ATHENS -- With his big, thick right hand, Pete Clentzos slaps his belly. The hand bounces off.
"The belly's solid," he says.
He's right. At 95, Clentzos still has an athlete's body. He's sitting on the roof of the Plaka Hotel with a red baseball cap perched atop his weather-beaten face, an honored guest of the Greek government. Clentzos -- an American who competed for Greece as a pole vaulter in the 1932 Olympics in Los Angeles -- is the oldest living former Greek Olympian. That's impressive enough. But his most important accomplishment was not athletic. It was linguistic.
Pete Clentzos is the man who gave the world the phrase "hubba-hubba."
Imagine that! For decades, countless men have watched countless beautiful women walk down countless streets and expressed their admiration by muttering "hubba-hubba." Yet few had any idea who coined the famous phrase.
"I'm the guy who invented 'hubba-hubba,' " he says.
He says it coolly, matter-of-factly, with no trace of braggadocio in his gravelly voice. The truly great are always humble.
It's not that he isn't proud of "hubba-hubba." He is proud. For two weeks he has been feted in Athens for his Olympic accomplishments -- the mayor presented him with the prestigious Medal of the City of Athens. But does his official curriculum vitae identify him as Mr. Olympics? No, it does not. It identifies him as "Mr. Hubba-Hubba."
There are many former Olympians, but there's only one inventor of "hubba-hubba."
The great pole vaulter/phrasemaker was born in Oakland, Calif., in 1909, son of a humble carpenter who had immigrated to America from the Greek island of Kythera. Clentzos took up pole vaulting in high school in the 1920s, then perfected his art as a member of the University of Southern California track team in the early '30s.
In 1932 Clentzos tried out for the U.S. Olympic team, hoping to play for his native land at the Los Angeles Games.
"I didn't make the team," he says. "I fell short."
He did well enough, however, to attract the attention of the Greek attache, who recruited Clentzos and awarded him dual citizenship on the basis of his Greek heritage. He lived with the Greeks at L.A.'s Olympic Village and competed in a Greek uniform.
"I was very proud to play for Greece," he says. "Greece was my heritage."
