Stepping back in time to Olympia worth long wait

OLYMPIA, Greece — Amid the olive trees, just past the ancient ruins, on a hillside bathed in an unrelenting Mediterranean sun, 15,000 spectators from around the world converged on this little town to watch 12 men and 12 women compete in the shot put at the Olympic Games. There were no sponsor signs, no electronic scoreboards, no beer stands, no hot dog vendors. The officials were dressed like extras from "Chariots of Fire," with straw hats and navy jackets. The spectators paid nothing to be there. And everyone kept their clothes on.

It must be said that it was a late-arriving crowd. Please consider this for a moment: People had 1,611 years to prepare from one Olympic event here to the next, yet some still couldn’t make it in time.

Nonetheless, on Wednesday at the 2004 Olympic Games, the shot put never had it so good.

Check that. The Olympic Games never had it so good. Enough with the multimillion-dollar sponsors, the Greek sprinting fiasco and the drug cheats. This was about a time and a place resurrected from the past for several hours, like some geographic time capsule, then allowed to return to its slumber. If some spectators left not knowing who won, much less who competed, it was all the better.

The wind swept up the dirt in what the ancients called the "stade," referring to the distance of nearly 200 meters that the ancient athletes ran in that first Olympics in 776 B.C. The stones that marked the world’s first starting line were still in their place, no more than 50 meters from where the shot-putters stood Wednesday.

The "stadium" itself was no more than two grassy hillsides, with no seats, except for the International Olympic Committee pooh-bahs who couldn’t possibly sit in the grass like the rest of us. Spectators were stretched out as if attending an afternoon concert in the park. But you knew it was more than a social outing by the way some reacted to what transpired before their eyes on Olympia’s dirt track. Leaps of joy for a shot put? Who knew?

But the athletes and the medals they won were only a sidebar to the reappearance of the oldest well-known stadium on earth — even older than Fenway, if anyone in New England can believe that.

We glory in Scotland’s St. Andrews golf course, but it is more than 2,500 years younger than this place. Wimbledon’s Centre Court is 2,653 years younger. Wrigley Field and Fenway Park, which aren’t even 100 years old, are nearly 2,700 years newer.

And to think a developer in Olympia never came up with the brilliant idea of building next door and turning this place into a parking lot.

For more than 1,000 years, these grounds were used. But in 393 A.D., Roman emperor Theodosius abolished them because he had found religion and considered the Olympics pagan. Can you imagine the sign that could have been hung on the gates here: "Next event in 1,611 years."

It was worth the wait, although there were differences between then and now. The most obvious ones were that women competed and men weren’t naked. Even the streaker who showed up at synchronized diving the other day stayed away.

There were world-class athletes out there, to be sure. No world records were set, although it can safely be said two stadium records were. In ancient Greece, there were no shot-putters in the Games.

Sitting on that hillside, in the very cheap seats, it was easy to revel in the past, but just for a few hours. Then I sent this column via my Blackberry and called it a day.