By PAULA PARRISH

Attention, all you Tony Soprano types with a passion for Olympic sports:

It's time to mark your calendars. You have only two years left to fix your favorite events at the next Olympics, the 2004 Summer Games in Athens, Greece.

Ha, ha. (Cough.)

"Godfather" jokes abound over the latest, and strangest, Olympic scandal - a Russian mobster accused of fixing the pairs and ice dancing medals at the Salt Lake Games last February.

Meanwhile, organizers for the Athens Olympics privately must be breathing a sigh of relief, grateful for a distraction to take the focus away from their procrastination.

Greece, a land of overwhelming hospitality and ancient magnificence - but meandering efficiency - is hurrying its preparations for the 2004 Summer Games, which begin in two years (Aug. 13-29, 2002), followed immediately by the Paralympics.

The $6 billion questions: Will Athens be ready? And will it be safe?

Though every Olympics has had preparation problems, the Athens Games has had more than its fair share, starting a year ago with repeated warnings from the International Olympic Committee that the country had better get its rear in gear - warnings that included a threat to move the Games.

The first Games were held in Greece thousands of years ago. The modern Olympics were revived there in 1896. Now Athens, an ancient city grasping tenuously, slowly, at the 21st century, is working to show the world a modern face.

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Sydney had its gorgeous harbor bridge and opera house. Salt Lake City had the Mormon Temple. But Greece, with the Parthenon and other Olympic touchstones, won't be outclassed as a television backdrop. Aristotle was walking the avenues of Athens and pondering man's ability to reason when Sydney was still a swamp avoided by the aborigines and Salt Lake City was just a desert.

At the 2004 Athens Olympics, cyclists will circle the 2,500-year-old Parthenon atop the Acropolis. Marathoners will retrace the steps of Phidippides, a Greek soldier who ran 26 miles from Marathon to Athens to announce the Greek victory against the Persians at the battle of Marathon.

The birthplace of democracy, drama and other tenets of Western civilization, Athens is rich in antiquity. But can Greece play host to a successful 21st century Olympics, given the celebrated successes of the 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake City and the 2000 Summer Games in Sydney?

If nothing else, organizers figure they can do a better job than Atlanta did in 1996.

"Yes, there was some disappointment over (losing) the centennial Games," said George Savvaides, 57, the new Greek ambassador to the United States. "For us, the Games are a matter of national pride, and also national effort, which is absolutely necessary to holding the Olympic Games in Athens."

That national effort was sorely lacking through last year. Olympic preparations were lagging because of a combination of procrastination, union troubles, political infighting, environmental lawsuits and archeological finds.

"It's been overwhelming for them on every front, never mind that every time you go to build something in their country you come across a piece of some 3,000-year-old ruin and have to stop," said Cindy Bristow, the director of development for the International Softball Federation, which is helping recruit an Olympic team of Greek-American softball players for Greece.

"The Greeks are so wonderful, and that's the thing - I've learned from them, from being over there, not to view (problems) from my American point of view," she said. "This is a Greek problem, and there will be a Greek solution. It will get done - maybe not until the last day, but it will get done."

IOC oversight watchdog Denis Oswald has praised Athens' recent progress, while at the same time keeping the pressure on organizers to hurry, hurry, hurry. He and other IOC officials have warned that any more delays - earthquakes, labor strikes, construction foul-ups, whatever - will put the Games in jeopardy.

Some signs are positive that Athens finally is on the right track. Gianna Angelopoulos-Daskalaki, the head of Athens' successful bid committee, was brought back to lead the organizing committee, called Athens 2004.

"When she says she wants bulldozers here now, she gets them," one official with Athens 2004 said. "She doesn't take `no' for an answer."

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The financial and logistical burden on Greece, the smallest country (with 11 million residents) to play host to the Summer Games since Finland in 1952, is enormous. But the lasting benefit will be billions of dollars and thousands of jobs.

Athens, a city of 5 million, is using the Games as the impetus for improving its transportation and communication systems. More than 190 kilometers of new and upgraded roads are in various stages of construction. A spur road extending from the new airport to Athens is partially completed and a half-ring road, similar to E-470 around the east side of Denver, is under construction.

Even so, driving in Athens is considered impossible; a travel guide recommends parking at the airport and taking taxis everywhere. So Olympic visitors are supposed to be transported by subway, light rail and suburban trains. Athens' 130-year-old subway system was upgraded in 1998, but construction has begun only recently on 32 kilometers of new suburban rail and 23.6 kilometers of light rail.

Meanwhile, work continues on the arenas and stadiums that will host the 28 Olympic summer sports. Athens 2004 organizers say many of those projects are ahead of schedule, including the Olympic Village, which will house more than 17,000 athletes, coaches and officials.

More than 70 percent of the venues already were built when Athens was selected as the host city in 1997, but many were slated for renovation and expansion.

Greek culture minister Evangelos Venizelos created a stir last month by announcing the government had decided to reduce the scale of some venues because some international Olympic sports federations were demanding overly extravagant facilities. That caught the IOC by surprise. Oswald has asked the Greek government to have all proposed cuts approved by the IOC.

Athens 2004 has received more than 30,000 applications from Greeks who want to be volunteers - but they need more than 60,000. A shortage of hotel rooms also remains a concern.

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Of all the problems faced by Athens 2004 organizers, security gets top billing - and a record $600 million will be spent. Salt Lake City spent $310 million on the 2002 Winter Games in a post-Sept. 11 world.

Security has been the top priority at the Olympics since 11 Israeli athletes were massacred at the 1972 Munich Olympics. At the 1996 Atlanta Games, a bombing in Centennial Olympic Park killed one woman and a cameraman suffered a fatal heart attack as he ran to the scene.

Athens 2004 has hired Sydney's security chief, Peter Ryan, a former British police officer once charged with coordinating protection for Britain's royal family. Sydney security officials believe they thwarted an attack on a nuclear power plant during the Sydney Games.

"We are constantly working to keep the country alert to matters of security," Angelopoulos-Daskalaki said last week. "Nevertheless, I must repeat that we are continuously on our guard. Our efforts cannot, of course, cease at present. This must continue to be the case, so that by the end of the Olympic and Paralympic Games the atmosphere will be one of joy and celebration."