News about Paavo Nurmi

JEFF POWELL: It was 3am of a moonlit night in Athens, just one week before the opening ceremony for the 2004 Summer Games, as the First Lady of the Olympics put on a hard hat and set out to spur on construction workers as they raced to beat that deadline. This was by no means the first - nor the last - of the many times Gianna Angelopoulos-Daskalaki delivered flasks of coffee and her patriotic message to men and women working around the clock to deliver what a mocking world was calling 'impossibly Greek.' Her objective on this particular occasion was to inspire a sprint finish to completion of the new Tram line, which would carry the crowds from the city centre to the Olympic Stadium. The track was still a kilometre or so short of the final stop, which itself was not quite finished.