To those who fret that the Athens Olympics will be an organizing disaster, I offer a reassuring thought: If Mexico could successfully host the World Cup in 1986, as an 11^th-hour substitute and after a series of devastating earthquakes, Greece will manage just fine in August.

There will surely be a glitch here and there, and the Summer Games will not be as slick and functional as they were in Sydney. But, barring a disastrous security breach, the competitions will take place and everybody will leave the city wondering what was so worrisome in the first place.

Bill Martin, acting president of the U.S. Olympic Committee, recently returned from a trip to Athens and reported that 80 percent of the preparation appears to be completed. If the Greeks fail to finish their signature dome atop the Olympic Stadium, only NBC Sports will be terribly disappointed. And NBC still has a little something called the Acropolis to exploit as a backdrop. (NBC Sports is a partner in the joint venture that runs NBCSports.com.)

The network did a fine job of making it appear that the 2000 Olympics were held right smack in downtown Sydney, a few blocks from the Opera House. In reality, the vast majority of those competitions were staged miles away, in an isolated area that had as much to do with Sydney as the New Jersey Meadowlands has to do with New York City.

Because of this geographic separation, the terribly overrated Sydney Olympics provided a sterile, theme-park atmosphere that couldn’t compare to the Barcelona Games of 1992.

Barcelona remains the gold standard for weaving an Olympics into the very fabric of the city. Given today’s security concerns, such a feat may now be impossible. But if Athens fares half as well, it will be fine.

Here are some questions from readers that the expert is only too happy to handle:

Q: What should we expect from Marion Jones this Olympics? Will she be trying for the same number of golds as in Sydney? How will her pregnancy affect her now?
--Monique, Virgin Islands

A: Marion Jones has been hinting that, yes, she will again attempt to capture five gold medals this summer in Athens: at 100 meters, 200 meters, the long jump and two relays. In Sydney, she managed three golds and two bronzes.

Early indoor results suggest it will be very tough for her to match the feats and times (10.75 seconds in the 100-meter dash, 21.83 in the 200) from those Olympics in 2000, though her form might be improving in the long jump. She also has been embroiled in yet more drug-related controversies, if only by association.

Jones, 28, has tried not to let her pregnancy slow her down. She trained in spikes for the first four months in Hawaii after conception. Two days before Monty’s birth last June, Jones had moved her practices indoors but was still running intervals on a treadmill. A month after delivery, Jones was back practicing starts alongside the boy’s father, Tim Montgomery.

“I hope people won’t even remember I took off 14 months,” Jones says. “I want to compete. I missed the feeling of lining up behind the blocks with seven or eight of the best athletes in the world.”

Q: Will the Australians be as strong in swimming as they were in 2000? Do you foresee an Australia-U.S. rivalry?
--Kelly Parsons, Timonium, Md.

A: I did a little extrapolating from FINA’s current world rankings and records, and came up with these projections: If the Olympics were held today, the U.S. men would be expected to win about seven golds, seven silvers and one bronze. The Aussie men would win about five golds, four silvers and one bronze. The U.S. women would win five golds, five silvers and five bronzes. The Aussie women would capture one gold, four silvers and four bronzes.

So you can see that the Americans are expected to have an edge, particularly in the women’s races, although there will be some great rivalries. By the way, Ian Crocker, the guy with the Aussie-sounding name, will be the American racing against Matt Welsh, the guy with the American-sounding name, who is an Aussie.

Q: I've heard about the security fears of the U.S. athletes -- what about athletes from other countries? Have they expressed similar fears? What about you guys, the journalists?
--Mike Gostisha, Pullman, Wash.

A: Generally speaking, American athletes appear the most concerned about security. Some of that is justified, and some of it borders on paranoia. After 9/11, the U.S. Fed Cup team cancelled from the tennis tournament in Spain and several other American athletes pulled out of international championships – much to the dismay of USOC officials, who felt the competitive climate was perfectly safe.

There is also reasonable concern from athletes from Israel, who remember Munich all too well, and from other Middle East countries. That wariness, however, is less likely to be expressed in public.

As for journalists, there is an emergency training session in New York available to all Olympic journalists in May. I plan to attend. But personally, I think there are more frightening assignments than being embedded with gymnasts and badminton players.

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