ATHENS—For Babis Bilinis, the legacy of the 2004 Athens Olympics is this depressing walk to the Aegean Sea.

Carefully, first, across the four lanes of a road that still lacks the pedestrian crossing the government promised. Across the tracks of the light-rail line that runs where the beach used to begin. Under a low bridge, past the homeless Roma who spend their days in its shadows, into the abandoned 25,000-square-metre patch of dirt and scrub that used to be sea.

Finally, down two steep steps, to the cement waterfront boardwalk that leads toward the Games’ 9,600-seat beach volleyball stadium — which has also been abandoned, weeds growing unchecked through its once-pristine sand, bird droppings staining its concourses, its folding seats flapping in the coastal breeze. You can walk right in.

The Greek government wanted to build other Games venues on this reclaimed seaside property beside the volleyball stadium. After a fight from Bilinis’ community activist group, the government plunked the buildings elsewhere, then erected a fence around the prime land. In 2006, Bilinis’ group and hundreds of supporters tore the fence down. But save for the Roma and a few hardy recreational fishermen, the land remains unused — like numerous other Olympic facilities and properties in Athens.

The 6,500-capacity table tennis and rhythmic gymnastics hall, which a developer has long planned to turn into a shopping mall, is still closed. The 8,100-capacity taekwondo arena, which officials talked of turning into a convention centre, is rented a few days per year for political conventions, concerts and Disney on Ice. The badminton hall was turned into a theatre — but a court has ruled the building illegal and ordered it demolished.

And the huge five-venue Olympic Park on the site of the old airport is surrounded by a chain-link fence. On a June weekday, you couldn’t get past a security guard if you didn’t have a ticket to an Evanescence concert being held in the fencing arena.

“Our Olympic Games did not help Greece at all,” Bilinis said in an interview. “They did not help local communities. They did not help the development of the surrounding areas. They only helped the construction companies.”

This is an exaggeration. Eight years after the jubilation of 2004, it is also a common sentiment.

The total cost of the Games was probably somewhere between $10 billion and $15 billion, but nobody knows the real number. Though Olympics spending contributed only marginally to Greece’s debt woes — as of early this year, government debt exceeded $450 billion — the stadiums dotting the city are among the most visible symbols of the excess and mismanagement that got the country into its fiscal mess.

Even Greeks who tout the infrastructure improvements lament the post-Games opportunities the government failed to seize.

“It turned Athens, I think, into a very modern city . . . but a lot of things could’ve happened that could’ve helped Greece be better off, run better as a country, that weren’t done. And I feel very disappointed,” said Sakis Kostaris, a former Paralympic swimmer who worked as a communications manager for the 2004 organizing committee.

“I think a lot of opportunities were lost. And I think they were lost because most of the politicians didn’t care about it — they didn’t think that a plan for the day after tomorrow was necessary. There was no strategic plan in terms of reaping the benefits after the Games. I think a lot of people are angry about the fact that the people who were in charge didn’t do their job very well.”

Post-Olympics tourism promotion was insufficient, Kostaris said. Skilled expatriate professionals who returned to Greece to help organize the Games were not encouraged to remain in the country to work on other vital initiatives.

And then there are those forlorn stadiums. Even the ones that are open and functioning — leaking roofs and all — cost “huge amounts,” Kostaris said, to rent for domestic competitions.

Given the unpopularity of many Olympic sports in Greece, most of the stadiums should have been either temporary structures or much smaller, critics say. But sporting federations pushed Greece to spend freely, said one Athens 2004 organizer who requested anonymity, and Greece was determined to show the world that a small country renowned for its disorganization was capable of world-class things.

“I was involved with the (2000) Sydney Games also,” said Achilleas Tsogas, who managed the judo competition in Athens. “In my sport, they were using an exhibition hall. In Athens, it was a venue built for wrestling and judo. The people of the federation said it was the greatest they ever had. But what happened next, we all know.”

The arena, he said, is only now going to be put to use again.

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The government was forced to spend more on security after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. It did not have to spend more than $200 million on a dysfunctional “C4I” security system that was not actually used. The fiasco led to bribery allegations.

“I believe that the cost of the Games was too high and that politicians and companies earned a lot offering nothing,” said Babis Stamatakis, who was a risk-management project manager for the organizing committee.

Stamatakis also believes that infrastructure projects like the subway system and a new ring road “really offered a new level of everyday life in Athens.”

Even if the venue plans were needlessly grandiose, hundreds of millions could have been saved with better execution. After years of political delay, the costs for overtime and materials ballooned as workers scrambled to complete venues mere weeks before the Games began.

“A lot of the works were done in such speed and haste they cost a lot more than they should have. I’m not happy,” Greek Olympic Committee president Spyros Capralos told the Guardian earlier this year.

Capralos did not respond to the Star’s requests for comment by the Star’s publication deadline. There was no response at all from the state-owned company that is supposed to sell or develop former Olympic properties — whose job has become nearly impossible. The government could no doubt have unloaded the sites in 2005 or 2006, when its economy was growing at a rate above the European average. Today, in the fifth year of an ever-deepening recession, investors are nowhere to be found.

Of course, Athens is far from the only Olympic host to produce white elephants and big debts. As Greeks repeatedly reminded a Canadian journalist, Montreal did, too. Even the heralded Sydney Games generated far fewer concrete benefits than Australian politicians had predicted.

Australian runner Cathy Freeman told the BBC that the true legacy of those Games was the “stories people have to tell that can be passed on from generation to generation.” Many Greeks make a similar case for the Athens Games.

For one brief moment in time, an individualistic and politically fractious country came together for a common cause and basked in the same international praise. Even eight years on, even in an economic crisis, warm feelings linger.

“It was a great experience for any sportsman,” said Tsogas, a former national judo team member. “And I still hear people who were volunteers tell me it’s the greatest thing they will do in their lives. So: it cost a lot of money, but can I say it was bad? No.”

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