their hotel. Even worse, Greek media reported that health authorities had inspected the hotel's kitchen two weeks earlier and found 23 hygiene violations, and that a second inspection a week later determined only some of the problems had been remedied. By Saturday night, Prime Minister Costas Simitis was interrupting his annual Greek island vacation on Sifnos to angrily phone organizing com mittee chairwoman Gianna Angelopoulos-Daskalaki, demanding that those responsible be fired immediately.

By Monday, Greek's opposition party that vowed not to politicize the Olympics by criticizing the 2004 preparations had joined the fray, saying the "grave problems" at the rowing competition "have unfortunately confirmed our fears that the government and other bodies responsible are constructing the Olympic projects in a patchy fashion."

But, hey, at least the rowing venue is finished and competition-ready. Athens is building 29 new venues for next summer; 27 are still under construction (and we're not talking about painting).

The Olympics were born in Greece in 772 B.C., and they were revived in Greece, and one year from today they return to Greece. The electronic clock at the Athens organizing committee headquarters has moved inside 365 days.

Tick-tock, tick-tock ... click-clack, click-clack. Tedious progression The boring machine had a 30-foot cutting head, large enough and sharp enough to dig a serious subterranean tunnel. But it turned at only four revolutions per minute, and there was a camera mounted in front monitoring what it was slicing into and a team of archeologists stationed in the back meticulously poring over conveyor belts of earth in search of the tiniest trace of antiquity. They progressed on average 35 feet per day, or about 11/2 miles per year. One half-mile section took four years.

This is how the Athens Metro was built. Every so often, an archeologist would notice something in the boring machine's camera or spot a shard of pottery on the conveyor belt, and the whole operation would stop. Sometimes for a few hours. Sometimes for a few days. Sometimes for a few months.

The western wall of the station at Syntagma Square in downtown Athens is glass, providing a cross-sectional view of layers of civilization. You can see fragments of ancient walls from various eras dating 3,000 years, remains of a public bath and bronze foundries, even a grave from the 4th century B.C. complete with a skeleton and a skull with teeth.

So it was only a matter of time before Olympic builders stuck in a shovel at a venue site and hit something hard, and the place was crawling with archeologists. At the Markopoulo Equestrian Center east of Athens, they unearthed a 2,500-year-old temple complex of Aphrodite. It had dwellings, tombs and what appeared to be an ancient brothel (she was, after all, the goddess of love).

At the rowing and sailing venue in Schinias Beach, they found three 4,500-year-old houses that had to be painstakingly moved 50 yards before proceeding. While widening the road so that next summer's marathon can be run on the original route, they found homes from 1,500 B.C. At the Athletes Village north of downtown, it was an aqueduct built by Roman emperor Hadrian.

It wasn't just ruins of ancient civilizations, either. At Helliniko, the old Athens airport that is being converted into a sprawling athletic complex, workers found an unexploded 250-pound bomb from World War II. They removed it and continued grading, and promptly found another one. It is all part of what Greeks call the "maturity phase" of a construction project, which means that it typically takes twice as long to get clearance to build something as it does to actually build it. One problem is that Greece is one giant archeological dig. The other, as one Athens organizing committee official put it, "is that we are a democracy."

The newest Olympic sport appears to be rhythmic court injunctions, which allow Greeks, in the true tradition of Socrates and Plato, to debate a project's merit in tedious detail. According to one report, 45 Olympics projects were tied up in the courts in 2002 alone. The result is that only now, six years after the International Olympic Committee first granted Athens the 2004 Games, are many of the building projects proceeding, turning Athens into the planet's largest construction zone and etching lines of concern across the brows of IOC officials ? many of whom live in a country, Switzerland, where you can set your watch by trains.

A year out from the 2000 Games in Sydney, practically every venue and every piece of infrastructure was complete. The glossy brochures from the organizing committee showed actual photos of the sports facilities. They could have been the 1999 Summer Olympics. Athens a year out? It has glossy brochures ... with artist's renderings.

Two of the 29 venues are done, neither of them a sports facility: the International Broadcast Center and the drug-testing lab.

The main Olympic complex in northern Athens is a massive dirt plain with backhoes and cement mixers weaving around piles of gravel and steel beams. The tennis stadium is a metal shell, as is the upper deck of the outdoor swimming pool. The water polo pool is barely more than a concrete hole. The velodrome has no seats.

The 1970s-era track stadium that is undergoing major renovation has no seats yet, either. The field is a patch of brown grass with rusting soccer goals at either end. Five-foot high weeds are growing in the long-jump pits. A cement mixer is parked on the faded track. The scoreboard clock on one end says it's noon. The clock at the opposite end says it's 10:14. Neither is right. It's 4:25 in the afternoon.

Besides new seats, the stadium's big makeover involves an exquisite steel and glass roof designed by famed Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava. The parts started arriving only in the past few weeks from abroad, and the IOC has expressed apprehension about going forward with a purely aesthetic project when, let's face it, the stadium it will cover is in shambles. There is now talk of installing the roof after the Games.

The baseball, field hockey and beach volleyball venues at the Helliniko complex are in construction infancy, and their test events have been pushed back to next spring. In its April inspection, the IOC said only 12 percent of the complex was completed.

The stadium slated to host the soccer finals? Didn't break ground until May. The main media village? Journalists have been told they will be informed of "alternative housing" if it isn't finished in time.

The suburban rail line that will link downtown with the new airport? Only eight of 20 miles of track laid. The tram line so vital for transporting fans to the southern venues? Less than two of 17 miles done. There also are the hundreds of smaller projects aimed at sprucing up the city ahead of the world's visit. Chunks of jack-hammered sidewalks piled on the side of streets. Subway stations closed for renovation. Yellow cranes dotting the skyline. Highway overpasses abruptly ending in mid-air in a tangle of rebar, like a Cyclops bit it off.

Even the Parthenon, perched above the grimy metropolis as a constant reminder of its glorious past, is covered in scaffolding.

No panic here And you're surprised? The last time Athens played host to the Olympics, when they were revived by Baron Pierre de Coubertin in 1896, the primary venue was the majestic Panathenaic Stadium not far from the Temple of Zeus. It had been uncovered in excavations a few decades earlier, and the plan was to rebuild it in all marble for 1896. But they didn't start in earnest until the summer of 1895, and they quickly realized that building marble seating for 100,000 in less than a year was a bit ambitious. So after installing marble in the first few rows, they decided to use a white stone for the rest. Even then, a month before Opening Ceremonies they hadn't cleared the rubble from the upper rim of seats. They went to Plan C: Wood seats painted white.

This is the culture that gave us the Odyssey and the marathon, a culture whose staple dish, gyros, is meat cooked for hours on a slowly rotating spit. Socrates, the story goes, once was hours late for a dinner party because, although he left on time, he got sidetracked. He had stopped on a neighbor's porch, "to think."

But patience, they say, is a virtue. The Panathenaic Stadium ? marble, stone and wood ? was finished in time and hosted a historic Olympics. Socrates eventually got to the party and ate dinner.

"It's just a different way of thinking from what we're used to," says Jim Easton, head of the international archery federation and an IOC member from the United States. "They say, 'Hey, we can do it. We'll get it done at the end. Maybe the paint's a little wet, but it's a perfectly usable venue.'

"It's not like how Sydney did it or how the Chinese are going to do it. They'll probably have everything done three years ahead of time. But what we have to understand is that there's more than one way to get a job done." Most of Athens' problems can be traced to the first three years after being granted the Games, when organizational spats and mismanagement basically meant nothing got done. The IOC was furious and demanded that Angelopoulos-Daskalaki, who had run such a solid bid effort, be installed as the organizing committee's chief. The or-else: Move the 2004 Games, to Los Angeles or perhaps Sydney again.

"For me, Gianna coming back was the difference," Easton says. "She's kind of a no-nonsense lady." The IOC issued another public "warning" about construction delays in February, but ever since they seem pleased with the progress ? almost surprised by its sudden pace. Indeed, several projects are ahead of their adjusted schedules. The Athletes Village, once a source of dire concern, is four months ahead of schedule. The soccer stadium, the last project to break ground, is already three weeks ahead of schedule.

There are other bright spots. Volunteering is not an integral part of Greek culture, but after an advertising campaign the organizing committee says it has received 100,000 applications for 60,000 spots.

There is a shortage of quality hotel rooms in Athens, but there are plans to dock 11 cruise ships at nearby Piraeus for 6,500 additional beds. There's also a program for Athens residents to rent out their homes. Security was another concern, being that Greece is a hop, skip and a surface-to-air missile from the Middle East. But those fears have been allayed by a $298 million contract to a consortium headed by San Diego-based firm SAIC and the recent breakup of Greek's most notorious terrorist group, 17 November.

"Each time we come, we realize how much progress has been made since the last visit," says Denis Oswald, the IOC's chief inspector for the Athens Olympics. "We are very confident that we'll have wonderful Games. We'll have magical Games. The schedule is tight, but everything is organized in such a way that all the facilities will be ready in time."

What people forget is that Greece, with a population of not quite 11 million, will be the smallest country to hold a Summer Olympics since Finland in 1952. Greece is also the poorest member of the European Union, struggling to join the 21st century when it essentially skipped the second half of the 20th.

The ultimate underdog in an era when one wealthy city after another has raised the Olympic bar to Bubka-esque heights.

But Greece is getting there, brick by brick, nail by nail, pottery shard by pottery shard, thanks to a few twirls of worry beads and something called philitimo. It is a Greek word meaning the ability to go above and beyond, to take that extra step when required, to rise to the occasion.

Or, in the case of the Olympics, to do in one or two years what normally takes seven. They might fail miserably. Their margin for error, after all, is midhen (Greek for zero). But they just might pull it off. They might have to delay the track meet a few hours while a team of archeologists excavates the infield because a javelin hit a third century aqueduct. A few folks might get stuck in traffic jams. Some volunteers might be late to work the modern pentathlon venue because they stopped on a neighbor's porch to think. And you might not want touch any of the painted railings.

These are the Greeks. This is how they do things. This is how they've always done things, going back to the beginning of time.

According to Greek mythology, mighty Zeus was the grandson of Gaea, the goddess of the earth. And Gaea, the creation myth goes, sprang forth from a giant, shapeless mass.

Well, As someone who never liked the Olympics as all it is to me is reporters stringing together endless cliche's trying to make things more dramatic then they are, I can't say that I don't find this amusing.

Lost interest in the Olympics a long time ago. It was supposed to be void of politics and promote frienship and the spirit of competition between countries and people.

It is nothing more than as one person said reporters trying to make something out of nothing and more of a circus atmosphere than anything else.

There are pros in the game too and that removes the innocence and fun of the whole movement. We don't watch it anymore. Besides, there are so many sports shows on the air the Olympics is just not something special as it used to be. It's just something that comes around every so often. Big money, Big money....

I watch the Olympics for the moments like the US/USSR Hockey game... the discovery of Olga Korbut... watching MaryLou Retton do that perfect vault and win the all around medal... to watch Brian Boitano skate perfectly because he had to... etc. etc.

Even though the reporter seemed to be piling on, I just love the Greeks in 1896 going from marble, to stone, to wood seats... totally pragmatic.

I was amused at the phrase, "Greece is one big archeological dig." (paraphasing)

Greece will be ready. They probably buy into my personal philosophy that "deadlines are our friends..."

I will be watching... wouldn't miss it for anything.

What a debacle!

I think this Olympics is going to be something that horrible.

I have major terrorism fears. The Greeks are incompetent and have no will to protect American athletes. The Greeks are viscerally anti-American. The Brit, Israeli and American athletes better arrange for tight security on their own.

Foreboding!

The Karaeskaki Soccer Stadium near Athens this week.

Might be able to go to the 2004 Los Angeles Olympics after all...

Just damn.

If you want on the new list, FReepmail me. This IS a high-volume PING list...

Oh man!

Might not be finished in time for soccer, but how about a demolition derby?

And it looks like the John Deere is in front ... No! The Caterpillar D9 reached out with its shovel and smashed the JD! And now it's being attacked by the huge Koimatsu!

The carnage is awesome! We have heavy parts flying through the air, and unfortunately some folks in Section C just got flattened...

The Hockey team victory was the last big thrill for me. It was great wasn't it? Never forget it. What a victory!!! Herb Brooks did well and the team? Well, they were awesome to say the least.

I was amused at the phrase, "Greece is one big archeological dig."

It's pretty much the truth though. I was there on a tour maybe 7 or 8 years ago, and our tour bus was driving down an Athens street. We were stopped at a traffic light, and I looked out the window to see a whole bunch of workers working on the lane right next to us. I looked more closely and realized that they weren't working on the road - they had dug down about 15 feet and were excavating an old marble column.

That's why I thought it was so amusing. It probably is one big archeological dig... and instead of digging, they are sifting so not to harm any artefacts. They are never going to get done at this rate. LOL!

I was amused at the phrase, "Greece is one big archeological dig."

It's not only in Greece, but here too. The local Historical Society got the bright idea that there might have at one time been a farm house somewhere around where the new city pool was being built. Needless to say, their foolishness didn't even turn up one broken saucer but it cost the taxpayers double and delayed the opening 1 year.

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