"Greeks do not fight like heroes, heroes fight like Greeks," he said.

In 2004, the Games returned to Greece, the home of legends and also the home of both the ancient, and the birthplace of the first modern Olympics.

At the 2004 closing ceremony, China watched with great anticipation as the torch was handed to the Middle Kingdom.

This year, the Greek Olympians are preparing to follow the flame from Athens to Beijing and the top-flight Greek basketball team will be leading their nation's medal charge after winning silver in the World Basketball Championship last year.

Their outstanding performance helped them earn the best Greek team award in 2006.

The Panhellenic Association of Sports Editors (PASE) gave the world silver medalists a run-away 2,248 points, followed by the Men's Volleyball Team (503), the Women's National Beach Volleyball Team (486) and the football team to Euro 2006 (370).

These Greek teams will figure in the 2008 medal hunt.

In the same way China worships 110m hurdles champion Liu Xiang, Greece bows to its own hurdling star, European 400-meter hurdles champion Pericles Iakovakis. At the IAAF finals late last year, Iakovakis clocked his third sub-48 seconds of 2006 (47.92).

In the field events, Chrysopigi Devetzi will be one to watch in 2008 after she was proclaimed Grecce's best woman athlete by the PASE. Her second position in the triple jump in the European Championship in Goteborg puts her as major gold medal contender.

Greece has a proud Olympic history and at the 1896 Athens Olympics, fielded 230 of the 311 athletes.

Greece's first modern Olympic hero was Spyridon Louis, the first and symbolic marathon champion of the modern Olympic era. The modest shepherd was revered in Greece, and went on to feature as flag-bearer to the Greek delegation in the 1936 Berlin Games.

There was no event that the Greek hosts wanted more to win than the 40,000m marathon race, which was created to honor the legend of Pheidippides, who reportedly carried the news of the Greek victory at the Battle of Marathon in 490 BC by running from Marathon to Athens.

Louis, wearing shoes that had been donated by his fellow villagers, pushed past the 16-man field to the great joy of the 100,000 spectators in and around the stadium.

Another crowd favorite was strongman Pyrros Dimas who won gold in the 82.5kg weight class at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. It was the nation's first weightlifting championship since 1904; and he won consecutive gold medals in Atlanta and Sydney. Remarkably, Dimas won bronze in Athens, after which he signaled his retirement by leaving his shoes on the platform. The home crowd went wild.

At the 1992 Olympic Games of Barcelona, Paraskevi (Voula) Patoulidou was the surprise winner of the women's 100m hurdles. That was the first great success of a Greek track and field athlete since 1956, and gave a boost to the sport that resulted to the recent successes of Greek athletes. She was also the first woman from Greece to win an Olympic medal in track and field.

While heavyweights China, USA and Russia have dominated gymnastics in recent times, gymnast Ioannis Melissanidis became a world force in the sport during the 1996 Atlanta Games with his high-flying floor routine earning him a 9.850 and gold. He is the first Greek to win a gymnastics medal since 1896, when the Greeks won six.