The economy has shrunk by around a quarter since late-2008; youth unemployment is reckoned to have soared to something like 50 per cent; disposable household income is said to have fallen last year to below 2003 levels.

And there is as yet no end in sight.

What can be happening to Greek sport under such circumstances?

I did think the abject form of the Greek football team, European champions in 2004, the country’s sporting annus mirabilis, was providing a pretty graphic pointer to the answer to this question.

They lost to the Faroe Islands last month in a Euro 2016 qualifying match; indeed, the Faroes have now beaten Greece home and away in the space of seven months.

When I telephoned Dionyssis Gangas, director of the International Olympic Academy (IOA) and former secretary general of the Hellenic Olympic Committee (HOC) to seek his views however, he told me that he thought that was one thing that should not be laid at the door of the country’s deep-seated economic problems.

“It is not a reflection of the crisis,” he argued.

“It is a reflection that this team has to change completely.

“They are not a team like they were in the past.”

In the Olympic world, the HOC, Gangas said, was getting “very little money from the Government”.

These payments, he said, were only sufficient to pay a part of the salaries of the employees.

When it came to Greek athletes participating in international tournaments though, he gave me to understand that private sponsors were still showing willingness to provide funding to make sure that this continued to happen.

As for the body he is most closely associated with, the IOA, located adjacent to ancient Olympia on the Peloponnese peninsula in south-west Greece, times, clearly, have not been easy.

“Gradually”, he told me, “the support of the State [which once provided 50 per cent of the IOA’s operating budget] disappeared”.

This year, out of the IOA’s €1.4 million (£972million/$1.5 million) budget, €120,000 (£83,000/$130,000) in state funding was, he said, promised - in other words, less than 10 per cent of the total.

In current circumstances, he is plainly not taking for granted that even this amount will materialise.

“With this problem we have, we believe it won’t even be given to us at the end of the year,” he said.

“If the International Olympic Committee (IOC) were not there - and Azerbaijan - the Academy would be dead.”

The reference to the IOC – which, Gangas said, is “doing their best”, contributing a little over €700,000 (£486,000/$760,000) at present levels - is perhaps to be expected; that to Azerbaijan, less so.

But Gangas made clear that the country by the Caspian Sea has made a substantial, and much appreciated, contribution over the past two years, during the build-up to the inaugural European Games, hosted last month by Baku.

The IOA’s director now seems unsure whether the successful staging of those Games will signal the end of the country’s financial backing for his institution.

“Maybe they will come back this year,” he told me.

“But we cannot pressure them.

“We fully understand.

“I believe they will come back - this is my hope.”

In the meantime, the resourceful Gangas is floating another idea for helping the Academy – which makes concrete modern Olympic founder Pierre de Coubertin’s vision for an academic centre for the study of the Movement – to weather the economic storm battering the country where it happens to be located.

“The International Sports Federations (IFs) could do something for the Academy,” he suggests.

“If each Olympic IF gave annually to the Academy [an amount equivalent to] the monthly salary of its secretary general or chief executive,” he says, “that would be the salvation of the Academy.

“We don’t need millions,” he continues.

“That would be quite enough to live.”

Given the immense value of the institution, set among idyllic grounds near the ancient stadium where the Olympics began in 776BC, this seems to me a small price to pay.

When I suggest that SportAccord Convention, now hunting for a 2016 host-city, could do its bit for the country that cultivated Olympism, by opting to go to Athens, Gangas appears to indicate that the event might even be within the capabilities of Olympia, with its extensive tourist infrastructure, to stage.

Having experienced the beautiful but somewhat tortuous road journey from Athens, I wonder if that is truly feasible.

Then again, if it were possible, it would send a strong signal that the sports movement values its roots.