Athens won the bid to organize the 2011 Special Olympics World Summer Games after a long assessment process among three other outstanding cities in the world. Athens is a city with an ancient tradition of sports excellence, providing an outstanding global platform to showcase the courage, dedication and talents of the athletes of the Special Olympics.

Greece is a country with a unique historical past. Although statistically small, with its 11 million of population, Greece is huge in its diversity. It offers a landscape that has given to the world thousands of images which remains challenging, vibrant and impossible to capture. Greece is a country of beautiful contradictions, a constant journey in time, from the present to the past and back again. Walking through olive groves, one can walk through ancient sites, or moving along the seashore one can experience clusters of beautiful islands, roaming from beaches to rocky mountains, exploring breathtaking sceneries.

The modern city of Athens, with a population of 4 million people, is at the crossroads of cultures, colors and civilizations, where one feels the combination of history with the warmth of the southernmost part of Europe, the Mediterranean.

Having hosted most successfully the Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2004, Athens will now be the host of 2011 Special Olympics World Summer Games becoming one of the four cities and countries in the world to have hosted the whole range of great Athletic Multi-sport Events.

The Special Olympics World Summer Games – ATHENS 2011 are coming to the country of Olympism, a country-leader in the area of sport. Through The Special Olympics World Summer Games – ATHENS 2011 Greece will demonstrate how sport leads to justice, how sport creates acceptance, how sport adopts unity, and, finally, how the Special Olympics can change attitudes and the world.