Gianna Angelopoulos - My Greek Drama: Life, Love, and One Womans Olympic Effort to Bring Glory to Her Country

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Copyright 2013 Gianna Angelopoulos-Daskalaki
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Publishers Cataloging-In-Publication Data
(Prepared by The Donohue Group, Inc.)

Angelopoulos, Gianna, 1955
My Greek drama : life, love, and one womans Olympic effort to bring glory to her country / Gianna Angelopoulos.1st ed.

p. ; cm.

Issued also as an ebook.
ISBN: 978-1-60832-581-8

1. Angelopoulos, Gianna, 1955-2. Olympic Games (28th : 2004 : Athens, Greece)Management. 3. BusinesswomenGreeceBiography. 4. OlympicsPlanning. 5. Autobiography. I. Title. II. Title: Greek drama

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Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

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First Edition

TO MY FAMILYFOR YOUR LOVE, FOR YOUR STRENGTH, AND FOR GIVING ME A JOYFUL STORY TO WRITE
AND TO MY EXTENDED FAMILYTHE PEOPLE OF GREECE FOR WHOM, I BELIEVE, THERE IS A BETTER CHAPTER AHEAD

AS YOU SET OUT FOR ITHAKA,
HOPE THE VOYAGE IS A LONG ONE,
FULL OF ADVENTURES, FULL OF DISCOVERY.

C. P. CAVAFY, ITHAKA
(EXTRACT TRANSLATED BY EDMUND KEELEY)

I WISH TO WARMLY THANK ALL THOSE WHO HELPED so that this book exists. All those who encouraged me to start (and finish) writing it, and then to publish; all those who told me not to.

Evidently I am no writer; in fact, I am far more a person of the spoken wordand a person of action. So, I feel in deep debt to Holly Sargent; to Jeff Nussbaum, Raphael Sagalyn, and Mark Starr, who labored along with me through drafts of this book; as well as to Left-eris Kousoulis, Michalis Zacharatos, Andonis Papagianidis, and Lena Zachopoulou, who believed in me and in this venture.

To my husband, Theodore, and my childrenCarolina, Panagiotis, and Dimitriswho once more had to bear with me while I was immersed in yet another venture, thanks will never be enough, but neither would be other forms of expressing my gratitude. So thanks, Efcharist!

August 29, 2004. After seventeen days of competitive cycling, running, diving, wrestling, and my own personal race, after a helter-skelter of emotionsmostly extraordinary highs but a few painful lowsI arrived at the Closing Ceremony of the Summer Olympic Games enveloped by a serenity that I hadnt felt since leaving London more than four years before to answer my nations call.

I knew that Greece had triumphed. Greeks knew in their hearts and souls our achievement would cement our Olympic legacy.

And on this final day, I was secure in my own personal legacy.

My eye had always been on the dream of my childhood: to do something great for Greece. And we had delivered unforgettable dream games! Greece had shown the world a nation so unlike the stereo-typeslazy and backwardwith which it had saddled us, a modern Greece that, by dint of hard work and sacrifice, could deliver on its promise and compete on the same playing field as all the other leading nations of a new Europe.

My heart was surprisingly light. My Valentino outfita silk blouse over peach-colored slacks, accentuated with a sashwas simple yet chic, comfortable, and celebratory. And I was ready to celebrate. To join in what my friend Dick Ebersol had characterized as a party for Greece.

Indeed, the night was lost to revel. At some point, as the festivitiesif not the musicians and dancerswound down, most of the VIPs around me began to make for the exits. But I simply wasnt ready for the party to end. Greeks throughout the stadium were enveloped in a frenzy of joy. And alone in the VIP box, I felt a visceral connection with my countrys people. So I surrendered heart and soul to the impassioned rhythms of the night.

Somebody later told me that what I experienced next reminded him of certain moments in the nineteenth-century novels of Leo Tolstoy. They occurred when a character acted without conscious thought, completely immersed in the passions of the moment. During my Tolstoyan moment, I began to dance the hasapiko, closing my eyes and extending my arms to the heavens where, no doubt, all the Greek gods were smiling. As I swayed to the music, lost in the exuberant joy of my people, I felt all the cares, anxieties, and pain of my long Olympic struggle flow out of my body. My happiness was truly transcendent.

Mine is a story of life and love, success and failure, betrayal and redemption.

It is a story of how the lessons and legacy of our Athens 2004 Summer Olympics were abandoned.

And it is a story that suggests paths Greece could follow today in its efforts to solve the serious problems it is facing. A memoir that is as much about Greeces journey as it is my own.

It is, in every sense, a Greek drama. My personal Greek drama, and the drama of Greece today.

www.mygreekdrama.com

MY GREEK DRAMA

OLIVE TREES, majestic as the sun plays on their leaves in the breezes coming off the Aegean Sea. The spicy taste of herb tea infused with fresh-picked thyme and diktamos. (This rare, expensive herb from Crete is believed to have medicinal virtues. In Virgils Aeneid, for example, Venus heals Aeneas with a stalk of dittany from Cretan Ida. My family too grew diktamos to brew for tea, a powerful potion that assured longevity. The locals call this herb erondas, meaning love.) The aromas of melitzana (eggplant), tomatoes, and lamb cooking over an open flame in summer, the time when it never rains. These are my memories of the place where I was born, the magical, historic island of Crete.

Greece is a country of islands. At present, four of the eleven million inhabitants of Greece live either in the capital city of Athens on the Attic Peninsula or in the mountainous northern provinces that extend to the borders with Albania and Bulgaria. But the soul of Greece lies in its twelve hundred to six thousand islands (depending on how you measure them) sprinkled across the Ionian Sea to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and the Aegean Sea to the east. Only about two hundred of these islands are inhabited, and of those merely seventy-eight have more than a hundred residents. Some of the islands are dry; they are covered in rocks, thyme, oregano, and white houses surrounded by blue sea and blue sky. Others are covered in pine trees. Rain, when it falls, falls in winter.