Can the Games damage your health?

ATHENS (Reuters) - "Faster, higher, stronger" is the motto of the 10,500 Olympic athletes sweating it out in the Athens sun -- but for the rest "heavier, flabbier, weaker" looks more fitting.


While Games heroes are pushing themselves to the limits, the public is taking it easy and most Athens gyms are shut for the usual August holiday break or work shortened hours.


"This is Greece, people spend all day on the beach," said an employee at an Athens branch of Universal Studios, one of Greece's leading fitness chains, which closed most of its gyms for the month.


Around the world millions are also sacrificing their exercise routines for long hours in front of TV and heaps of junk food.


In Germany, Tagesspiegel newspaper estimated that the 80-million nation will weigh 240 million kgs more after the Games.


Thousands of sports officials, journalists and volunteers in Athens also risk finishing the Olympics in worse shape than they started with their waistlines under threat from long days and heavy schedules.


"Work out? I haven't done anything for weeks, all you think of is to get some sleep," says Georgios Balantin, who volunteers at the reception desk of one of the Games media villages.


"After the Games I'll play some soccer again, but now all I can play is Playstation."


A reporter pumping iron or taking a morning swim is also a rare sight and gyms in the media villages, packed with brand new expensive equipment, stand virtually empty.


Fitness gurus have long been warning that the world's greatest sports spectacles such as Olympics or soccer's World Cup are health hazards.


But easy-going Greek fans may avoid the Games fluctuating weight effect.


While a typical couch potato spends days pinned to the sofa in front of TV on a diet of pizza, chips and beer, Greeks prefer to watch the Games with friends in street cafes, sipping frozen coffee or freshly-squeezed orange juice.