Goodbye from Hooterville. Eb says y’all come back now. Eb means it, too. Imagine that.
The world came, the world stayed and the world left its empties, as well as a couple of Cubans and an Iraqi.
The Olympics are now Sydney’s problem, the city down under and not the security guard. Sydney promises to do better. That’s what Atlanta said after Barcelona.
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The buses got lost and the lines were long and strangers were packed into subway cars in ways that usually require a ceremony and rice. But the people kept smiling.
These were not the Games of Job but the Games of Numbers and the most important ones were 9.712, Kerri Strug’s score in the vault; 19.32, Michael Johnson’s time in the 200 and, ultimately, 911.
That Atlanta forgot and what matters finally are the Games, and the Games were good.
When it is all scraped away, all the foo-faw and shoe logos and Carl Lewisness, the moments that matter are Donovan Bailey’s astonished glee at the end of the 100 meters, or even Linford Christie’s peevish petulance at the beginning, the unphony happiness of Lindsay Davenport and Andre Agassi winning insignificant tennis prizes.
Pain came with the glory and was just as compelling. Dominique Moceanu landing on her head on the balance beam, Mike Powell face-first in the long jump pit, Butch Reynolds in a heap on the track, and super blob of Tonga, 310-pound Paea Wolfgramm, jiggling with every punch thrown and taken.
Every Olympics is always saved by the games. The people who put them on forget that. They try to make them about peace or image or pride, but they are about games. And when the games are good, the Games are good. And these Games were good.
This was not about Atlanta’s hijacking Fortune 500 companies to the New South or the little flea market vendor pouting because nobody wanted to buy his clutter. And it wasn’t about the number of medals the USA! USA! won or about how we didn’t seem a bit guilty about waxing Norwegians.
Not the tacky T-shirt shacks and sardine-can transportation, the shameless price gouging–a six-pack of cookies could run roughly $1.12 per Oreo–or all that prickly heat. None of that. Not even the bomb in the park.
As His Excellency Juan Bob Samaranch said, it didn’t go off in an official venue, where the athletes are, where the public had paid to be safe. Read the back of the ticket.
This was unofficial terrorism and there’s nothing Juan Bob could do about that or any of the local folks, from Billy Bob Payne to the FB of I.
These Olympics added new phrases to our language, “virtually live” for NBC’s viewer’s digest approach to the Games and “principal focus,” the conclusion-jumping designation for an uncharged suspect in a crime that happens close to a worldwide TV uplink. This could be applied to a Centennial Park security guard as well as Irish swimmer Michelle Smith.
But even the crime scene became just another attraction, a photo op. Eb got his picture taken there and one in front of the big plastic Elvis.
The Greeks, who didn’t get the Games, didn’t miss a chance to chortle. “It takes a lot of effort to organize the Games as badly as Atlanta did,” said the Greek minister of sport.
And IOC types griped that their beloved Olympics had come to a “Third World tent city” and guesses are good that Atlanta has ruined chances of the next U.S. bid for the Games. Even Tom Welch, the head of the Salt Lake City Winter Games six years hence, shook his head sadly at how his fellow Americans had bungled the big show.
Eb says what could you expect when you turn the Olympics over to a real estate lawyer? And Eb’s right, you know, but I’ll never forget little Kerri landing on one leg.