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Athens Readies Itself For Olympic Games
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Posted by: forwardone
ATHENS, Greece. - Greece has completed all venues and is ready to host extraordinary and safe Olympics this month, Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis said Tuesday after a long tour of the main Olympic sports complex.
Karamanlis, who toured several sports facilities with Athens Games chief Gianna Angelopoulos 10 days before the start of the Aug. 13-29 Games, said everything was in place to welcome athletes from a record 202 nations.
"The Olympic installations and infrastructure are ready to welcome, host and serve the Olympic family, the athletes, the journalists and the spectators coming from around the world," he said.
"Together we made it this far and together we will achieve the common aim of hosting extraordinary Games under conditions of maximum security."
After wasting the first three years of its seven-year preparation period, Greece went on a construction frenzy to complete the projects that ended only a few weeks before the Games. It has also implemented the most expensive Games security plan, worth more than $1 billion, for the first summer Games since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on U.S. cities and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Geoff