The marathon course for next month's Olympics is finally ready, 18 days before the Games start. The bankruptcy of a contractor and other delays had postponed works to widen an existing 26-km road on which a large part of the marathon will be run.
"We have won," Public Works Minister Yiorgos Souflias told reporters during the road's inauguration. The marathon track was considered the biggest remaining hurdle in Athens' trouble-ridden Olympics preparations after the main stadium's glass-steel roof was installed earlier in the month.
Alongside serving as marathon track, the road will also link the Greek capital with the Games' main journalists' village and the rowing centre of Schinias. The marathon track's completion had broken through several deadlines and featured on top of the agenda of Greece's new, conservative government that took office on March 7.
Games organisers ATHOC completed Saturday the official measurement of the 42.195km (26 mile) track from the Greek town of Marathon to the Panathinaikon Stadium in central Athens, where the first modern Olympics took place in 1896.
The Athens Olympics marathon runners will follow in the footsteps of ancient Greek runner Philippides (also known as Phidippides), whose run from Marathon to Athens in 490 B.C. gave the discipline its name.
Filed by Ciaran Cronin
