FASTER, HIGHER, BRAVER

By STEVE WULF/ATLANTA

Audacius. when Kerri Strug took off down the runway late last Tuesday afternoon (real time), ignoring the intense pain in the left ankle she had badly sprained on her previous vault, she thought she needed to stick it in order to give the U.S. women the gold medal in the gymnastics team competition. She didn't even need to vault, as arithmetic turned out, but no matter. Strug did more than win a gold medal. She added another word to the Olympic credo: Citius, altius, fortius, audacius. Faster, higher, stronger, braver.

Until the roar of terrorism early Saturday morning, the defining moment of the Centennial Olympic Games had not been a Cream Team snoozer or a stalled bus or an O.J. Simpson sighting or even one of the inspiring performances by American swimmer Amy Van Dyken. It was Kerri Strug nailing her landing after her Yurchenko 1 1/2, then maintaining her balance on one foot as she pivoted in deference to the two tables of judges. With that, the 87-lb. 18-year-old shoved aside Shaquille O'Neal, Alexander Karelin, Billy Payne and all the big, bad Olympians. There were other heroes, to be sure, in the first eight days of the 16-day competition, but none as compelling as the Seven Sisters of U.S. gymnastics (see page 42). In this ghost town on Saturday, one could only wish that they might magically reappear to make all of Atlanta--spectator, Olympian, official--braver. After all, in just a few hours last week, they had crystallized and reminded us of the intent of the Games.

Citius. Threats of thunderstorms never materialized on Saturday night, but there was lightning on the Olympic Stadium track. Donovan Bailey of Canada won the 100 m in a world-record time of 9.84 sec., although it took three false starts and a petulant protest by Great Britain's Linford Christie, who was disqualified for two of them, before the gun sounded for good. Bailey ran down Frankie Fredericks of Namibia and Ato Boldon of Trinidad to become the world's fastest human--ever. He also helped erase the Seoul stigma of Ben Johnson, who like Bailey was a Jamaican running for Canada. "I'm not trying to do what Ben did, or undo what Ben did in Seoul," he said. "My name is Donovan Bailey."

The women's 100 m took both 10.94 sec. and an eternity. Gail Devers and Gwen Torrence of the U.S. and Merlene Ottey of Jamaica all hit the tape together, with Devers winning by a literal nose. But minutes passed before the result was posted, and then silver medalist Ottey filed a protest that was denied an hour later. Devers, who thus becomes the first man or woman since Wyomia Tyus in '64 and '68 to repeat in the 100, was quick to bank her joy with concern for the loved ones of the people injured and killed in the blast at Olympic Park. "It's hard to enjoy this," said Devers, "knowing that someone is trying to destroy the Olympic spirit. But they won't be able to do that unless we let them."

The pool at the Georgia Tech aquatic center was supposed to be the fastest in the world, but it yielded more surprises than world records (four). While teammates like Janet Evans and Amanda Beard got all the pre-Olympic hype, the charmingly gawky Van Dyken stole the show with an unprecedented four gold medals. Michelle Smith, another relative unknown from Ireland, a nation not heretofore known for its aquatics, won three races. The U.S. men's 4 x 100 freestyle relay team of Gary Hall Jr., Jon Olsen, Josh Davis and Brad Schumacher not only kept America's unbeaten streak in the event intact, but also provided the delicious symmetry of winning the 100th gold medal for U.S. men swimmers in the 100th year of the Olympics. "Cool," said Davis when first informed of the milestone. Cool was also the reception given to Smith and the Chinese swimmers, who were persistently accused of drug use by American journalists and swimmers on only circumstantial evidence. "They're being a little bit ungracious," said Smith. "I don't want to lower myself to that level."

Altius, America. After basking in the opening ceremony and the first parade of nations to include every nation (197 in '96), the Atlanta Journal-Constitution summed up the first day of competition with this banner headline: NO GOLD FOR US. The message was that there was something ignoble about the two silvers and the bronze that U.S. athletes won that day, and by extension the dross won by athletes from other nations. Aleksandra Ivosev of Yugoslavia certainly appreciated the bronze medal she won for the women's 10-m air rifle. Ivosev has a training problem, which would be laughably ironic if it weren't sadly so: "Because of war," she said, "we couldn't find a good location to practice."

The U.S. did find a mother lode of gold in the pool, enough to satisfy even the most jingoistic sports fan. But the medal-count table has about as much soul as the meter on a cab, the rate on the back of a hotel-room door, the total on a cash register--numbers that dominated conversations in Atlanta. When the women of the U.S. gymnastics team did something none of their predecessors had ever done, their collective effort, and the spirit of Kerri Strug, transcended metallurgy. They went higher, and so did we.

Higher was also the objective of the many stargazers who attended the first week's events and collected celebrities like pins: Simpson, David Hasselhoff, Bruce and Demi, Arnold, Ali, Chelsea--who, bless her heart, went to everything--and her parents. Royalty mixed with Olympian and, in the case of Kuwaiti swimmer S.A.B.S. Sultan Alotaibi, who finished 37th out of 37 in the 200-m individual medley, were one and the same. Perhaps the most interesting encounter occurred at the Olympic Village, when U.S. team handball circle runner Dave DeGraaf was followed into the lavatory by men in suits. "Mr. President, how are you?" asked DeGraaf. "Fine--how are you, young man?" responded Clinton. As DeGraaf's teammate, goalie Yaro Dachniwsky, put it, "Dave's now an expert on presidential leaks."

Fortius. The third Olympian goal was also well served last week. There was the Pocket Hercules, Turkish weight lifter Naim Suleymanoglu, who won the 64-kg class to become the first man to win gold medals for weight lifting in three consecutive Olympics. Asked if he thought he was the greatest weight lifter of all time, the 4 ft., 11 in. Suleymanoglu said, "You can make your own decision." (We think so, Pocket.) On the first night of track and field on Friday, Randy Barnes of the U.S. won the shot put with a toss of 70 ft., 11 1/4 in., easily outdistancing teammate John Godina and erasing the shame of the drug suspension that kept him from competing in Barcelona.

The best test of strength, though, may have been in the superheavyweight final of Greco-Roman wrestling. Matt Ghaffari, representing the U.S. and resembling a refugee from the World Wrestling Federation, locked up with Karelin, the Russian who had two Olympic gold medals and has a real future as a Hollywood heavy. Ghaffari gave it his all in a tense, exhausting eight minutes, but Karelin emerged victorious by the scantest of margins--1-0. Appearances are deceiving. Ghaffari blubbered like a baby on the medal stand--he was overjoyed, mind you--and Karelin revealed himself to be a pussycat. Asked if he was bothered that people are afraid of him because of his countenance, the Dostoyevsky-quoting Karelin replied, "I'm used to it, and anyway, it's better than the other way around: being beautiful and mean."

Until the competition took over, Atlanta was threatening to add another Latin word to Baron de Coubertin's motto: Irritabilius. Testier. Journalists whined about A.C.O.G., IBM, the I.O.C. and journalists who whined. Atlanta mayor Bill Campbell said that the media critics should be taken out to the Wolf Creek shooting complex. Cuban fencer Elvis Gregory got into a shoving match with Adam Krzesinski of Poland, who had won their gold-medal match in the foil. The Italian baseball coach complained that Team USA was running up the score. When two of his boxers lost controversial decisions, U.S. coach Al Mitchell said, "Now you know why these guys go pro." (So they can ply their trade among honorable men?) Joe Frazier, the ex-heavyweight champ and former gold medalist who was in town for a promotional appearance, had the bad taste to ridicule the torch-lighting dexterity of old nemesis Muhammad Ali. And Reggie Miller, Dream Team III guard, won the gold medal for chutzpa when he complained about the room service at the deluxe hotel accommodating the U.S. basketball team.

The one unfortunate, unshakable characteristic of these Games is the class system: first class or coach. At Morehouse College, where the popular U.S. women's basketball team plays most of its games, the cheap seats made available to the public are completely filled, and the good seats bought out by Olympic sponsors go unused. Before basketball games, the two teams exchange gifts like pins and jerseys. At the U.S.-Angola men's game last week, it would have seemed fairer if the Dream Teamers had given the Angolans keys to luxury automobiles. After the game, which the U.S. won by only 33 points, Angolan coach Vladimiro Romero was asked how much his players earn. After he and two of the players stopped laughing, Romero said, "Each might earn one one-thousandth of what each player on the team we played tonight earns."

Not every famous athlete is isolated by wealth. Monica Seles, who would have every reason to sequester herself, is just one of the girls on the U.S. tennis team, living and reveling in the Olympic Village, catching as many events as she can. Evans, in her last Olympics, did the laundry for Beard, in her first. Nothing, not the Atlanta Olympic committee, not commercialism, not even a bomb, can extinguish the Olympic ideal. Some of the most heated matches in these Games--boxing, baseball, volleyball--will be between Cuba and the U.S. Yet the other night, after Jeff Rouse of the U.S. defeated two Cubans, Rodolfo Falcon Cabrera and Neisser Bent, in the 100-m backstroke, Cabrera took his seat at the press conference, smiled at Rouse in admiration and patted the chair next to him as an invitation. It was the smallest and the largest of gestures.

At another press conference last week, after weightlifter Zhan Xugang of China won the 154-lb. gold medal, his coach, Yang Han Xiong, was asked why Zhan added more weight to the bar in the clean and jerk (bringing it up to a world record 430 lbs.) even after he had clinched the gold medal at 424 lbs. "The Olympic spirit is faster, higher, stronger," said Yang. "So we tried it."

--With reporting by Adam Cohen,Sally B. Donnelly, Barry Hillenbrand and Lawrence Mondi/Atlanta

With reporting by ADAM COHEN,SALLY B. DONNELLY, BARRY HILLENBRAND AND LAWRENCE MONDI/ATLANTA