READY...OR NOT?

By Steve Wulf

Every few minutes or so, Jackie Joyner-Kersee beats all comers in the 10-m dash. Grant Hill seems willing to go one-on-one with hundreds of wannabes. Shannon Miller never loses her balance on the beam even though she walks the walk all day.

These Olympians, or rather their virtual realities, are part of the show in Coca-Cola Olympic City at Centennial Olympic Park, the not-yet-completed plaza that the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games (A.C.O.G.) hopes will be the meeting place for what one official calls "the largest peacetime gathering of humanity in the history of humanity." Be that as it may, 2 million will descend upon Atlanta next week for the 100th anniversary of the Olympics, and they are entitled to ask, "Is Atlanta ready yet?"

If a visit to Coca-Cola Olympic City 18 days before the opening ceremonies is any indication, Atlanta is at least ready to embrace the traditional Olympic spirit of commercialism, i.e., go for your gold. For an admission fee ($13 for adults, $8 for children), you can step into the world of corporate sponsorship: meet Olympians in the Reebok Athlete Center, take the kids to Ronald McDonald's SportsPlace, watch a Discovery Channel presentation of A World of Champions. You can refresh yourself with a cooling mist from the bottle caps of the giant Coca-Cola bottles scattered throughout the park--aesthetically, they actually are cool--or you can buy a commemorative six-pack of Coke for only $75.

Still, in Olympic City you can get a chill from something other than a giant Coke bottle. In the Coliseum Tent there is an exhibit of "priceless artifacts" from the Olympic Museum in Lausanne, Switzerland. Whether it be Baron Pierre de Coubertin's saber or Jesse Owens' track shoe or a medal from the first Games in Athens, the artifacts can do a better job of transporting you to the Olympics than, say, the mountain-biking simulation. The museum pieces are not only keepsakes of the Games' history, but also reminders that this city has been handed a glorious legacy. They whisper to Atlanta, Don't blow it.

Is Atlanta ready? One of the more vexing problems here is the weather, which tends toward the brutal in July and August. At the U.S. Olympic track-and-field trials in June, the mercury rose to a muggy 100[degrees] in the stands and 112[degrees] on the track itself. Even though the seats were three-fourths empty during the week, more than 100 spectators and athletes had to be treated for heat distress. For the athletes, A.C.O.G. plans to have more shade and hydration stations at Olympic Stadium than USA Track & Field did. For spectators inside the central core of venues known as the Olympic Ring, organizers are promising trucks known as "water buffaloes" in eight Red Cross tents, and dozens of other oases and cooling stations. "Part of what we have to do is educate pedestrians about what they have to do to take care of themselves," says Susan Pease-Langford, director of the Mayor's Office of Olympic Coordination. To that end, spectators at the trials were advised to drink 16 oz. of water an hour--at $2.75 per 16-oz. bottle of Crystal Springs water.

Another unpleasant given with Atlanta is the traffic; even on slow days, locals love to talk about the crawl on the Downtown Connector, the bumper-to-bumper crop on the exit ramp to the Perimeter. Marion Waters, a traffic-operations engineer for the Georgia Department of Transportation, says, "I'm not saying there isn't going to be congestion, but I think it's going to work." Downtown employers are being asked to downsize their work forces for the Games, and during the fortnight, Olympic Ring streets will be restricted to essential traffic from 7:30 a.m. until midnight. The population will be asked to use the MARTA subway system, though many venues still require a bus ride, or a long walk, from their nearest MARTA stops.

A recent poll conducted by Yankelovich Partners rather ominously indicated that 61% of Americans are concerned that Atlanta will be a terrorist target, but A.C.O.G. director of security Bill Rathburn promises that "Atlanta will be a very, very safe place." There will be metal detectors at every venue and biometric palm devices, matching a person's hand to a stored topographical map of that hand, at high-security checkpoints. There will also be at least 22,000 security personnel from federal, state and local law-enforcement agencies and the military.

Another challenge Atlanta faces is the perception that the construction at several Olympic sites was rushed and ill designed. Last year a steelworker named Jack Falls was killed when a light tower at the $230 million Olympic Stadium collapsed on him. The Falls estate is suing A.C.O.G. and the Atlanta Stadium Design Team for negligence, while A.C.O.G. and the ASDT are suing each other. There was also the collapse of a steel truss at the Georgia Tech Aquatic Center in March; though no one was hurt, some members of Ironworkers Local 387 refused to return to the site.

A.C.O.G. has taken other design hits that have more to do with taste than safety. The Olympic Stadium, which was built so that it could be reassembled next year as the new home of the Atlanta Braves, was designed by HOK Sport of Kansas City, the folks behind such new ballparks as Oriole Park at Camden Yards, and while it has the same brick-and-girder feel of those parks, it has none of their charm and less stature even than Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium, the condemned ballpark across the street. Track-and-field athletes dislike the stadium because the track, built for world records, is too hard and the warm-up track is a bus ride away. Journalists at the trials didn't like the long walk from the press box to the interview areas, and they tried to outdo each other with descriptions of the somewhat inadequate Olympic flame cauldron--the winner was New York Times columnist Dave Anderson, who called it a french-fry container on an Erector Set.

Then there is Centennial Olympic Park, the $55 million, 21-acre plaza in the forsaken northwest downtown area. Right now, it appears to be corporate elephants grazing on commemorative bricks and blacktop painted green. But this is what A.C.O.G. president Billy Payne hopes will be his legacy, the first major urban park to be developed in the U.S. in 30 years. This is also what cynics predict will be the world's largest urinal once the Games end and Atlanta's large homeless population returns. "I think it's a great idea," says Rufus Hughes II, a professor of architecture at Georgia Tech. "All of that no man's land between downtown and Georgia Tech is now up for reconsideration. It should breathe new life into the city." A.C.O.G. can only hope the park meets the same fate as the once-derided Atlanta Olympic mascot who transformed himself from Whatizit, a sperm in sneakers, into Izzy, the cash cow that souvenir vendors can't keep on their shelves.

Still, the biggest question facing Atlanta on the eve of the Games has nothing to do with heat or security or engineering. It has to do with the two spirits of the Olympics: Which will Atlantans adopt, the one of community and friendship and sacrifice, or the one of commerce and brinkmanship and looking out for No. 1? Right now, it appears to be the latter. Taxicabs are asking for a 22% fare increase for the Games, having been denied their original wish of 66%, and some parking lots are going from $10 a day to $20. Southern hospitality? Hospitals will ask foreign visitors to pay up front. And don't bring any food to the venues--a woman had her potato chips confiscated at the trials after being told, "We have to draw the line somewhere."

Hughes, who has lived in Atlanta for 40 years, sees a disturbing trend in his hometown. "The culture of Atlanta is changing. You can see it in the way people cut in front of you on the highway, leave trash on your driveway, make illegal U-turns. In the last eight months, I have seen a city go from grace to greed."

Anticipation of the Olympics may have made Atlantans cranky, but the arrival of the Games could also restore them to their state of grace. There is, after all, something mystical about the Olympics. Al Levine, a writer for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, covered the torch run a few weeks ago. "Before I left, I was pretty cavalier about it, saying, 'Gotta go chase the Big Barbeque.' But in Waterloo, Iowa, they needed a runner, and they asked me. When I got back to the office, all I could talk about was Mother Flame."

Besides, many Atlantans haven't lost their charm. A woman and her two young sons stopped to ask directions to Coca-Cola Olympic City last week, and in the course of conversation, Ginger Schilling allowed as how she was very excited about the Games. "I feel like it's the night before the big prom," said Schilling. "We hope there are no disasters. We hope you like us. We hope you have a wonderful time."

--Reported by Adam Cohen and Brian Reid/Atlanta

With reporting by ADAM COHEN AND BRIAN REID/ATLANTA