Ancient seemed modern at shot put site

OLYMPIA, Greece - They did not have judges in blazers and fedoras in 776 B.C., and they most certainly did not have machine-gun wielding soldiers and porta-potties stationed on the high holy ground that Zeus cleared with a single lightning bolt from a faraway Mount Olympus peak.

But they did have winners and losers at Olympia back then, and a method of measuring the nearly imperceptible difference between the two. So nothing essential changed over the 2,780 years that separated the first Olympic Games and the shot put competition that Adam Nelson lost Wednesday on the same narrow, 200-meter dirt field where naked Greek men once covered themselves with olive oil and made sport of ripping out each other's small intestines and throats.

It was a game of centimeters, then and now, and Nelson figured a half-centimeter cost him a chance to feel that surge of athletic immortality he felt when he walked past the Temple of Zeus and through the vast sanctuary of stone and marble columns and monuments that led him to the gateway of the Ancient Stadium, under the one remaining arch that greeted Leonidas the runner and Milo the wrestler.

``This facility is absolutely world class,'' Nelson said. ``It has been for 3,500 years, so why would it change now?''

No, that half-centimeter foot fault on Nelson's sixth and final attempt to win the gold couldn't alter his belief that he'd just been part of the Summer Games' most remarkable event, its gift to gods who'd been kept waiting for far too long.

``It's really a special venue,'' Nelson said. ``I feel very honored and privileged to compete in it.''

In this idyllic hamlet 210 miles removed from Athens, Nelson had taken the lead by heaving his 16-pound ball 69 feet 5 1/4 inches on his first medal-round go, and fouled out on his next five with a series of flubs and flops. Having lost to Yuriy Bilonog of the Ukraine, Nelson raged against the red-flagging judge, Dimitrios Karafles, who told the American, in effect, to go back to the videotape.

The films never lie. ``You must be blind not to see,'' Karafles claimed.

``I apologized for second-guessing him,'' Nelson said.

The silver medalist and his wife, Laci, would sob together as they embraced on the fringe of a golden opportunity gone by, but Nelson made a quick recovery, no doubt inspired by the knowledge that he'd just competed in a once-in-a-millennium event.

Nelson was the perfect gladiator for the show. As a star football player at Dartmouth, he'd dress up as a Viking and traumatize pencil-neck freshmen. As a performer on a site that hosted pagan festivals celebrating life's extremes, Nelson's warm-up act - clapping his hands until the fans joined along, then ripping off his shirt and flinging it to the ground as he stomped toward the ring - was the ideal routine; he was basking in his own Herculean strength, the way throwback warriors loved to do.

But even as a blazing sun scorched the surrounding olive groves and hillside pines, this was a competition to be savored by all. It went unstained by corporate boxes and sponsor signage; the only swoosh-related presence came in the form of Nike, the Greek goddess of victory.

Some 15,000 fans sat on the grass slopes surrounding the dirt pit, just like they did 28 centuries back. Only this time there were no fire-eaters and prostitutes, no accompanying den of inequity as described in Tony Perrottet's book, ``The Naked Olympics: The True Story of the Ancient Games.''

``The Woodstock of antiquity,'' Perrottet had called it.

Oxen were sacrificed at Zeus' altar back then. Men were the only Greek citizens deemed worthy of gracing the stadium dirt.

``I just heard that women who were caught in here were thrown off a cliff,'' said 11th-place finisher Cleopatra Borel of Trinidad & Tobago.

Legend said head-first, in fact. Virgins were encouraged to attend; fathers brought their daughters in the hope of arranging a marriage with a sporting champ. But a married woman who appeared in the stadium might end up taking the Greg Louganis plunge.

This time around, women of all shapes and sizes were welcome to compete, watch and dress up in white B.C. gowns and hand out olive wreaths to the finalists. ``It was surreal,'' Borel said. So surreal that a 41-year-old race engine builder from Chicago, Ted Karkazis, walked about in a Roman toga and wondered why nobody else was doing the same.

In the 2004 Games, oxen would not be sacrificed at Zeus' altar, lifetime supplies of olive oil would not be awarded to the winners, and charges of cheating would not involve magic potions spiced up by lizard's flesh. But the cicadas would still make their loud, shrill noises in this theater in the pines, and the temples would remain adjacent to the stadium, in various states of disrepair. Earthquakes, floods and man-made battles left the monuments to Zeus and Hera battered and bruised, yet my undetected walk through the off-limits sanctuary Wednesday offered evidence of a living mystical force.

To pass the 2,800-year-old Temple of the Hera, legendary home of the disk of the Sacred Truce, was to feel the spiritual connection Wednesday's Olympians said they felt as they marched toward their defining athletic moment.

``This is better than anything I could've dreamed of,'' said Nelson, who used to chase that dream by training at Manhattan College.

The fans booed him before his last attempt, if only because Nelson had revved them up on his four previous throws before letting them down hard. (Actually, they weren't booing. They were only shouting, `Zeuuuus.'). John Godina, Nelson's teammate and a two-time medalist, had it far worse. He failed to make the final-eight cut - ``I should've won it; I screwed up,'' he said - and was later seen sitting among the ruins and fighting back the tears.

The gods can be most cruel. In 393 A.D., they stood by idly as the Roman emperor Theodosius did away with the Olympic Games because he decreed it one big pagan bash. Baron Pierre de Coubertin, a French nobleman, restored the Games in 1896, and today his heart rests at Olympia - inside a vase buried within a 16-foot-high white marble monument.

Too bad he wasn't around for this. The founding father of the modern Games would've gotten a kick out of Wednesday's shot put, even if the local archaeologists initially wanted no part of disturbing the sacred field.

``It's brilliant,'' Australian Justin Anlezark said of the stadium. ``But they should have given us rocks to throw.''

Even without the rocks, this was the best event of the Summer Games. No competitors were flogged, no married women were sent diving off a cliff, and no naked men appeared in a coat of olive oil.

The ballyard held up just fine. Let's do it again in another thousand years or two.