Greece remains staunchly proud of its first ever Olympic athletics champion, 1896 marathon winner Spiridon Louis, so the suggestion that he may have cheated his way to the gold medal still causes outrage here.
Nevertheless, it has long been suggested that the water carrier from Maroussi was a far from worthy winner when the Games were first held in Athens.
The Greek poet George Katsimbalis lived in the same village as Louis and claimed that the runner had told him that he and a group of fellow Greeks runners had taken a short cut through a forest that ran alongside part of the route.
Details of the race itself are sketchy and it was to be another 40 years before an Olympics was televised so it is impossible now to verify the accusation.
All witness to the race are also now long dead but accounts suggest that at the halfway point in the 40km race, Louis was six minutes behind the leader France's Albin Lermusiaux.
Australia's Edwin Flack, the winner of the 800m and 1,500m which were then the longest track events on the programme, was shortly to take over the lead and apparently Louis was losing even more ground.
{{/usCountry}}Australia's Edwin Flack, the winner of the 800m and 1,500m which were then the longest track events on the programme, was shortly to take over the lead and apparently Louis was losing even more ground.
{{/usCountry}}Flack was accompanied throughout the race by the butler of the British Ambassador to Greece on a bike who, with 5km to go, rode backwards to see where the rest of the field where and found no one within a kilometre of the leader.
However, a little further down the road, Flack suddenly found Louis in front of him and the 24 year-old Greek went on to win the race by more than seven minutes while a deflated and near-delirious Flack was to retire from the race.
Flack intimated that Louis might have cheated in a letter home to his father.
Another convinced that Louis had cheated was the British discus thrower George Robertson, who shared a flat with Flack and was watching the race.
"He (Louis) can't have been in front of Flack. There was not a soul to be seen on the road," claimed Robertson in an interview with the BBC in 1964.
Rumours of the cheating was also widespread after the race and reported elsewhere in European newspapers at the time.
Curiously, despite being feted by the nation, Louis never cashed in on his popularity and ran another race.
Nor did he speak of the matter when, after 40 years living in obscurity, he was brought to the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin as one of Hitler's guests of honour.
If Louis did cheat, he wasn't the only one in the race.
Another Greek, Spiridon Belokas, was originally given third place but was later stripped of his medal when it emerged he had been helped to the finish by taking a ride in a passing carriage, overtaking Hungary's Gyula Kellner who was eventually given the bronze medal.
Whatever the true facts, Louis still remains an icon to the hosts of the 2004 Olympics.
"Even if Louis did cheat, I would want to see him acquitted," wrote the Swiss athletics author and journalist Noel Tamini in 1997.
"For his victory gave his people something that no other Olympic winner will ever give again," added Tamini, a view most Greeks would also endorse.