What It Was About

By Tom Callahan

The Olympics end: with glory, with anguish and reason for all to be proud

Could the celebration have been richer if the competition had been better? America's Olympics closed with the usual expressions of hope, as the five-ring flag was passed from Los Angeles to another neutral location, Seoul, Korea, where doom is expected again in four years, and the athletes will probably come through once more. The XXIII Olympiad was handsome and bright, not completely smog-free but, as British Runner Steve Cram said, "You should see it where I live," just outside Newcastle. Bringing a world of people to Los Angeles did seem a little like fetching coals to his neighborhood, but the capacities of the freeways were not overloaded. The capacities of the citizens were overlooked.

In off years the reasons for having Olympics tend to fade, but the proof of value is fresh now in the faces of the athletes. Certainly nowhere else in sports, and maybe nowhere else at all, do the emotions show through the contests so clearly or compellingly, to the point of dominating first the action and then the results, finally becoming a theme more powerful than any one anthem or all of them combined. There must be a lot of great Communist Greco-Roman wrestlers around the Soviet Union and East Germany, but no one spoke of hollow victories in boycotted company at the moment of burly Jeff Blatnick's memorable tears. It staggered him and everyone else. And the financial stripe of Mary Decker's shoes stopped being a topic of much interest once they became tangled in the loose limbs of a dramatic child, as Decker fell by the wayside of her lifelong race. Barefoot Zola Budd of South Africa and England padded onward in tears and boos, but her heart appeared to have dropped beside Decker. So that was the outcome of the Games' great confrontation: a double knockout.

How delicate they all really are, and how fragile their dream. For every flying Carl Lewis there is a fallen Mary Decker, and the fullest appreciation of sport requires both. Joan Benoit breezes in gracefully from her marathon, while Gabriela Andersen-Schiess lurches along grotesquely behind, and the picture-memory of the spectators develops into a composite of both images--the terrific and the terrible--much more touching as an entry than either could be individually. The happiest circumstance, of course, is when they take turns. First U.S. Gymnast Mary Lou Retton rejoiced as Rumania's Ecaterina Szabo sighed, then a couple of days later Ecaterina laughed and Mary Lou made a petulant face. The athletic world, like the real world, is seldom so equitable. Fairness is not really the essence of sport.

Partly because of new events inaugurated for women--the cycling road races, the marathon, even synchronized swimming--the Games had a strong feminine strain. They also had an unavoidable American flavor. Two of the world's three best teams were missing, after all. The first American gold-medal volleyball team was thoroughly unbothered by the asterisk. Nationalism was rampant but ugliness restrained. The boxing mobs were as sour as the judging: it is probably too soon to tell Evander Holyfield, a U.S. light heavyweight disqualified for not pulling his punches, that in the end this heartache may end up distinguishing him from the crowd of champions. The ironies of the Games usually outlast the scores: Swimmer Rick Carey is criticized for preferring a world record to a gold medal; Carl Lewis is blamed for the reverse.

The second best long jump in Olympic history, 28 ft. 1/4 in., thrilled Moscow four years ago when East German Lutz Dombrowski accomplished it. By the exact measurement, although a slightly different standard, Los Angeles was a little disappointed with Carl Lewis. He reached that distance on his first jump, fouled on the second and folded the rest. If it was more than a foot less than he could have done, it was almost a foot more than he had to do. Stopping was good track and bad theater: some of the $60 customers, not including Bob Beamon, booed. "My friend lives," murmured Beamon, referring to a 29-ft. 2 1/2-in. companion of his, a record now 16 years old.

Just the workaday production of Lewis is superlative, but in conserving his strength so calculatedly over the four-medal haul, he never completely strained either his own talent or anyone else's imagination. And the effect was not enhanced by his omnipresent moneymen or the press releases and voice tapes he sent to the victory conferences in lieu of himself. In a humorous snag, Lewis charged that he was "misquoted" by newspapers reporting his declaration: "If someone had jumped farther, I would not have come back." It was on his cassette.

First, two Saturdays ago, he won the 100-meter dash. As the aficionados put it, Lewis was fast and Sam Graddy only quick. The time was 9.99, the margin comfortable. Then the long jump, and it could have been mailed in. "My strategy will be the same as always," he announced beforehand, "to pop a very big jump early and make everyone chase after me. If I feel 'on' after my first jump, I might take a second." For a personal Olympic motto he chose: "A gold medal is first. The world record is last." If his priorities did not earn admiration, there was at least irony in the boos. Criticized by some for grandstanding too smoothly in order to build his public image, he was being ragged now for his insufficient pursuit of glory. "I understand why he didn't jump," said Rival Larry Myricks, no friend of Lewis', adding, however, that in the same situation he would have tried. Said Lewis later: "I was booed because they wanted to see more of Carl Lewis. In a way it kind of flattered me."

Before the 200-meter race something special seemed afoot, but Lewis could rouse only victory. One of his legs was complaining quietly and he decided, "I just want to get the race over with." He looked tired to Tom Tellez, his Houston coach. "He wasn't smooth. There's been a lot of pressure on him. Only Jesse Owens would know how Carl Lewis feels after the last few years of expectations." The 19.80 Carl dashed off was no embarrassment though. Only Pietro Mennea of Italy (19.72) and Lewis himself (19.75) have run the 200 in a faster time. Mennea was in the race, incidentally, as he has been in four straight Olympic 200 finals since 1972. Imagine, a sprinter achieving such a thing, age 32. "Carl Lewis will never do it," the Italian said after finishing seventh, not meaning any unkindness. "He will run the fastest 200 some day, but he will never be back for four Olympics."

Three Americans swept the 200; up the track they stopped and lighted on one knee with Lewis in the middle banding Kirk Baptiste and Thomas Jefferson in his long arms. Afterward again the prepared statement: "It was great to jog around holding the flag with two other guys and not just by myself." Now only the relay separated him from Owens, and Lewis appeared ready to go all out. "I have three guys that are unparalleled in front of me." Though early-round understudies are permissible in the relay, he staffed every round. "If anyone drops the baton," Tellez said, "he wants to be the one."

The baton passed smartly from Sam Graddy to Ron Brown to Calvin Smith, whose only role in the Olympics was this 100-meter leg. Smith's famous early burst won the lead, and Lewis' 8.94 split topped off the first world record of the Olympic track meet: 37.83. Lewis' sister Carol, who had failed to make the finals in the women's long jump, greeted him with a bouquet and a heart-shaped balloon--hearts and flowers. "This has been the time of my life," he said. "I'm tired emotionally and physically. The world record lifts me up." He planned to celebrate by jumping fully clothed into a swimming pool.

Decker's Olympic epitaph is the saddest one, that she never had the chance to succeed or fail. Without challenge, almost invisibly, formidable Rumanian Maricica Puica finished the ill-starred race with her yellow hair flying. It was the Games' inaugural 3,000-meter run for women, another piece to the creeping acknowledgment of their athletic competence. Puica looked eminently competent, and not being able to see her hooked up with Decker in the stretch was a sore loss. In 1972 Decker was just starting out as little Mary, 14, not yet contrary, who ran so extremely hard, her bones occasionally came out of their sockets. A major reconstruction job on her shins kept her from Montreal in 1976. A war in Afghanistan stopped her in 1980. "Obviously, myself and the Olympics don't have a very good relationship," she said after the crash last Friday night.

Stirred by Benita Fitzgerald-Brown's victory in the women's 100-meter hurdles, the audience was ready for a main event, but unprepared for a drama deeper than a race. The pack holds no attraction for either Decker, 26, or Budd, 18, front runners in every sense. They would naturally fight for the lead, where they could ignore the jostling and bumping behind them. A half-stride ahead on the outside at the 1600-meter mark and in tight quarters with Decker, Zola was knocked first abobble and then akimbo (see box). Decker, meanwhile, could not have been flipped so unexpectedly if someone in the infield had stuck out a cane. Budd's left leg had angled out so oddly that she could not have done it voluntarily, much less intentionally. Bleeding from a spike hole in her left ankle, where Decker's foot had hit her, cowering from the booing, Budd dropped back to seventh.

Immediately, Referee Andy Bakjian, an American, ruled that she was disqualified, but the British appealed to an eight-member board, which swiftly reinstated her. After studying numerous television replays and discussing every known rule of track etiquette, nobody except Decker seemed absolutely sure there was a foul, let alone who committed it. Cornelia Buerki of Switzerland, also South African-born, had a respectable view from the back of the pack. "I would say it was Mary's fault," she said. "She was trying to pass Budd on the inside and spiked Zola's Achilles. Zola couldn't help anything because she couldn't see in the back of her head." Instantly, ABC Commentator Marty Liquori thought Budd's inexperience was the culprit, but he changed his mind the next day: "Both runners could have done something to avoid it. Both aren't blameless. Neither is guilty."

Not that it can be any consolation to her, but Decker never looked so attractively human. Her running expression is either vinegary or no expression at all, and there has always been an edge to her that seemed chilling. Trying to leave the field under her own power, crying as hard as she ever ran, Decker faltered before reaching the tunnel and was lifted up into Fiance Richard Slaney's arms. He is a discus thrower on the British team, and they are massive arms. Set down on a small flight of steps in the tunnel, she accepted condolences from all the other runners but one. "Don't bother," she told Budd, who once kept a photograph of Decker tacked on her bedroom wall, the one in South Africa. "Zola Budd tried to cut in basically without being ahead," said Decker, who added she would have pushed Budd but feared newspaper headlines and disqualification. "I should have pushed," she said. They will push each other in the future.

In the Olympics, where femininity is literally put to the test, the right to trudge 26-plus miles had been withheld from women until this year, when unsinkable Benoit, 27, of Maine and Andersen-Schiess, 39, of Switzerland came to opposite conclusions in the marathon. "I was extremely comfortable the entire way. It was a very smooth, happy, training-run atmosphere," said Benoit, whose 2-hr. 24-min. 52-sec. frolic was dramatic only in light of the arthroscopic knee surgery she underwent 17 days prior to winning the

U.S. trials in May. For death-defying suspense, the spectacle of Gabriela reeling to a 37th-place finish was the most prolonged horror of the Games. She is a ski instructor in Sun Valley, Idaho, grotesquely adept at staying upright. Nobody in the Coliseum could either help, touch or help being touched by the looniness of the long-distance runner.

For such a momentous event, history's fastest all-woman marathon began in a quaint setting at the compact track of Santa Monica City College, where the mood was suitable for a high school pep rally, and so few tickets were sold at just $4 a head that the gates eventually were thrown open to all. Being a 5-ft. 3-in. feather in the wind, Benoit found that just 50 jostling women caused a terrific congestion. She hurried into the clear under a delightful painter's hat with the bill brushed back. About three miles out, Benoit ran away completely and was astonished when no one kept up. "I didn't complain," she said. "I just sort of followed the yellow brick road."

The other side of vainglory, Benoit is so down-home she picks blueberries and puts them up in preserves. Responding to a question about fame, she referred to her impending marriage: "People have wondered whether I'm going to keep my maiden name. Well, I'm going to drop it as quickly as I can." It even crossed her mind that rushing out so far ahead might be "showboating," but only if she faded along the way. A banner from Bowdoin College (her alma mater) made Benoit grin, and a mural of herself on a building prompted her to look away. "I'm not trying to make any statement," she said. "I run because I love to run."

Norway's gaunt and great Grete Waitz finished second, 1 min. 26 sec. late, without encouraging any discussion of her chronically creaky back. It had been in severe spasm the day before. Benoit was "too strong," said Grete, who had never before lost a marathon that she finished. By the halfway point, according to her old Norwegian saying, "the train had already left." Waitz was one of the few runners who viewed the Swiss straggler with a totally unmixed emotion: "I would have taken her right off the track. I don't like to watch that." Benoit sighed, "She had come so far," but had to agree. "Nothing is more important than life."

Before anyone could read women's frailty into the issue, Benoit added, "Wait until you see some of the men Sunday," when the race would be later in the day, and the cloud cover figured to be less. Aside from Pheidippides, the gasping Greek who established the marathon distance in his farewell appearance as a messenger, the most famous Olympic swooner before Andersen-Schiess was, of course, a man: Dorando ("Wrong Way") Pietri, an Italian who mislaid the finish line in 1908 in London.

When last the Los Angeles Coliseum greeted a winning Olympic marathon champion, he was Juan Carlos Zabala of Argentina, in 1932. Zabala would have finished a poor tenth to Benoit.

Maybe because they had not collected any gold medals since 1968, U.S. women runners celebrated their victories most animatedly, fumbling with flags and even tumbling with coaches. None appeared more joyful than Valerie Brisco-Hooks, 24, now the only 200 and 400 double winner of any sex in all Olympic history, and the first American to win three gold medals in track and field since Wilma Rudolph's unprecedented triple in 1960. Two-and-a-half years ago, Brisco turned away from track to marry former N.F.L. Pass Catcher Alvin Hooks and have a son. Once Alvin Jr. grew old enough to attend workouts and the sport began to call her back, she discovered the amazing power of motherhood. "I know for a fact that it gave me extra strength. It's easier for me to work out well now." She is one of ten children raised in Los Angeles, the only daughter of three to follow her brother Robert to foot racing. He was killed by a stray bullet while running on a high school track in 1974. "I was close to Robert," she said.

Before the 200-meter race, its most remarkable feature was Florence Griffith's Howard Hughes-length fingernails gaily lacquered in red, white and blue.

She had the slicker fingernails, but Brisco-Hooks the happier feet. As she screeched through the curve, her 21.81 time made it two Olympic records for her, and the U.S. won the women's 4-by-400 relay on the last day of competition. Her trademark bulky glasses were discarded for contact lenses; a row of braided bangs fell across her forehead like a beaded door hanging. She ran like a cougar, like Evelyn Ashford.

At last Ashford's position as the world's finest sprinter was confirmed in the 100-meter dash. Since she was twelve, and she is 27 now, none of Ashford's records and all of her dreams have been set at the Olympics. But she has been awakened frequently by nightmares: in 1979 she ran away from the best international 100 and 200 fields, celebrated East Germans Marlies Goehr and Marita Koch included, at the World Cup. But by 1980 her fine, fragile legs were popping strings, and they could not be summoned to try out for a symbolic team. Ashford posted her world record 100 (10.79) in Colorado last summer to chill the East German runners awaiting her in Helsinki. But she arrived there, as usual, grabbing her right hamstring, which she racked in the heats and wrecked in the finals. At the Olympic trials in June, taped as tautly and poignantly as Mickey Mantle, she won the 100 but could not finish the 200. "To be injured at the trials put a fear in my heart," she admitted. How many rehabilitation programs before a person quits? Well, Ashford finally held together for the Olympic 100.

The world's fastest fragile female runner is now also the only sub-11-sec. woman in the history of the Games. "I have the world record, and I'm the Olympic champion," she announced to herself. On the victory stand she held the gold medal out with her thumb to look at it. "I don't know what, but something came over me and I couldn't stop crying." She thought, "My God, it's over. I've done it. I can rest in peace." But no: "I'll continue to compete as long as I have speed." The new gold-medal class had been too long catching up to the last one, Madeline Manning and Wyomia Tyus, to stop running now.

In the melancholy absence of Czechoslovak 400 and 800 World Record Holder Jarmila Kratochvilova, 33, the mortal women of the 800 all brought a reasonable hope to the start. But Eastern Europe turned out to be well represented after all by Rumanian Doina Melinte and an associate-American Kim Gallagher might say, an accomplice-Fita Lovin. At about the 600-meter station, Gallagher heard them conversing ("I thought that was strange"), and her ears burned. Just as Gallagher, 20, was about to unleash a figurative kick, she absorbed a literal one in the heel, broke stride and ended up finishing a slightly indignant second to Melinte, who denied any conspiracy. "I still feel good," Gallagher confessed. "Starting in the Olympics is a thrill, but finishing in them is a relief."

Edwin Moses knows the feeling. For seven years, 105 victories, 90 of them finals, Moses has maintained complete custody of the 400-meter hurdles he gained title to unexpectedly at the Montreal Games. Streaks always include a burden, but by some quality of grace, dignity most likely, Moses has run the course and won the crowd. Carl's entrances into the Coliseum may have been slightly louder, but Edwin's were appreciably wanner. Moses is no less a capitalist, though he hands out surprisingly precise figures ($457,000 earned last year, maybe double that sum now), along with agreeably straight talk. "Amateur athletics is just a play on words. No one can run hurdles as fast as I can. No one can run the 100 as fast as Carl Lewis. We're the professionals in our fields."

He is better at describing pressure than demonstrating it. "I do feel it," he said, "probably more than anyone else. It's like going to your execution 14 times a year." But the reflection is better in Wife Myrella's eyes. She hurdled a few barriers of her own to get to him on the track afterward. "For four years," she said simply, making it sound profound, "all you think of is the Olympics." Together they wept. The last man to defeat Moses, West German Harald Schmid, admitted the night before the race that he aspired only to the silver. Behind American Danny Harris, who accidentally interfered with him, Schmid fell one slot short. "I wasn't sure I could win any medal," the West German shrugged. "I saw the American trials." Despite nine consecutive losses to Moses, he will try again. "The chance is always there. I don't think I'll ever give it up." At the same time, Moses denied that he will quit soon. But he did not say, as he likes to say, "When I beat a guy who is 18,1 feel 18." He felt good and 28.

When the other U.S. hurdler supreme, Intermediate Specialist Renaldo Nehemiah, abdicated for the love of the San Francisco 49ers two years ago, Greg Foster was the party to whom he bequeathed the favored status. A touchy fellow sometimes, Foster was more pleased to have received the gift than to have had to hear about it ever since. The Games were supposed to lead him into the sunlight, but instead they gave him a new football player to shadow. University of Pittsburgh Defensive Back Roger Kingdom caught Foster by a .03 blink, and neither of them even realized it until the replay lit up the Scoreboard first and Kingdom next. In Foster's opinion, "It was a false start and they didn't recall it," but he showed a new side in losing to a man and not a memory. Graciously, he accompanied Kingdom on his victory lap, as Bronze Medalist Arto Bryggare of Finland watched them. "I was looking for a rare race to beat Foster," he said. "Kingdom had it."

If the 800-and 1,500-meter races have not been British realms in the time of Steve Ovett, 28, and Sebastian Coe, 27, they have at least been British subjects. Ovett and Coe split those gold medals in Moscow, but by three and four years, they were the senior members in the final heat of the Los Angeles 800, which introduced a new legend, the Brazilian Juantorena, Joaquim Cruz, 21. "In my country football [soccer] is first, then volleyball," he said. "Track and field is last. I hope this will change something. I hope. I can't tell you my feeling, it is too strong." Cruz's streamlined ease moved Coe, the world record holder (1981) and 800 runner-up, to say poetically, "Clocks have nothing to do with Cruz." Joaquim locked away the race in overdrive. "This man doesn't worry about the speed he's running," said Coe. "The guy was just a little bit stronger, just a little bit fitter and just a little bit faster, just when it really mattered. He is a supreme champion." And it was Cuban Alberto Juantorena's 1:43.50 Olympic record of eight years ago that he broke.

From either end, the 800 was compelling: the straggler was Ovett. Just to make it into the final eight, he had required a desperate dive in the semi. "Steve," said Seb softly, "don't you think we're getting much too old to play around with this kind of fire?" Hyperventilating and hacking a bronchial cough, Ovett finished eighth and doubled over for air. "It was as if someone pulled the plug out of my main system," he said. All along the last lap, he had been thinking, "This is an Olympic final. Don't drop out." And later: "For God's sake, don't faint." Gratefully, Ovett made it from the track to the tunnel, but once there he began to feel clammy and claustrophobic. "That was the last I saw of the world until I woke up in the hospital." He stayed two days. On the third day he returned to the track with a pasty face to win a slow heat in the 1,500. "The last time I stepped on an Olympic track, I was not going to go out on a stretcher. It's a matter of pride."

But then he did go out on a stretcher again in the final, lasting to the bell lap in the thick of the field before casually stepping into the infield and melting. Neither Cruz nor South African Expatriate Sydney Maree made it even to the starting line, the strapping Brazilian having to excuse himself from the semis with flu, and Maree waiting until the last week to give in reluctantly to a slow-healing knee. Black or white, the South Africans who changed countries in search of sport found no glory in Los Angeles. Coe won the milers' race, emitting a defiant and uncharacteristic shout at the finish, presumably toward Fleet Street. The penny press has given Coe a couple of rough years, but he is the first man in Olympic history to repeat in the 1,500. "It took me back to some of my better races," he said.

The men's 400 was advertised not only as a splendid match but as a juicy grudge between Jamaican World Champion Bert Cameron and chatty Antonio McKay of the U.S. "I just set my sights on the guy in front of me and chew him up, blip, blip, blip," boasted McKay. "I'm going to destroy Bert Cameron." Dismissing McKay's threat, Cameron checked the field, including two beautifully named Nigerians, Sunday Uti and Innocent Egbunike, and mused, "Alonzo Babers is so relaxed when he's running. Maybe McKay should be watching him instead of me." So it happened that Cameron was injured in the semifinals, and in the end McKay finished third to Babers, a U.S. Air Force lieutenant about to begin pilot training-jets, naturally. McKay pushed his forehead into the track and rocked with embarrassment.

Gabriel Tiacoh's silver medal in the 400 was the first of any kind for the Ivory Coast. Morocco got two golds, including Said Aouita's in the 5,000 meters. Casablanca-born Nawal El Moutawakel won the women's 400 hurdles to give Morocco its first, also thought to be the only medal ever won by an Arab woman. When someone handed her a flag to flap about the Coliseum, she cried into it instead, explaining, "The people in my country have hoped this." A gang of Americans intended to monopolize the discus throw with 230-ft. throws, but a goateed West German in dark glasses, Rolf Danneberg, won instead with a modest fling of 218 ft. 6 in. He looked mortified.

Another happy scene: the Joyner siblings of East St. Louis, Ill., finished practically together on the same night, although in an ironic order. Al has always been the plodder, Jackie has always been the star. But as she was winning the silver in the heptathlon, he was winning the gold in the triple jump. Al qualified for the final on his last attempt, but won it on his first, a hip, hop and leap of 56 ft. 7 1/2 in. Not that he stopped jumping, though he did pause once to run the infield curve near Jackie in the 800, her climactic ordeal. Leading narrowly after six events but obliged to stay within a couple of seconds of Australian Glynis Nunn, she slipped three seconds behind and lost by a mere five points (6,390 to 6,385). The long jump, her staple usually, betrayed her when she managed only 20 ft. 1/2 in.

The hulks of the infield tossed their anchors and made their muscles, but rather obviously missed the boycotters. Nobody can handle a ball and chain quite like a totalitarian. It did not spoil his mood too much when opening-day Flagman Ed Burke missed the finals in the hammer throw. "Just because I didn't advance doesn't mean I didn't enjoy it," he said. Should some young U.S. hammer throwers be inspired, he will be pleased. "They need to learn how to compete," he said kindly. "A lot of them are marshmallows." The winner, Finland's Juha Tiainen, sighed, "It's not the same without the Eastern bloc countries." In the high jump, the celebrities were World Record Holder Zhu Jianhua of China and Dwight Stones of the U.S., but the winner was Dietmar Moegenburg of West Germany. He never missed at any height until everyone else was out and, alone with the bar, he tried raising Zhu's 7-ft. 10-in. mark by a half-inch. Moegenburg was not distressed when he failed twice. Both Zhu, 21, and Stones, 30, went out at 7 ft. 7 3/4 in., but with fewer misses, Zhu got the bronze. Stones went out smiling, though. "At least you have four years to look forward to," he told Zhu.

Two Frenchmen and two Americans argued it out in the last stages of " the pole vault. Only Mike Tully of the U.S. deigned to try at 18 ft. 6 1/2 in. and casually cleared. Pierre Quinon of France went over comfortably at 18 ft. 8 1/4 in., while Countryman Thierry Vigneron and the other American, Earl Bell, fell out. Tully passed. Again on the first vault, Quinon surmounted 18 ft. 10 1/4 in. Tully passed once more. But they both failed the next height, and therefore Quinon, 22, won. "I am young and learning," he said, "perhaps how to lose mostly, but how to win this time." Vigneron, a 19-ft. vaulter who lost his world record some time ago to Soviet Sergei Bubka, observed Quinon coolly. They are not close. "It was a very difficult competition," complained Vigneron, "due to the fact that Americans were rooting for Americans."

David Albritton, 71, cheered the Americans as he watched on television in Dayton, where he no longer coaches high school track--not officially. A silver medalist in the Hitler Games of 1936, a high jumper, Albritton was Jesse Owens' best friend. They roomed together both at college and in Berlin. On the subject of people rooting for one another, Albritton might have some knowledge of what Jesse would have thought of Lewis' equaling his four gold medals. "Different times, different circumstances," he said, "different places, different people. Nobody will ever be Jesse. If Carl is fortunate, he will always be Carl. Neither one of them is stumbling stock, you know.

"I think Jesse would have liked this guy. He never resented his records' being broken. It kind of made him happy. Owens was special, Lewis is special. He grew up thinking of Jesse, and now some kids will grow up thinking of him." It is a pleasant thought. These were good Olympics both for making and reprising memories. With his second victory, British Decathlete Daley Thompson brought back Bob Mathias. With her three gold medals, Valerie Brisco-Hooks recalled Wilma Rudolph. The happy side of these Games won. --By Tom Callahan. Reported by Steven Holmes and Melissa Ludtke/Los Angeles

With reporting by Steven Holmes, Melissa Ludtke