Sport: Eve of a New Olympics

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To whatever extent future Olympic hosts will permit these transactions to be copied, Ueberroth is hopeful, like De Coubertin, that something of what he has learned will endure. Ueberroth swears that he does not wish to be President of the U.S. and does not even care to be baseball commissioner. Still, around this time next year he will be looking for another challenge of Olympic proportion. "I don't know if there is one," he sighs. "This is so much more difficult than anything you can imagine."

There are both charm and sadness in a job, one gigantic piece of work, that need be done only once, that can be done only once, and then it is over. On second thought, this time next year, Ueberroth and his associates will probably still be shaking, maybe tingling.

—By Tom Callahan. Reported by Steven Holmes/Los Angeles, with other bureaus