Aussie Games bought time for Olympics

EVERYBODY has a favourite last memory of the Sydney Summer Games, now over. Mine will forever be the sight (and sound) of a Swiss lawyer named Francois Carrard breaking into song.

Carrard is the general director of the International Olympic Committee, who has spent much of the last few years explaining that chicanery by Olympic officials really did not signal the end of the world, or the Olympic movement.

In the closing hours of these quite excellent Aussie Good-Humour Games, Carrard was asked to comment on the boorish behaviour of a few U.S. relay runners on that night.

Giddy with a gold medal, one Yank had draped the American flag around him like a turban while another had mugged for the cameras like a character from World Wrestling Federation.

Asked if the IOC had any response to these callow actions, Carrard performed a sideways 1 1/2 conversational flip worthy of a gymnastics gold medal.

He said he had spent part of that evening down at Central Station, watching the volunteers direct passengers with a little ditty of their own. And then, with a slight Gallic accent, he imitated the volunteers: ``If you want to change at Central....''

Carrard was obfuscating, to be sure, as one would expect a lawyer to obfuscate. But in his own artful way, he was drawing attention to the essence of the past three weeks. They have been having a wonderful time.

Juan Antonio Samaranch was absolutely right to return to the grand Olympic custom of calling these ``the best Olympic Games ever,'' a tradition he suspended - to the eternal sadness of the Atlanta organisers - after the 1996 T-Shirt Shack Games. Order has been restored, but not particularly by the Swiss gang, nor even by the able Australian organisers, but by the Australian people themselves.

The headline in the paper said: ``47,000 Heroes'' - meaning the volunteers - and they had it right. The Games were great, but the Australians were even greater, and they bought a whole lot of time for the survival of the Olympic Games - at least until Salt Lake City and Athens has its precarious moments in the spotlight.

The Games are about the athletes. These will always be the Games of Cathy Freeman turning water into fire in the opening ceremony and later winning her gold medal in the 400, and they will always be the Games of the Thorpedo and the Swimming Dutchman and Dutchwoman, and the Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Rulon Gardner of Greco-Roman wrestling instant fame.

They were not the Games of C.J. Hunter, who tried to explain, right in the middle of his wife's quest for five golds, why he had flunked four - count 'em, four - drug tests. Performance- enhancing drugs cast their ugly spell over the Games, but cynicism and anger and vigilance are shrieking for a tighter control of the wonderful world of Olympic chemistry, so maybe now we may begin monitoring the cheats.

The few positive tests could not blur the good feelings at these Games, which probably had more to do with the zestful approach of the Australian people. The language sounded vaguely like English, but the people responded more openly than Americans are conditioned to expect.

``I asked directions down at Darling Harbour the other day,'' afriend told me. ``A lady closed down her shop and walked me around the corner because she was afraid I'd miss the street.''

We all sensed that good humour was in the air, a throwback toanother time in America. I'm old enough to remember the States after World War II - generous, optimistic, friendly. I don't believe that it was just because the Olympic cauldron was lit, either.

I liked watching the massive Australian crowds, the families spending hundreds of dollars on tickets and hotels, taking the train out to Olympic Park. (Reporter grumps like me were the only ones grousing about the lines and the security.) There was a sense of holiday. Over 400,000 people squeezed into Olympic Park on the biggest day. I hope the Athenians know what they're doing.

If you ask me, the Games are too big. Too many events, too many arenas, too many barricades and wire fences, too many journalists, for that matter.

``It's clearly a stretch,'' said Michael Knight, the head of the Australian organisers. ``I don't think it's too big, but I wouldn't want to see them get any bigger.''

The Australians were able to carve out all these stadiums and arenas because of the open space in this land and the generally good economy, despite the recent slump of the Australian dollar. Michael Knight, the head of the Australian Olympic Committee, danced around the question of whether Olympic Park will become the home of the white elephants. Sydney doesn't want to be the next Montreal, paying off Olympic debts a quarter of a century later.

Right now, Sydney may have a hangover, but the people earned it. They accepted thousands of us, jet-lagged and crazed and demanding, and they calmed us down and fed us and drove us around. I suspect Sydney (and Melbourne, and Canberra, where I watched soccer and ate well) are excellent cities without the Games. The cities didn't let the crush of the Games drag them down.

If the Aussies did not totally rescue the Olympic movement from the bribers and the bribees, from the drug cheats and the handful of louts in running shoes, they surely put on a nice party. As they say aroundhere, ``Good on you, mate.''

- New York Times News Service

GEORGE VECSEY

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