The Greek Debt Crisis seriously affected Greece’s Olympic effort in London 2012 and is threatening to do so again as another Greek Bailout is sought.
An Olympic Games without founders Greece has never, ever happened – and we want to keep it that way.
To do this we call upon not just Greek people, but all fans of and believers in the Olympic Games movement to step up.
Uncertainty surrounds Greece’s economy as its banks nears collapse under the burden of its international debts, and the debts caused by the troika bailout loans issued to help save the nation’s economy.
Regardless of whether another bailout loan is issued or not, huge reforms will be necessary and there is a very real threat that there could be little or even no funding available from the government for Greece to train athletes for the Rio 2016 Olympics and send them to Brazil.
In 2012, two years into Greece’s debt crisis, Greece’s Olympic athletes struggled to get to London 2012. They barely had enough funds to train or compete, coaching and support staff weren’t getting paid and in the end they only fielded 103 competitors – more than 50 less than the team they sent to Beijing in 2008 and less than a quarter of the team that took part in Athens 2004.
The Greek Athletics Federation cancelled domestic competitions, Athens’ showcase Olympic venue fell into disrepair and, when the Hellenic Olympic Committee received half of the €30million it was promised for the London 2012 Olympic Cycle, the International Olympic Committee had to step in to get to teams to qualifying events.
Do you want this to happen again to the nation that is the mother of the Olympic Games?
At London 2012, Greece’s Olympic team was 103 persons strong, athletes competing in 19 different sports – including archery, diving, cycling, sailing, volleyball and table tennis – winning bronze medals in judo and rowing.
Imagine the costs of subsiding the governing bodies of those 19 sports? Add that to the costs of each athlete’s flights from Greece to Rio de Janeiro. Then there’s accommodation for each Olympic athlete for up to a month, food, medical assistance, physiotherapists, the list goes on.
It is estimated that to get Greece’s Olympic team to the Rio 2016 Olympics could cost upwards of €750,000 – and that’s before you consider the costs of the extra competitions and training camps needed in the next 12 months to qualify and prime the Olympic team for the event.
Your contribution to this effort to cut into that cost, however small, could be the difference between a Greek team being there to carry their flag into Rio de Janeiro’s Olympic stadium next August, or being at home in Athens, the place where the modern Olympic Games were first held in 1896.
Only five nations have taken a team to EVERY Olympics since that year, Greece, the founders of the Olympic movement, are one – but it’s up to you to help them maintain that.
It began in Olympia. According to Mycenaean mythology, after his victory over Oenomaos, Pelops founded games to honour his vanquished and in order to be purified and thank the Gods for his victory.
Hippodamia then founded women’s games in honour of Hera, then, in other myths, demigod Hercules introduced the race and the chariot race. So Greek Gods were the first Olympic competitors.
Zeus beat Cronus in wrestling; Apollo beat Hermes in a race and Ares in boxing. And they were crowned with a wreath of a wild olive tree.
Olympia became a pan-hellenic centre and ancient written sources report 776BC as the year the games began. From that year starts the list of Olympic Champions, but it is from 1896 that the games were run as we know them today.
In that year the games were revived in Athens after a Roman-imposed ban of 15 centuries. They were now an international competition, evolving from the original events in Olympia to become the modern Olympic Games.
Rio 2016 will be the 28th edition of the modern summer games and the first to be held in South America.
The Olympic games forged the national, racial and spiritual unity of Greeks.
They combined the deep religious spirit with the heroic past of Greeks, the highest degree of cultivation of the body, mind and soul, with the universal philosophical values and the promotion of individuals and cities with the utmost ideal of freedom.
The Olympic Games motto. ‘Citius, Altius, Fortius’, written in that ancient language of Latin, embodies that; Faster, Higher, Stronger it reads.
Excellence, friendship and respect remain the Olympic values and the Olympic torch that is passed between host nations during the Olympiad – the four-year cycle between Olympic Games, serves as a constant link between the ancient Olympic Games and the modern Olympic movement.
In addition, the Olympic rings represent the unity between the world’s five key areas – North and South America, Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia -, meaning that this event which once brought only Olympia and Greece together now unites the entire world and bestows upon it everything you read above.
Yeah, Greece is pretty damn amazing. Show your thanks – Get Greece To The Olympic Games in Rio.
Every €1 you pledge to this crowdfunding campaign will go to the Hellenic Olympic Committee to be put towards the costs of qualifying Greece’s Olympic competitors for the Rio 2016 Olympic Games, and towards the costs of getting them to Brazil and caring for them as they take part in the Olympic Games.
We’ve organised some ways for you to commemorate your donation, like flags, t-shirts and wristbands, but you don’t have to buy them and you can pledge absolutely any amount you want.
What you’re doing when you pledge to the Greek Olympic Team is supporting a nation that we think has done more for sport than any other.
I mean, they founded the Olympic Games guys. It doesn’t get bigger than that.