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Alexander Kitroeff, Wrestling with the Ancients: Modem Greek Identity and the Olympics. New York: Greekworks.com. 2004. Pp. xviii + 276. 16 illustrations. $32.00.
Alexander Kitroeff traces his early awareness of Greece's unique connection with the modern Olympics back to his schooldays, when the teacher told the class that 6 April was to be "Olympic Games day" (a piece of nationalist idealism dating from 1966). He sets out to show how Greece has experienced a "dual identity, as heir to the classical tradition, and as a modern European state" (more precisely, in the earlier parts of the story, an aspiring modern European state, the Olympics being seen as a means of achieving modernity). Extending this aim, Kitroeff argues that Greece maintained a privileged place in the Olympics movement because it saw its role as both the affirmation of the ancient heritage and a means to gain international recognition-which implied efficiency, modernity and the civilized values attributed to more advanced European states. seen in this light, the Olympic Games, whether of 1896 or 2004, were a challenge which Greece could not refuse, whatever the cost to the taxpayerthough Harilaos Trikoupis came near to refusing it in 1895!
Kitroeff s general analysis is in my view correct. He writes that "ever since its establishment almost two centuries ago, modern Greece has merged a deeply seated sense of continuity with ancient Greece into an equally deeply felt belief that it is part of a "civilized" (that is developed) Europe. Coubertin invited Greeks to play both roles in the context of the international Olympic movement. ". . . Coubertin himself became the first victim of the Greeks' overzealousness; ultimately however, the Greeks found their appropriate place as the guardians of tradition, even to Coubertin's satisfaction."
Kitroeff sees the 2004 Olympics as the "ultimate test of Greece's ability to balance an Olympics steeped in tradition with one run efficiently." He traces this theme through the origins of the modern Olympic movement, the Athens Games of 1896 and 1906, the development of the Hellenic Olympic Gommittee (HOC), the appropriation of Greek antiquity and Hellenic imagery to Nazi purposes at the Berlin Olympics of 1936 (where Kitroeff treats the HOC harshly), Karamanlis's proposals in 1976 and 1980 to "redeem" the politicized Olympics...