Fireworks exploding over the Olympic stadium during the opening ceremony of the Athens 2004 Games. Photograph: Yannis Behrakis/Reuters
Olympic torture: Greece contemplates dismantling of Games stadium roof
The Athens landmark was a symbol of confidence in 2004, but safety concerns have left officials thinking the unthinkable
It was a roof that symbolised Olympic glory: a giant white-ribbed steel dome cascading over a stadium that would not only be the centrepiece of the 2004 Athens Games but emblematic of the spectacular style in which the event would be held.
For Greeks, who it was hoped would look back at the “dream games” with pride, Santiago Calatrava’s architectural landmark said it all. A construction that both defied the sceptics who questioned their ability to host the greatest show on Earth and expressed a new-born sense of confidence.
This week, almost 20 years later, the Mediterranean nation was faced with a very different narrative as the Greek government announced that the 70,000-seat stadium would be closed “indefinitely” because of safety concerns over Calatrava’s steel canopy. The double-arched roof – a forerunner of the Spanish architect’s later works – had failed to “meet the legally permitted levels of static adequacy”, according to a public asset body tasked with inspecting the site.
A nearby velodrome, covered with a similar structure, would also have to close because it, too, had shown signs of instability. “It would be superficial and even foolish to give any timetable … or say when either the velodrome or stadium will open,” the sports minister, Yiannis Vroutsis, told reporters on Tuesday. The facilities’ fate, he added, would rest on a second inspection by a professional association of engineers which advises the government on public works projects.
But by Wednesday, as the cost of the stadium’s closure became apparent, with the prospect of dozens of events being cancelled – including a sold-out concert by Coldplay next year – officials were beginning to whisper the unthinkable: perhaps it was time to dismantle the famous roof altogether. Rust had not only been found along its steel cables and arches but even in the bolts that held it together. “Nothing at this point is being ruled out,” said one well-placed source. “Maybe it will have to come down.”
Calatrava has previously defended himself over criticism for works that while intricate and eye-catching have subsequently proved problem-plagued – in one instance a leaky roof in a winery in northern Spain. But in Athens this week it was inadequate maintenance that was being blamed for the Olympic stadium’s plight and, indeed, the desolate state of almost every other installation built for the games.
“It is a known fact that the [OAKA Olympic complex] had not been maintained for two decades,” the prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis wrote in an online post. “Who does not feel disappointed when they see the pictures of such important facilities that have been left to their fate for so many years?” the centre right leader lamented.
The lack of upkeep behind installations that now stand empty, desecrated and forlorn, has been attributed, mostly, to the budget cuts successive Greek governments were forced to make at the behest of international lenders after the debt-stricken country narrowly averted bankruptcy – and ejection from the eurozone – in late 2009.
“There wasn’t the money for maintaining OAKA,” recalled Stavros Kontonis, who was appointed sports minister when the leftist Syriza party assumed power on an anti-austerity platform in 2015. “The venue had been left to the mercy of God from 2004 to 2014.”
Even attempts by ministry officials to find the Olympic stadium file had fallen on stony ground, Kontonis claimed, after he assumed the post. “We couldn’t even find the project’s file … We were forced to ask for it from Calatrava’s office in Spain.”
Not every engineer is convinced that the canopies are in danger of imminent collapse. Some who worked on the design in 2003 believe government officials who have been forced to deal with an array of disasters this year, from a deadly train crash to fires and floods, may have acted in haste for fear of being caught on the back foot.
But what was once a moment of Olympic glory has increasingly been seen as an extravagant folly, with many Greeks holding the Games responsible for accelerating the debt mountain that spurred the nation’s economic near-collapse.
“Even now we don’t know what the 2004 Olympic Games cost us,” the leftwing Avgi newspaper railed in an editorial this week. “Opinions converge on €20bn … the so-called Olympic works and Olympic Games contributed decisively to the Greek state going bankrupt just a few years later.”
Whatever happens in the days and months ahead, the famed Calatrava roof will be remembered not as an emblem of triumph – the feat of a small country leaping into the future by staging a modern Olympic games perceived to be among the best ever – but for everything it was not.
“It has become a symbol of the collapse of the narrative of modernisation of Greece,” Yannis Tsirbas, an associate professor of political science at Athens University, told the Guardian. “More than ever we now know [Greece’s] modernisation was just that: a narrative, and not the reality.”