18 Days in August, an Olympic Blog

It seems that the only "negative" that the previous articles can mention about the Athens Games, was the fact that there were empty seats in some events and that the Greek crowd only went to see their own athletes.
I think this is an extremely unfair thing to say on behalf of the international press.
First of all I do not think that there is anything wrong in wanting to see your own athletes/teams, especially if you have to pay €200-300 to see a final that your country does not compete in.
From personal experience I can say that most stadia were at least 1/2-3/4 full, with Athletics always packed. There is so much Greek people can afford...to pay for tickets, and believe me they have bought the majority of tickets sold in the last few weeks.
Okay some 9am Badminton qualifying games had few people in them, isn't that normal?
The football final at 10am on a Saturday morning had 41,000 people, I think this is an amazing crowd.
In general the Greek people had 3 strategies in buying tickets:

• See our own guys
• See sports that we will never see again, this is why Cayak slalom was completely soldout for all days (and I did not manage to see it...), same applies to Beach Volleyball but for different reasons
  
• See famous teams/athletes compete (i.e. football final)

But I also met people who went to any event that suited their timetable... this happened mostly is tha last few days when there was a mad rush of "non believers" who wanted to go to at least one Olympic event.

So who was missing from the crowds? all the foreign tourists, mainly the US, who were scared for their lives. Why didn't they come? they were scared away by the very same journalists that now complain about empty seats...
So yes we accept the apology of all these journalists that they misjudged us, but please do not accuse us for the supposedly empty, thats your fault as well!