For the first time ever, nylou.com shows you what ALL others only tell you. See more than 30,000 photos of more than 2,500 hotels, 58 destinations, 300 beaches, 125 museums and sites, 150 restaurants from all over Greece.
Glorious skies and gusty winds helped create postcard-perfect skies over Athens on Monday.
The Good...
Greece won a gold medal in the men's synchronized dive from 3 meters and a bronze in weightlifting, and the cloud from the Kenteris-Thanou controversy seems to be lifting. Ticket sales continued strong.
The long anticipated Van Hoogenband-Thorpe-Phelps match up in the men's 200 m freestyle swimming kept a sold out crowd at the edge of their seats for 1 minute and 44.71 seconds. That's how long it took the Thorpedo to put any ideas of the end of his dominance in the event to rest.
The Bad...
A sailing champion from Denmark, driving an official Olympic vehicle on an Olympic lane, hit and killed a pedestrian British tourist, crossing the street, yesterday morning near the Ellinikon venue. Olympic lanes, reserved exclusively for vehicles with Olympic credentials, thus mostly empty, have been at the center of controversy because drivers using them tend to speed excessively and cause accidents. Until yesterday, mostly non-lethal ones.
And the Weird...
It was announced that the office of the Public Prosecutor in Athens is investigating the Kenteris-Thanou controversy and the blaze in an Athens park caused by fireworks from a party at the nearby villa of Organizing Committee President Gianna Angelopoulos-Daskalaki.
nyloo's daily Olympic Diary
Everyone is focusing on the Games.
The Australian Thorpedo won the long anticipated 200 m freestyle at the Olympic Aquatic Center and shared the podium with Holland's Van Hoogenband and Phelps of the US. So, this happened.
The Chinese continued amassing gold and every other medal at a frantic pace, reaching a total of 15, of which 10 gold, after only three days of competition. So, this is happening.
Greece gave the Cuban sluggers a difficult time before finally succumbing 5-4 in the baseball competition. So, this could happen.
Basketball fans made tickets for tonight's Greece-USA game dissappear as soon as ticket outlets opened Monday morning. So, this will happen, in a few hours.
Both visitors and Athenians crowd outdoor cafes and restaurants in central Athens, people wave their countries' flags, they jam the glittering metro system of the Greek capital and they pose for pictures (Exhibit: our Photo Gallery today).
People have stopped talking, thinking, worrying about the Kenteris-Thanou controversy. The two received a 48-hour extension by the Executive Committee of the IOC yesterday and they will appear before it on Wednesday morning. The fact of the matter is that their predicament affects only them and they are now well on their way out from people's love and attention. The President of the Republic called the affair "a disgrace" on Sunday night, a statement that pretty much sealed their fates in Greek minds.
The gold medal won by two Greek divers in the synchronized event from the 3-meter platform and the bonze won by Atlanta and Sydney silver medalist Leonidas Sampanis in the men's 62 kg weightlifting category cheered Greeks up and helped the public focus on the Games instead of on doping scandals.
News stories from Athens by foreign media have begun talking about the "lack of spectators" in the Olympic venues. British newspapers printed photographs of empty stadium seats on Monday and even CNN commented on it.
Don't believe it. The Games are running so smoothly that journalists, who must file interesting stories in order to earn their living and prove to their editors that they are busy working, must resort to exaggeration to file a page one story.
Ticket sales so far run at around 3 million, about 300 thousand tickets less than in Sydney. If allocated among the remaining events, this would translate to about 100 tickets less per venue per day than in Sydney.
Empty stadiums? "In all of my archery career I have never seen so many people at an archery event. Maybe this is because of the historic venue, but I am very pleased for my sport", said Indian archer Satyadev Prasad yesterday. The archery events are held at the marble Panathinaikon Stadium, in downtown Athens, the venue of the first modern Olympics in 1896.
