POSTCARD FROM BEIJING

Traveling to 2008, remembering 2004

Pollution in Beijing could be the big story from the Olympics and this photo shows the Forbidden City on July 28 (l) and on August 2, after measures to curb emissions began.

Paris – I know what it’s like to be on the other side. Four years ago, in the lead-up to the Athens 2004 Games, I was the international media manager waiting for thousands of journalists to arrive. Now I’m on my way to Beijing to attend the 2008 Olympics with a journalist’s accreditation.

Despite the last-minute progress, worries persisted that the venues in Athens were not going to be ready in time for the Games. Even worse, fears about a terrorist attack would regularly surface in the international press. In late July 2004, I sat down with a New York Times reporter who was summoned to Athens from his post in Indonesia. He had covered war zones and he was dispatched to report on a possible terrorist attack. He wrote an introductory piece on security (or the lack of it) and waited. A week later, I saw him again. “There is no story for me here,” he said. He left Athens the next day.

Reading my e-mail at the airport in Paris en route to Beijing, I was reminded what an agonizing experience it is for any city to reach the opening ceremony. A friend of mine, a TV producer already in Beijing, wrote to me: “The pollution here is going to be the equivalent to ‘Will Athens be ready?’” Before turning off my computer. I checked my Facebook account. Patrick Sandusky, the Chicago2016 spokesperson, wrote on his page about his first day in the Chinese capital: “People are friendly; weather great; everything seems to be working.”

Stratos Safioleas was the chief spokesperson for the Athens 2004 organizing committee.