The Young And Old Will Shoot For Glory At Atlanta, Close To 200 Nations Will Be At Olympics

So much of these Olympics will seem so familiar.

The faces. The accent. The time slot. The gouging by cabbies and maitre d’s.

So much will seem different.

More women competing. Hakeem Olajuwon in a USA jersey. Former Soviet athletes dispersed to new teams. Beach volleyball. No boycotting nations.

One hundred years after French nobleman Pierre de Coubertin revived the ancient Greek games in their ancestral home, the world comes together next month to play in summer for the last time this century.

But it does so in sultry, sweltering Atlanta, not Athens, where it all began. That’s largely because a real estate lawyer and ex-Georgia football star named Billy Payne sold the International Olympic Committee on the symbolic value of coming to a city that was burned to the ground, rebuilt from ashes and hasn’t stopped hustling for business since.

“We decided the centennial is for looking forward, not looking back,” IOC vice president Richard Pound said. “While we honor our traditions, we are about the future. That’s why we chose the new world over the old.”

Not one nation - old or new - extended an invitation by the IOC turned it down. That means a record 197 nations will be on hand, competing in 271 events in 26 sports. Among the nations are 15 that once pledged allegiance to the Soviet Union; another five were once united under the banner of Yugoslavia.

Whether this means the United States goes top shelf in the unofficial team standings is anyone’s guess. But for the record, the Americans counted 37 golds among 108 medals from Barcelona, finishing behind the Unified Team in both categories (45 and 112) and ahead of Germany (33 and 82), which was unified for the first time in 1992.

“Instead of having one really powerful Soviet team, we still have a pretty powerful Russian team, a powerful Belarus team and a powerful team from Ukraine,” U.S. men’s gymnastics coach Peter Kormann said. “I don’t think it makes it easier.”

Kormann was talking about his sport, but he could have been speaking about wrestling, shooting or any number of other disciplines formerly dominated by the Soviets.

To represent the new teams and old ones, there will be 10,800 athletes, about 3,800 of whom are women - a 40-percent increase over the number competing four years ago.

Just as impressive, perhaps, is the number of women expected to watch, roughly half of the audience NBC shelled out $456 million in rights fees to reach. No wonder gymnastics, or swimming and diving - what NBC sports president Dick Ebersol calls “female-interest sports” - will be shown live in prime time virtually every night. It’s the same reason that 14-year-old gymnastics sensation Dominique Moceanu already has a biography out, and why sprinter Gail Devers’ struggles to become an Olympian recently merited a made-for-TV movie.

The increased participation and viewing by women is also why two of the four medal events added to the roster - softball and soccer - are distaff versions of established sports. And why beach volleyball and mountain biking join the fold as both men’s and women’s competitions.

And yet, for all the new faces sure to emerge, the old, familiar ones figure to provide the most compelling stories from these centennial games. A host of athletes once considered past their prime have made plans to summer in Hotlanta for the 17 days of the Olympics. And their motivation is as varied as their talents and origins.

Among the Americans are the graying, but still royal king and queen of track, five-time Olympian Carl Lewis and four-timer Jackie Joyner-Kersee. Included as well are Michael Johnson, the indomitable 200- and 400-meter man; original Dream Team alumni David Robinson, Scottie Pippen, Karl Malone and John Stockton; heavyweight wrestler Bruce Baumgartner, a four-time Olympian and two-time gold medalist; and former swimming prodigy Janet Evans, now all of 24, 7 inches taller and 18 pounds heavier than when she debuted in Seoul as a high school junior.

The rest of the world returns with its share of stories, too:

From Cuba, middle-distance runner Ana Fidelia Quirot, who lost her premature baby after a 1992 fire that left her face, chest and arms covered with third-degree burns and her career in seeming tatters.

From Turkey, the “Pocket Hercules,” weightlifter Naim Suleymanoglu, whose training and record-setting feats beginning with Seoul have become a way to repay a debt to his adopted homeland.

From Israel, judoist Yael Arad, whose silver medal in Barcelona lifted the black cloud that had lingered since Palestinian terrorists murdered 11 of her countrymen at the 1972 Games in Munich.

From Belarus, gymnast Vitaly Scherbo, who as late as January had no plans to defend his six Olympic titles, until his critically injured wife, Irina, began her remarkable recovery from a near-fatal car crash.

Some of the athletes coming back were drawn by games close to home, gambling that familiarity and a partisan crowd will coax from them one last moment of greatness. Others come back hoping old legs are resilient enough for one more run.

Still others return to secure a legacy, to right some wrong or some perceived slight, or simply because changed circumstances means a chance to compete under a different flag.

In the style of traditional Southern cooking, the familiar spice those athletes bring to the table will complement, but not overwhelm, all the novelty dishes being served. And from that perspective, what a feast Atlanta promises.

Already proven world-beaters, China’s female swimmers and distance runners will arrive with chips on their shoulders. In 1994, they shocked opponents with a series of record-smashing performances. But seven swimmers, including world champions Lu Bin and Yang Aihua, failed drug tests at the Asian Games later that year. The Chinese, angered at the leniency shown some Western competitors, have been waiting for the chance to confront their accusers.

“Whenever the Americans see other peoples’ troubles, they take pleasure in their misfortune,” Le Jingyi, the reigning world champion at both 50 and 100 freestyle, said recently.

On the other hand, there will be decidedly less enthusiasm to face some other U.S. women’s teams.

The softball squad could probably give Cuba’s men’s baseball team a run for its money, having lost only one game in international competition over the last 10 years. It is considered such a lock that 34-year-old shortstop Dot Richardson has taken a one-year leave of absence from her day job as an orthopedic surgeon to see the mission through.

Such devotion would get knowing nods all around the female version of the Dream Team. Led by four-time Olympian Teresa Edwards, who will turn 32 on the first day of the games, the average age of the team is 27, the oldest ever.

The male Dream Team, by contrast, didn’t hold its first full practice session until July. But with Shaquille O’Neal, new U.S. citizen Olajuwon and Anfernee Hardaway joining the returning quartet, their only challenge could be matching the 43.8-point average margin of victory by which the original Dream Team beat the rest of the world.

For all the vaunted veterans coming back in all sports, both the U.S. track and field and swimming teams will be hard-pressed to match their performances of 1992.

The track team won 12 gold, eight silver and 10 bronze at Barcelona and in the process, set three world, six Olympic and five U.S. standards. Still, one measure of how good it can be this time around was glimpsed when Michael Johnson ran the 200 in the U.S. trials in 19.66 seconds, breaking a 17-year-old world record, the oldest mark in the business. Further proof of U.S. depth came at the trials when sprinter Gwen Torrence came in fourth after a photo finish for the 200; winner Carlette Guidry simply ran the fastest time in the world this year.

In ‘92, the United States produced 27 medals, 11 gold, in the pool. And once again, reloading without a noticeable drop in performance seems possible. Brooke Bennett, a sassy 16-year-old, has already established herself as Evans’ successor. Tom Dolan could turn out to the hub of the men’s team, considering his versatility in the middle-distance freestyle and individual-medley events.

Versatile could describe the U.S. tennis team as well, especially if endorsing ever becomes an officially recognized sport. Andre Agassi will be joined by Pete Sampras and Monica Seles, another recently minted American citizen.

Whatever else it shows, the appearance by that trio, the Dream Team and all the other professionals in these Olympics demonstrates the IOC has turned Baron de Coubertin’s basic premise on its head. The pretense of games contested by amateurs vanished long ago. In truth, it was doomed almost from the outset. But Atlanta could be remembered as the games that finally killed it.

Sponsorships have been sold to game shows and processed meats alike. Without the safety net that government funding laid out for previous efforts, the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games, or ACOG, had to obtain sponsorship for just about everything - even security.

At the end of June, ACOG admitted to being $150 million short of the $1.7 billion tab for staging the games. Payne, the relentlessly optimistic CEO, said that sales of tickets (11 million were available), souvenirs and refreshments will make up the difference.