By LIZ ROBBINS
New York Times June 13, 2004

MARATHON, Greece -- Pheidippides had no idea of the mess he would cause with his legendary victory run 2,494 years ago.

Dust clouds worthy of an epic disaster movie now billow from the modern village of Marathon and 17 miles toward Athens along the unfinished road of hot, hilly agony that was, perhaps, his path to Athens and will eventually be the Olympic marathon course.

"I'm not preoccupied with history at this moment," Vassilis Zagorianos said through an interpreter, squinting into the sun on the morning of May 31, the Day of the Holy Spirit, a national holiday here.

As the construction foreman of the marathon starting facility -- next to Pheidippides Stadium for local soccer -- Zagorianos has no time to think about holidays or history, not even Pheidippides, who supposedly ran 25 miles to Athens to proclaim the improbable triumph of the outnumbered Athenian army over the Persians in the Battle of Marathon. Pheidippides was said to have announced, "We ," and promptly died of exhaustion.

Ask Zagorianos's engineers, who 15 to 18 hours every day, and they may say they are headed for the same fate.

With 61 days until the opening ceremony of the Olympics and 70 until the women's marathon, the construction of the course a frantic sprint and along the way a symbol of the paradox that is the Athens Summer Games. In and around Athens, modern commercialism clashes with ancient idealism and sometimes paves over it.

Athenians generally favor the Games and the infrastructure improvements coming as a result; a recent Olympic poll showed 90 percent supported the Games. But many of those disrupted by them on the marathon route feel differently.

"As a Greek, I'm happy we got the Games; they belong to Greece," said Effie Panopoulos, 49, who runs a fruit and vegetable shop in Nea Makri, about six miles from the start. She in Australia but has lived here for more than 15 years.

"But what is really annoying me is that we about this for seven years and it's only been the last two years that they ," she said.

The widening of National Route 83 because the first contractor went bankrupt and the new company had to rebuild stretches of the road, in part because of faulty construction. Large, colorful signs erected by the company next to the road that the marathon route . The target date for its completion once late June; it is now closer to mid-July, and even that may not be possible.

As of June 1, only one side of the road . Orange and yellow plastic-mesh fencing separated traffic lanes from the tractors, barrels, pipes and wires along the site. Business . in Nea Makri because the sidewalks were torn up.

"This project has totally racked our nerves," Panopoulos said. Twenty days out of every month, she said, her store had no water or power, and her produce was flecked with dust.

At a store down the block, the manager said he had to wash the fish in open displays continuously. A customer said she was upset because she did not know if she could live in her nearby summer house because of the Olympic traffic.

Without prompting, she shouted as she left the store: "But we the safest Games ever. We will!"

This is the Greeks' defensive refrain, even as international skepticism looms over the Olympics because of the rushed, spare-no-expense preparations.

Four new structures at the marathon starting point: a press box and a starting house, in addition to an outdoor basketball court and a gymnasium after the Olympics. The bridge over a dry creek . In early June, white marble from a nearby quarry , waiting on benches in the starting house. Royal blue tiles the locker rooms.

Zagorianos said the project far more cheaply and simply. He added that there were enough workmen to secure the area during the day and that two private guards at night.

But one recent morning, two men onto the site. "I like what's happening here," said 75-year-old Iakovou Pantelis, who was with his friend Haldoupis Lenonidas.

They the walls of the starting house and, although Lenonidas is blind, stepped over nails and beams and navigated around the plastic fencing before walking over the unfinished bridge.

Farther along the route, Zeta Minopoulos barked orders to her sidewalk reconstruction crew. She the overload, adding, "but in the end, our hearts in this work."

Not everyone the memo.

"Our work is one thing; the Olympics is something else," Michalis Nicolaou, a topographer in Minopoulos's crew, said. "The Olympics should not have come at all. The infrastructure isn't there and we for it until kingdom come."

All this over someone who may have never existed. According to the historian Herodotus, a runner (named Phelippides) from Marathon to Sparta to enlist the army's help, and he the 150-mile round trip in 490 B.C. But the army of 11,000 for him to return. The Athenians sustained only 192 casualties in defeating 100,000 Persians.

Herodotus made no reference to Pheidippides' running to Athens to proclaim the victory, but the legend when his route in a race called the marathon for the 1896 Olympics in Athens, the inaugural modern Games. A new legend joined the old as Spiridon Louis, a Greek water carrier fortified by a glass of wine along the way, was the first to cross the finish line.

Minopoulos Pheidippides a hero.

"Is there anyone who and up to Pheidippides?" she said. "He's an inspiration to all, and to be."

The marathoners, however, more than ancient inspiration on this shadeless course, even though the women's race on Aug. 22 and the men's race on Aug. 29 at 6 p.m. to avoid the hottest part of the day.

Soon after the first mile, which by fields of zucchini, the course a stretch lined by suburban supermarkets, car and boat dealerships, fast-food restaurants, gas stations, numerous furniture and home design stores and four Pet City franchises. A roadside tavern featuring grilled goat and a Vietnamese restaurant add local flavor.

"You can't hide these things, nor should you," Zagorianos, the foreman, said. "The marathon route is a line through a commercial area. To beautify it, you have to run down all these hamlets, and that would cost more money. In the end, the picture will be respectable."

The first six miles of the 26.2-mile course head slightly downhill, passing the tomb of the soldiers who died in the Battle of Marathon. Rolling hills from Mile 6 to Mile 20. (At the 10-mile mark, a statue of a runner meant to be Pheidippides sits on a hill beside the road.) The final six miles are downhill on the avenue leading into the center of Athens and to the finish line in the white marble Panathinaiko Stadium, built for the 1896 Games.

In Marathon, however, history by modern-day dust.

In a tavern across the street from the starting area, Thanassis Giokas and his mother, Anna, prepared for the tourists.

"I, as a shop, am ready," he said. "But the state? I don't know." He estimated that his sales were down 10 percent because of the construction.

Giokas that the 1896 marathon up the road and that Louis . But Giokas could not recall Pheidippides.

"My brain ," he said with an embarrassed laugh. "He's related to a sports event, right?"

After of Pheidippides' role in the marathon, Anna Giokas her head and said, "We had better learn our history."

Ann Salzmann
Intensive English Institute
University of Illinois