Lovena Tuley has collected Olympic memorabilia for years.
Candy wrappers, mascot pins, a commemorative bicycle — anything with the Olympic emblem on it has been fair game for her collection.
She has a rare “Athens Olympics 1992” T-shirt commemorating the Greek city’s unsuccessful bid to be host of the Olympics that year. She even has a replica of a bronze medal that she says her great-grandfather won at the 1896 games.
Twelve years ago Tuley decided to get a permanent souvenir: a tattoo of the Olympic symbol on her lower abdomen.
“You lose the wrappers and the cameras and the bikes,” she said. “But I’ll always have the tattoo.”
Tuley has been to the Olympics twice as a dancer participating in the games’ ceremonies. She now hopes to participate in this summer’s Athens games as a volunteer physical therapist. She is in the second stage of the application pro-cess.
According to the International Olympic Committee Web site, more than 150,000 people worldwide had applied by the end of February for the roughly 60,000 available volunteer positions.
Tuley said if her application was accepted she would be assigned to a particular venue — she hopes it will be the gymnastics arena — along with a team of doctors, nurses and other medical personnel.
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Though she is interested in the events, Tuley said she would prefer to stay on duty while in Athens rather than take time off to be a spectator.
Lawrence resident Lovena Tuley displays a replica of a bronze medal that she says her great-grandfather won in the 1896 Olympics. Tuley’s interest in the athletic games is more than a matter of family pride, as her collections, travels, passions — and even a tattoo — suggest.
“I’d rather be in the middle of the action than sitting in a chair,” she said. “I’m not a good sitter.”
Language no barrier
Aside from her medical training and Olympic experience, Tuley has another qualification for the job: She speaks fluent Greek. Her father is a Greek immigrant who owned the Greek Islands restaurant in Kansas City’s Westport neighborhood for many years. He now lives in Athens. Tuley has visited Greece many times.
With these credentials, she said she was uniquely qualified for the job.
“I can’t imagine they get a ton of Greek-American physical therapists,” she said.
Tuley, who has lived in Lawrence for 15 years, works at Lawrence Memorial Hospital and co-manages XFactor, a personal training studio at 26th and Iowa streets, with her husband, Marty. She has also competed internationally as a professional bodybuilder since 1994.
Tuley said she had been a fan of the Olympics almost since birth.
“I wasn’t really raised on traditional sports,” she said. “But we always sat down and watched the Olympics.”
Tuley said her great-grandfather, Aristides Stefanou, won a bronze medal in track and field at the 1896 Athens games, the first of the modern Olympic era. Since then, she said, her family has always followed the games enthusiastically.
When she was 16, she performed with her dance team in the opening ceremonies of the 1984 games in Los Angeles. Later, after graduating from Kansas University, she performed an acrobatics and dance routine at the 1992 games in Barcelona on behalf of the Atlanta delegation in its successful bid for the 1996 games.
Tuley said she had performed before large crowds as a cheerleader for KU and the Kansas City Chiefs, but she said the Barcelona experience was unique.
“It made the Chiefs games seem like nothing,” she said.
Now Tuley awaits the next stage of the application process: a telephone interview.
Her enthusiasm is tempered somewhat by security concerns. She might not attend the games even if she is accepted, she said, if she doesn’t feel confident about security.
Fears of a terrorist attack in Athens are widespread and, some say, well-founded.
“Greek security has never been terribly tight,” said John Younger, professor of classics at KU, who travels to Greece annually.
Younger said he thought security would be “beefed up” as much as possible for the games but that the risk of terrorism would be just as great in almost any city.”I hate to say this, but it wouldn’t surprise me at all if there was a terrorist attack at the Olympics, no matter where it was,” Younger said.
Greek officials have asked NATO to assist in security preparations for the games in the wake of last week’s train bombings in Madrid.
Tuley said she felt torn between safety concerns and her own adventurous instincts.
“I consider myself a fairly fearless individual,” she said. “I don’t want to make decisions based on fear, even if it’s a warranted fear.”
Despite her reservations, Tuley said she would feel jilted if the Olympic committee denied her application.
“It’s like a boyfriend,” she said. “Even if you want to break up with him, he’s not allowed to break up with you. I don’t like rejection.”
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