My Greek Drama: Life, Love, and One Woman's Olympic Effort to Bring Glory to Her Country Read online

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  Austin, Texas

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  Copyright ©2013 Gianna Angelopoulos-Daskalaki

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  Design and composition by Greenleaf Book Group LLC

  Cover and interior design by Rodrigo Corral and Abby Kagan

  Publisher’s Cataloging-In-Publication Data

  (Prepared by The Donohue Group, Inc.)

  Angelopoulos, Gianna, 1955-

  My Greek drama : life, love, and one woman’s Olympic effort to bring glory to her country / Gianna Angelopoulos.—1st ed.

  p. ; cm.

  Issued also as an ebook.

  ISBN: 978-1-60832-581-8

  1. Angelopoulos, Gianna, 1955-2. Olympic Games (28th : 2004 : Athens, Greece)—Management. 3. Businesswomen—Greece—Biography. 4. Olympics—Planning. 5. Autobiography. I. Title. II. Title: Greek drama

  GV721.2 .A54 2013

  796.48/092 2012956124

  Part of the Tree Neutral® program, which offsets the number of trees consumed in the production and printing of this book by taking proactive steps, such as planting trees in direct proportion to the number of trees used: www.treeneutral.com

  Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

  13 14 15 16 17 18 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  First Edition

  TO MY FAMILY—FOR YOUR LOVE, FOR YOUR STRENGTH, AND FOR GIVING ME A JOYFUL STORY TO WRITE

  AND TO MY EXTENDED FAMILY—THE PEOPLE OF GREECE FOR WHOM, I BELIEVE, THERE IS A BETTER CHAPTER AHEAD

  AS YOU SET OUT FOR ITHAKA,

  HOPE THE VOYAGE IS A LONG ONE,

  FULL OF ADVENTURES, FULL OF DISCOVERY.

  —C. P. CAVAFY, “ITHAKA”

  (EXTRACT TRANSLATED BY EDMUND KEELEY)

  CONTENTS

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  PROLOGUE

  1: PHILOXENIA

  2: FAMILY NAMES

  3: “I DON’T NEED A SON. I HAVE GIANNA!”

  4: GROWING PAINS

  5: ESCAPE FROM CRETE

  6: THE GOLDEN HORSE

  7: A TOUCH OF BASIL

  8: SCHOOL DAYS

  9: PARLIAMENTARY STEPS

  10: TURKISH DELIGHTS

  11: UN COUP DE FOUDRE

  12: SECOND CHANCES

  13: NO GAIN WITHOUT PAIN

  14: GENERATION NEXT

  15: BACK TO UNIVERSITY

  16: LONDON CALLING

  17: SLEEPING WITH THE ENEMY

  18: ATHENS IS IN MOTION

  19: WE COURT THE WORLD

  20: A GOLD-MEDAL PERFORMANCE

  21: A TALE OF TWO CITIES

  22: LAND AND WATER

  23: SUN TZU, MACHIAVELLI, AND ME

  24: OMENS AND BUMPS IN THE ROAD

  25: “I WILL ALSO BE THERE!”

  26: G FORCE

  27: GAMES ON!

  28: LAST DANCE

  29: NEW PATHWAYS AND PARADIGMS

  30: A GREEK DRAMA

  EPILOGUE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I WISH TO WARMLY THANK ALL THOSE WHO HELPED so that this book exists. All those who encouraged me to start (and finish) writing it, and then to publish; all those who told me not to.

  Evidently I am no writer; in fact, I am far more a person of the spoken word—and a person of action. So, I feel in deep debt to Holly Sargent; to Jeff Nussbaum, Raphael Sagalyn, and Mark Starr, who labored along with me through drafts of this book; as well as to Left-eris Kousoulis, Michalis Zacharatos, Andonis Papagianidis, and Lena Zachopoulou, who believed in me and in this venture.

  To my husband, Theodore, and my children—Carolina, Panagiotis, and Dimitris—who once more had to bear with me while I was immersed in yet another venture, thanks will never be enough, but neither would be other forms of expressing my gratitude. So thanks, Efcharistó!

  PROLOGUE

  August 29, 2004. After seventeen days of competitive cycling, running, diving, wrestling, and my own personal race, after a helter-skelter of emotions—mostly extraordinary highs but a few painful lows—I arrived at the Closing Ceremony of the Summer Olympic Games enveloped by a serenity that I hadn’t felt since leaving London more than four years before to answer my nation’s call.

  I knew that Greece had triumphed. Greeks knew in their hearts and souls our achievement would cement our Olympic legacy.

  And on this final day, I was secure in my own personal legacy.

  My eye had always been on the dream of my childhood: to do something great for Greece. And we had delivered “unforgettable dream games!” Greece had shown the world a nation so unlike the stereo-types—lazy and backward—with which it had saddled us, a modern Greece that, by dint of hard work and sacrifice, could deliver on its promise and compete on the same playing field as all the other leading nations of a new Europe.

  My heart was surprisingly light. My Valentino outfit—a silk blouse over peach-colored slacks, accentuated with a sash—was simple yet chic, comfortable, and celebratory. And I was ready to celebrate. To join in what my friend Dick Ebersol had characterized as a “party for Greece.”

  Indeed, the night was lost to revel. At some point, as the festivities—if not the musicians and dancers—wound down, most of the VIPs around me began to make for the exits. But I simply wasn’t ready for the party to end. Greeks throughout the stadium were enveloped in a frenzy of joy. And alone in the VIP box, I felt a visceral connection with my country’s people. So I surrendered heart and soul to the impassioned rhythms of the night.

  Somebody later told me that what I experienced next reminded him of certain moments in the nineteenth-century novels of Leo Tolstoy. They occurred when a character acted without conscious thought, completely immersed in the passions of the moment. During my Tolstoyan moment, I began to dance the hasapiko, closing my eyes and extending my arms to the heavens where, no doubt, all the Greek gods were smiling. As I swayed to the music, lost in the exuberant joy of my people, I felt all the cares, anxieties, and pain of my long Olympic struggle flow out of my body. My happiness was truly transcendent.

  Mine is a story of life and love, success and failure, betrayal and redemption.

  It is a story of how the lessons and legacy of our Athens 2004 Summer Olympics were abandoned.

  And it is a story that suggests paths Greece could follow today in its efforts to solve the serious problems it is facing. A memoir that is as much about Greece’s journey as it is my own.

  It is, in every sense, a Greek drama. My personal Greek drama, and the drama of Greece today.

  www.mygreekdrama.com

  MY GREEK DRAMA

  OLIVE TREES, majestic as the sun plays on their leaves in the breezes coming off the Aegean Sea. The spicy taste of herb tea infused with fresh-picked thyme and diktamos. (This rare, expensive herb from Crete is believed to have medicinal virtues. In Virgil’s Aeneid, for example, Venus heals Aeneas with a stalk of “dittany from Cretan Ida.” My family too gre
w diktamos to brew for tea, a powerful potion that assured longevity. The locals call this herb erondas, meaning love.) The aromas of melitzana (eggplant), tomatoes, and lamb cooking over an open flame in summer, the time when it never rains. These are my memories of the place where I was born, the magical, historic island of Crete.

  Greece is a country of islands. At present, four of the eleven million inhabitants of Greece live either in the capital city of Athens on the Attic Peninsula or in the mountainous northern provinces that extend to the borders with Albania and Bulgaria. But the soul of Greece lies in its twelve hundred to six thousand islands (depending on how you measure them) sprinkled across the Ionian Sea to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and the Aegean Sea to the east. Only about two hundred of these islands are inhabited, and of those merely seventy-eight have more than a hundred residents. Some of the islands are dry; they are covered in rocks, thyme, oregano, and white houses surrounded by blue sea and blue sky. Others are covered in pine trees. Rain, when it falls, falls in winter.

  Crete lies three hundred miles south of Athens, in the southern Aegean. It is a true miniature of the flora and fauna of the entire Mediterranean. With more than three thousand square miles—twice as large as the state of Rhode Island—Crete is a large island, and its population exceeds six hundred thousand, rivaling that of such major US cities as Boston, Washington, Denver, and Seattle. It is the land of poets and artists. It is the birthplace of Nikos Kazantzakis, author of Zorba the Greek, who once wrote, “Happy is the man… who, before dying, has the good fortune to sail the Aegean Sea.”

  The city of my birth, Heraklion, is Crete’s largest city. A place Lord Byron called “Troy’s rival.”

  An ancient fortress built behind solid ten-foot-tall stone walls that remain standing today, Heraklion has witnessed a history of invasion and cultural assimilation as Crete’s natural resources and strategic location have been a pivotal point of interest for generations.

  In the thirteenth century, for example, the Venetian Empire seized control of Crete and ruled the island for more than four hundred years. Renaissance culture had a pervasive influence on the island and assured the development of rich literature and arts traditions. In the latter half of the seventeenth century, the Ottoman Empire drove the Venetians from the island and ruled Crete for two hundred years.

  It wasn’t until 1908, the year my father was born, that Crete declared its union with Greece.

  Crete’s economy has always been stronger than that of mainland Greece. The island boasts agricultural and tourist industries as well as a flourishing commercial port in Heraklion. Crete’s natural beauty, along with its combination of cultural and economic riches, has bestowed upon many islanders a distinct sense of superiority. Cretans sometimes believe they are the super-Greeks—stronger, wiser, braver, and freer spirits who are blessed with more of all the virtues that are associated with the Greek people.

  There has always been chatter on the island that Crete should break away from the rest of jealous Greece and become an independent nation.

  For a long time I shared the feeling that we Cretans were a special people. At critical junctures in my life and career, my faith in the bonds of a shared heritage was rewarded. I always believed I could count on Cretans for assistance or, sometimes, a small miracle that I required.

  Over the span of my life I have traveled extensively, meeting Greeks from across my homeland, all of whom seemed to subscribe to their own notions of regional exceptionalism. As a result, I have come to believe that while Cretans have been blessed and are, to some extent, a distinct culture, what we share with all Greeks is far greater than our differences.

  As a young girl, I did not fully appreciate the heritage of Heraklion. I viewed my city as drab and unattractive. I did, however, appreciate aspects of Crete’s ancient history. Beginning almost five thousand years ago and for almost thirteen centuries, Crete was the pinnacle of Western Civilization, home to the Minoans, who were renowned as the first palace-builders of Europe.

  The most famous of those palaces is Knossos, the ceremonial center of a city built on the island between the seventeenth and fourteenth centuries BC. It was discovered and partially restored by the British archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans in the early years of the twentieth century.

  I often visited Knossos during my childhood, biking there from my home, which was roughly three miles away. Most people think of antiquities as lifeless and colorless, your classic white marble structures. But Knossos was alive with color, most memorably lush red—le sang de boeuf. I marveled at the intricate architectural design that connected more than a thousand rooms, at the elaborate system of water and pipes that served to cool the palace and drain the sewage. I was dazzled by the sophisticated artistry, which included columns carved from cypress trees and stunning frescoes. But to a young girl from a conservative culture, nothing was more striking than the images of women decked out in elegant finery that left their breasts bared.

  Years later, those images still resonated with me. When the director of the Opening Ceremony for the Athens 2004 Summer Olympics wanted to incorporate the beauty and sensuality of the ancient women of Knossos, I supported him. I only beat a diplomatic retreat after being warned that any nudity, no matter how deeply rooted in our heritage, might result in controversy.

  However unprepossessing Heraklion’s appearance, that was only a relatively minor concern of mine growing up there. I was far more distressed by what a cultural backwater the city was. I’m not talking about Minoan glories or Greek antiquities; rather, I’m talking about that 1960s and ’70s youth culture—rock and roll, Hollywood movies, British fashion—with which I, like millions of young girls around the world, was totally infatuated. To be generous, I could say Heraklion gave me an appetite for life in a real city. And I would go on to spend my entire life living in major cities: first Thessaloniki, then Athens, and a decade in Zurich and London before, finally, a return to Athens.

  I did not discover what it means to be truly Cretan—Cretan in heart and soul—in Heraklion. That transformation would occur in the countryside, in the tiny village of Embaros, nestled in a valley in central Crete.

  When I was born, my paternal grandparents, Manolis Fazakis and Parthenia Daskalaki, had already lived in Embaros for some forty years, and it was there that they raised my father, Frixos, along with his older brother, Achilles, and sister, Ioanna.

  My father viewed the family homestead in Embaros as the center of his universe. He insisted on taking my younger sister, Eleni, and me there as often as possible for vital infusions of the real Crete. So we visited during summer, during school vacations, and over holiday weekends. Sometimes my mother would entreat my father to let us stay in the city for a long weekend so that the family might partake of some more sophisticated social activities than another family dinner—but to no avail. My father felt it was essential that his daughters experience genuine Cretan life and that they embrace all the values inextricably bound up with his family, the land, and the village.

  Although Embaros was merely thirty miles south of Heraklion, it was a world apart. Almost all the villagers had names from ancient Greece: The men were Achilles, Praxiteles, Epaminondas, and Pericles. All nine muses—Euterpe, Clio, Thalia, Terpsichore, Erato, Urania, Polyhymnia, Calliope, and Melpomene—were represented by the women there. Later, when I was taught Greek mythology in school, the names of the mighty heroes and the beautiful muses would conjure up for me the rugged and plain faces of the peasant folk in Embaros instead of those otherworldly creatures.

  While Embaros may have been a short distance from Heraklion as the crow flies, it was a long journey. To get there, we traveled a rough, rutted, and overcrowded road on which cars were often stuck behind slow-moving vehicles, carts, and mules. My parents’ may have been the slowest moving car of all.

  My father refused to drive. He had been in an automobile accident during his World War II military service, but his reluctance may actually have had more to do with
the damage his feet suffered traversing the rugged Albanian terrain during the war.

  As a result, my mother always drove. And she always maintained a speed that rivaled the pace of your average mule. Make that your average mule carrying a heavy load. Mom insisted that her most important job was keeping us safe, not getting to the village quickly. And she was always totally focused on that task. She never seemed to hear the shouts—“Go wash some dishes, lady”—from the other travelers irked by her plodding pace. Nor did she appear to see their occasional vulgar gestures. I don’t think she even heard my father’s oft-repeated refrain—I think he was joking—that her driving would someday be the cause of his strokes. But she always got us there safely and he never required medical assistance. Any lingering distress from the long, boring trip would rapidly fall by the wayside as we felt the gentle embrace of the countryside—awash in color and redolent with exotic fragrances.

  At the Daskalakis* homestead (I’ll share with you in chapter 2 why it wasn’t the home of Mr. and Mrs. Fazakis), vines crawled over the walls surrounding the huge open courtyard filled with pots of the island’s various flowers. Crete boasts more varieties of herbs than in any other European country, and my grandparents planted pots of them as well, particularly basil. (Basil would play a major role in my later political life.) The door onto the courtyard was always left open, and occasionally a stranger would stumble inside, thinking he was on a path through the village. We Greeks embrace philoxenia, which translates literally as “love for strangers.” Figuratively, philoxenia means that whoever comes to your house, friend or stranger, must be welcomed, made to feel at home, and offered a lot to eat. The value of a person’s hospitality was judged by how generously he or she welcomed strangers. To fail that test was a family disgrace—and our family never failed.