NEWS

Italy-Greece, Turin-Athens: Olympic hosts share surprising links

Just as Italians and Greeks are said to share a race, a face and a strong penchant for finishing things at the last minute, Turin’s parallels with Athens are striking and may not have occurred to the IOC when it plumped for it in a special 1999 vote. The low-key Olympic Flame handover in Athens early last month underscored the brotherly rather than trans-global element the event usually marks. Alitalia airlines’ in-flight magazine is even called «Ulisse,» after the mythic Greek explorer. Historically, the two cities are established regional centers that also served as national capitals of 19th century monarchies that became 20th century republics. Capital of the Kingdom of Sardinia from 1720, Turin was a focus of the Risorgimento, the mid-19th century nationalist uprising, and served briefly as united Italy’s first capital; for centuries the House of Savoy held court in its imposing palaces. Even the two cities’ settings – rich in vineyards and monasteries, nestled in basins ringed by mountains to the north and west and opening to the sea further south – slightly echo the other’s. Both cities have migrant-rich districts surrounding an historic core (Roman ruins crop up in downtown Turin). Preparations for their respective Games also followed similar trajectories. Both cities spun world championships – held the same year of 1997, Turin at nearby Sestriere for skiing and Athens for athletics – into springboards to the Olympics. Each city succumbed to pre-Games hyperbole, counterbalanced by criticism over construction delays that gave IOC overseers the fits; «This isn’t Germany» was a common refrain in both cities. Fears of organizer insolvency were taken seriously given both countries’ high levels of indebtedness (the embattled government of Silvio Berlusconi faces a Games shortfall of 80 million euros, while just yesterday financial police inspected documents at TOROC, the organizing committee, over alleged contract irregularities). Prior to both Games, transport was a key concern. Granted, there is also a world of difference between the lush Piedmont and more arid Attica landscapes, while Turin lacks Athens’s ageless significance, modern sprawl and even cosmopolitanism. Normally garrulous Italians still shy away at the sound of English, while French is more widely used as a second language (France is but a ride away through the Frejus tunnel). Turin still carries its own Baroque majesty and, sometimes, attitudes to match – leaving some locals unmoved at the prospect of Olympic medal ceremonies in medieval Piazza Castella. «I think they’re building a runway for the space shuttle,» one weary resident told me. But Turin could surprise itself, and others too, by producing a sporting moment freeze-framed for the ages and a fitting, wintertime bookend to Athens 2004.

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