Deadline looms

last updated 8 January 2015

Athens

With just 10 months to go before the 2004 Summer Olympics, host city Athens is woefully behind in preparations, inspectors from the International Olympic Committee said last week. Planned train and tram routes to get athletes and spectators to the arenas are still incomplete, and construction of the main stadium is three months behind schedule. Greece is the smallest country to stage the Olympics since Finland in 1952, and it has had to take out an emergency loan of $2 million to meet extra building costs. The government blamed the delays in construction on the constant discovery of antiquities, which must be salvaged from dig sites before work can proceed.