Late to the game as usual, I have been reading My Greek Drama, the memoir by Gianna Angelopoulos-Daskalaki, President of the 2004 Athens Olympic Organising Committee (ATHOC).

It does not mince words, as anyone who knows her would expect, but my attention has been concentrated principally on one precisely-delineated passage of Angelopoulos-Daskalaki's life: the four years and three months during which she battled to make sure that Athens would be ready on time.

This struggle has been made all too topical by the problems currently overshadowing Rio de Janeiro's preparations for the 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

Indeed, the comparison was last month made explicit by International Olympic Committee (IOC) vice-president John Coates, when he observed that not only were Rio's preparations "the worst I have experienced", but they were "worse than Athens".

Having absorbed what Angelopoulos-Daskalaki has to say, I am left with a sense of trepidation for what those no doubt highly-motivated souls in the Rio Organising Committee may be called on to go through in the next two years before enjoying what we all hope will be their moment of triumphant vindication.

One statistic in particular in Angelopoulos-Daskalaki's book leapt out at me: "The divorce rate among the Olympic committee staff was some 55 percent."

The ATHOC President also admits that, "with the Games less than a year away, I dared to suggest to women employees that it was an unsuitable time for them to get pregnant".

Rather shockingly, she reveals too that "Lena, my right hand who on top of all her administrative duties did her best to take care of me, suffered a stroke just two months before the Games."

What is more: "Against doctor's orders she returned to work after only 15 days of recuperation."

Athens 2004 President Gianna Angelopoulos-Daskalaki has detailed the problems the Greek capital faced in preparing for the Olympics in her book, My Greek Drama ©My Greek Drama

Angelopoulos-Daskalaki herself was at one point warned by a psychologist that she was "in real danger of having your marriage fall apart".

She ended up having to spend the first six weeks of 2005 in hospital.

"Her blood is like water," a doctor confided to her husband.

I know nothing about the Rio 2016 Organising committee's detailed working arrangements.

Perhaps structures are in place to prevent intolerable stress being heaped on employees, no matter how fast the city is having to move in order to be ready to host the world's greatest sports extravaganza.

But I observed in the build-up to London 2012 just how hard staff members of even a universally-praised and all but crisis-free Organising Committee sometimes pushed themselves.

Part of the problem, I think, is that once Governments have signed up to their Olympic mega-project, with its substantial demands on public resources, pressure almost inevitably builds to rein in costs in the areas where this is possible.

Angelopoulos-Daskalaki explains that she felt it was imperative for ATHOC not to overspend.

"One message, one inviolable rule, had primacy," she writes, "Stay on budget!...One euro over and they will hang all of us."

This, of course, would have been an extra source of pressure on people who, first and foremost, were engaged on an unrelenting four-year race against the clock.

"During the final year," the ATHOC President acknowledges, "we delayed hiring some employees for months to save on salaries.

"The rest of us were working 24/7 to compensate."

Gianna Angelopoulos-Daskalaki with with then IOC President Jacques Rogge at the Closing Ceremony of Athens 2004 ©Getty Images

We know that changes to Olympic Games bidding procedures are under consideration as part of IOC President Thomas Bach's Olympic Agenda 2020 initiative.

The experience of Rio, and Athens before it, suggest that procedures over the critical seven years between a bid being declared victorious and the lights going down on the Opening Ceremony need to be scrutinised as well, with the IOC taking a more continuously hands-on role than the Coordination Commission system currently permits.

It is a delicate balance to strike: host-countries need to think of the Games they are staging as very much "their" Olympics/Paralympics and, on a practical level, host-country officials will know more than the IOC about how most effectively to get what they need from government ministers and other local leaders.

But it is in the interests of no-one, except perhaps the companies which may be able to charge higher prices for completing Olympic commissions in double-quick time, for the IOC to be obliged to appoint IOC Executive Director Gilbert Felli to monitor preparations after they have fallen far behind schedule.

The big thing that experienced IOC insiders can bring to the Olympic preparation process is, of course, an ability to set a host-city's rate of progress in the context of its predecessors.

This would be an immensely valuable contribution even to the best-run organising committees.

So large and complex have the Summer Games now become - and I see little sign that Agenda 2020 will change this - that I think the time has come for the IOC to establish a permanent secretariat, as a matter of course, within each Organising Committee.

When the local organisation is efficient, this can be tiny, perhaps even a single representative.

But when problems that the IOC's know-how could help with arise, the secretariat could be beefed up quickly and appropriately with relatively little fuss.

Gianna Angelopoulos-Daskalaki claims she was the "Olympic bitch" during the build-up to Athens 2004 ©Getty Images

Angelopoulos-Daskalaki and her colleagues dug Greece out of a hole - just as Rio will probably clamber out of the hole it appears to have dug for itself.

But her book highlights the potential cost of this style of crisis management.

"I was the Olympic bitch," she states, referring to the way she was habitually characterised, adding:

"If I was a 'bitch' at times - and I was - it was because I had no choice. I had to get things done with a dispatch that was not customary in our country."

It is hard to imagine the mild-mannered Felli in the guise of Rio 2016's "Olympic bitch" - but someone is probably going to have to crack the whip over the next 800 days.

A permanent IOC presence in future organising committees would aim to smooth out wrinkles long before they reached the Athens, or the Rio, stage.

In doing so, the IOC may spare itself a deal of stress and help some of the talented and dedicated people who staff these key bodies to retain a half-reasonable work-life balance.

* To order a copy of My Greek Drama click here.

David Owen worked for 20 years for the Financial Times in the United States, Canada, France and the UK. He ended his FT career as sports editor after the 2006 World Cup and is now freelancing, including covering the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the 2010 World Cup and London 2012. Owen's Twitter feed can be accessed here.