ATHENS — Suppose they held an Olympics and nobody came.
In sharp contrast to the turnaway crowds of Salt Lake 2002, when more than 95 percent of the tickets were sold — and that's not counting the free ones taken by the Legislature — and in Sydney 2000 before that, only slightly more than half of the 5.3 million tickets to the various events at the Athens Games of 2004 have been sold.
Great blocks of stadiums sit empty during competition. (You'd think the Clippers were playing.) It hasn't yet reached the point of an event beginning with no one watching, but at the equestrian arena last Sunday, which coincided with the Greek national holiday that observes the death of Mary, the horses seemed to outnumber the spectators.
It's true many of the Olympic sports are unfamiliar to the Greeks.
That's one of the most frequent reasons given for the lack of attendance.
But the Olympics are made up of obscure sports. How many people do you know who Greco-Roman wrestle or play team handball when they get the chance?
Or luge, for that matter? Before the Salt Lake Games, Utahns knew as much about luge as they knew about nuclear physics, yet during the competition the luge track looked like a rugby scrum. The crowds were backed up so far from the track that most people who went to the Olympic Park to see luge — after climbing a mile straight up to get there — didn't actually see luge.
Here in Greece, there has been no such phenomenon. They're either a lot less sports crazy than we are in America, or a lot smarter.
Considering their tradition, this is hard to figure. It was Greeks, after all, who invented the Olympics. They held events such as the pankration, a combination of wrestling and boxing where two nude men tried to maim each other, and the hoplite, a race where runners had to wear helmets and carry shields. The Greeks know athletic obscurity.
And people flocked to those original Greek Games. They were so popular that Nero, the Emperor of Rome, built a house on the grounds at Olympia — the ultimate luxury loge.
To get their Games back for the first time in 108 years, the Greeks spent $7.2 billion — which makes it look like Salt Lake City bought its $1.5 billion Olympics at Kmart — and erected sparkling new stadiums all over Athens. There are 35 of them, each one a modern temple to sport, magnificent in detail and amenities.
But except for the headline events — track and field, basketball, swimming and a few others are in big demand — there's hardly anyone in them.
The cost of living no doubt has something to do with it. The average Olympic ticket costs 35 euros (about $43), which is steep for the average local wage-earner. It can cost a plumber a week's pay to take his family to see modern pentathlon.
Still, where there's a will to spectate and a Visa card there's always a way. The high price of Olympic tickets didn't stop the Aussies in Sydney, a city smaller than Athens, and in 2000 the Australian dollar was in free fall.
Organizers here predicted that many Greeks would purchase their tickets at the last minute — in keeping with the theme of the Games. Why buy tickets before the arenas were finished? But the facilities were completed in a mad dash just under the wire and the ticket-buying flurry has not followed, as the sparse crowds thus far attest.
The tepid interest might in part be a reaction to the tragic way the 2004 Games began for the host country. On the eve of the Games, a member of the women's judo team, forlorn over the breakup with her boyfriend, attempted suicide. That was followed by the crazy affair involving sprinters Kostas Kenteris and Ekaterina Thanou — he won gold at 200 meters in Sydney, she won silver at 100 meters.
First they failed to show for drug-testing and then they both checked into a hospital claiming they had been in a midnight motorbike accident, further thwarting the drug tests.
Even in a country where injury by motorbike is a way of life — I know, I've driven in Athens — the story was so unlikely you could almost hear the entire country exhale, "Yeah, right."
The sprinters were their country's pride coming into the Games — proven athletes on the world stage ready to contend in the Olympics' signature, not to mention original, event. Their photos are on billboards all over Greece. Kenteris, aka "Greece Lightning," has a stadium and a cruise ship named after him. In one of the Games' worst-kept secrets, he was to light the cauldron in opening ceremonies Friday night.
Instead, he was in a hospital bed (wink, wink) and the Greek Games began under the ugly accusation of cheating.
Maybe that plumber who was going to go to modern pentathlon threw his hands in the air, exclaimed "Thee mou!" (Loosely translated, "Mamma Mia!") and decided to spend his money on a motorbike instead.
Lee Benson is in Athens to report on the 2004 Summer Games for Deseret Morning News readers. This is his ninth assignment to cover the Olympics. Please send e-mail to benson@desnews.com.