18 Days in August, an Olympic Blog

I was really looking forward to these matches in the brand new Hellinikon complex.
For those of you that have not been to Athens, Helliniko is the site on the south coast of Athens, that the old airport used to be. I can tell you that until December that was the last time I had been there, most of it was undeveloped wasteland!!!
Now there is new indoor sports arena, 2 baseball stadia, 1 softball stadium, 1 hockey stadium and an indoor fencing arena (for all future generations of budding Greek Zoro's)

The first match was between Puerto Rico and the USA. You probably have heard about this game already, it is in the news everywhere.
There was quite a big Puerto Rican crowd in the audience boosted by the locals. You might say that at the start the support of the Greeks was due to anti-american sentiment. But they all cheered a good effort, irrespective of side, and after the first few minutes when the Puerto Ricans showed their skills they really won the support of the crowd.

I have to say that PR play extremely well, having been there recently I can really understand that for them this was the game of the tournament (any comments please?), they had far more motivation to win this game than any other.

The "Dream Team" was more a Nightmare Team than anything else... I would not be surprised if they lose another match(s). Well I certainly hope they will lose their next match which is against Greece on Tuesday.
They were totall out of it, did not seem to understand what was happening around them. Any comments from our American friends? what did NBC say?
You can check the stats of that game here

And now the second match of the day:
Greece vs Australia. By this time the stadium was packed with people, mostly Greeks with a few pockets of Australians. Meanwhile the Puerto Ricans were dancing in the external corridors of the stadium.

For those outside of Europe, basketball was until June (when Greece became European football champions) the Greek national sport. Because we had been in the past European basketball champions, as well as finalists among the various other honours. But in the last few years there has been a drought in Greek basketball. With every new tournament people hope that the flame will burn again, only to be disappointed.
Nevertheless the stadium was packed and the crowd roared with every point scored.
We started well (14-0 in the first period), but slowed down a bit. Only to pick up in the middle of the last period. The win would have been far easier if the team had score a bit more than the 64% in free throws that they did. Still with 76-54 they achieved the widest victory of the day.

Lets see what will happen on Tuesday when we play the USA!