GREECE PROVES ALL OF US WRONG.

Byline: PAUL OBERJUERGE

ATHENS, Greece - Well, shut my mouth.

After a year of promising everyone within earshot the Greeks would make a hash of the Athens Olympics, here we are on the final day of what has turned out to be fully acceptable, almost exceptional Summer Games.

Fitting, for the home of the ancient Olympics and the birthplace of the modern Games. But not something many of us really expected.

Was it only three years ago that the International Olympic Committee was making noises about a ``last-minute'' move of the 28th Olympiad to a city with venues already built and infrastructure already in place?

After wasting four of the seven years it had to get ready for 2004, Greece produced an upset of Athenians-beat-Persians proportions.

Get-things-done entrepreneur Gianna Angelopoulos-Daskalaki took over the Athens Olympic Organizing Committee and jump-started a moribund organization. And the Greeks showed a finishing kick worthy of Hicham El Guerrouj.

Maybe not every venue was completed to a spit shine, and maybe you didn't really want to look behind the tarp wrapped around that abandoned building, but Athens, and the Greeks, took care of all the basics.

The athletes had no complaints about the facilities. Many of them loved them.

The buses ran on time. Traffic flowed. The power grid held up.

Telephones worked. Journalists were able to file their stories.

Sure, Greece spent up to $10 billion to make it happen, but there was a time when it appeared as if no amount of money would make this thing come off.

Then there was the issue of security.

For a long while, Athens was known for having the sloppiest airport security in Europe. If you wanted to hijack a plane, this was the place to go.

Greece also had some homegrown terror organizations, albeit of the mailbox-bomb variety. But people can get hurt even in small explosions.

Thousands of Americans, including at least one elite U.S. rower and a batch of journalists, decided it was just too risky to come here.

Greece conceded it spent $1.5 billion on security. Enough to build an aircraft carrier or two. But it seems to have paid off, aside from a kook impeding the marathon leader during Sunday's race over city streets.

Barring a terror attack as we stream to the airport, Greece managed to strike the delicate balance between effective security and oppressive security.

American athletes were impressed.

``The nice thing was you saw it, but it wasn't obvious,'' soccer star Mia Hamm said. ``So it didn't make you nervous.''

Anyone who was at the 2002 Winter Olympics knows what she means. Salt Lake City was armed to the teeth and hunkered down like a frontier garrison.

One criticism of the Athens Games is that it had no focal point. No gathering place for fans to celebrate victory or mourn defeat. The Olympic Park, where several of the biggest venues are located, was meant to be that spot ... but you couldn't enter it without a ticket, leaving it sparsely populated.

Another fair criticism was the poor attendance at many events, especially the first week. NBC didn't like all those shots with empty seats in the background.

The failure to peddle tickets will hurt Athens' bottom line. Ultimately, it didn't detract from the competition.

Fans did turn out for track and field, a European favorite, and athletes there loved the crowds.

``Every time I stepped on the track, I had chills,'' said American Justin Gatlin, 100-meter champion. ``No matter how much my legs ached or my feet hurt, it was an electrifying experience.''

Greeks have added reason to feel proud of themselves, this morning.

``For four or five years, they've had nothing but criticism,'' U.S. Olympic Committee chairman Peter Ueberroth said. ``Every day they woke up to criticism. 'You won't be ready, you can't do it, this is silly, this is folly.'

``It was a great Games. History will record that these Games are among the greatest, if not the greatest, Games of all time.''

Who'd have thunk it? Not me.

Paul Oberjuerge, [phone]

paul.oberjuerge(at)sbsun.com