Time
May 18, 2012
The rain didn't bother Katerina Papamichail. Standing on the marble steps of the Panathenaic Stadium in Athens, the site of the first modern Olympics in 1896, she and a friend huddled beneath an umbrella on Thursday to watch the ceremonial handing over of the Olympic flame to the London 2012 organizers. Hundreds of other Greeks did the same, some wearing T-shirts from the 2004 Athens Games to remind them of better times. "We've forgotten what it feels like to feel good," says Papamichail, an ebullient businesswoman in her 50s. "Well, I'm not going to forget. The rest of the world can treat us like paupers, but I know we're not."
Papamichail clapped when the Greek honor guard — soldiers dressed in the skirt-like fustanallas — marched in. She screamed like a teenage girl — along with the rest of the crowd — when she saw soccer star David Beckham, who's on the London 2012 committee. And she choked up when Greek tenor Mario Frangoulis belted out a soaring rendition of the Greek national anthem as rain soaked his elegant suit.
The flame had been lit in Olympia a week earlier. More than 5,000 people packed into the tiny town in southern Greece to watch ceremonial priestesses dance on the grassy hills above the ancient stadium where the Olympics were first held in 776 B.C. Elementary school teacher Sophia Mermela had driven two hours from her home in Patras to watch the torch-lighting ceremony. A tiny woman in Jackie-O sunglasses, she held a blue-and-white Greek flag above her head. "I'm disappointed more people didn't bring flags today," she sighed. "I don't want the visitors to think this crisis has beaten the pride out of us." An actress playing the high priestess lit the flame in the Temple of Hera with the help of a parabolic mirror — and "maybe a little assistance from the sun god Apollo," Mermela said, smiling.
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