THE GAMES TRIUMPHANT

Our life, said Pythagoras, "is like the great and crowded assembly at the Olympic Games," which is a roundabout, Olympian way of saying the Games are as full of terror and chaos as the lives they temporarily eclipse. On a less exalted level, in Atlanta's official fairy tale of the Games, the first of the five Olympian qualities that a hero must master (in the realm where the Olympian flame always burns bright) is perseverance.

The Olympics this year were a study in perseverance, from the thousands who breathed new life into a haunted party to the athletes who stayed focused amid bomb threats in a city that had waited forever to show off the New South (a phrase coined in 1886). As the Centennial Games came to an end, it seemed as if a slim hope had gone 15 rounds with hard reality and emerged bloodied but just ahead on points. Atlanta had faced its share of biblical afflictions--rain and thunder, explosions far and near, a plague of journalists and the smell of lucre. Yet the stars raved about the crowds as much as the crowds raved about the stars, the venues shone, the volunteers (mostly) smiled and the athletes never failed us. Simply put, the sports were thrilling.

Every time one looked up at the bank of 20 TV screens in the Olympic Stadium media subcenter, one could see arms being raised, in victory or despair. A man called Talant scored with two minutes left to lift Spain to the medal round, above Egypt, in team handball, 20-19. The perennial Olympian, basketball hero Oscar Schmidt, in his fifth and last Games, put up an absurd shot for Brazil with 17 seconds left, and it fell in, and Puerto Rico was defeated. In the new sport of women's softball, an American pitcher was one strike away from a perfect game when reality fell asleep--she gave up a home run and lost.

In the age of "plausibly live" broadcasts and virtual-reality competitions and an Olympic Experience store, the highlights of the first interactive Games were plain, old-fashioned human interactions. Bagpipes played on Peachtree Street, and fans learned a new lexicon in which misters are not just gentlemen in Georgia and ticket-holders are made of plastic. The effortlessly graceful Marie-Jose Perec showed that she was a true champion when her bronzed rival in the 400 m, Falilat Ogunkoya, teared up as she thought of the mother she had just lost and Perec warmly hugged her (while a volunteer fetched a Kleenex). Japanese said "Muchas gracias" to Cuban baseball players, and the Cubans responded, with typical charm, "Domo arigato." Charles Barkley gave his practice jersey to the 14-year-old daughter of Alice Hawthorne, the woman killed in Atlanta's bombing.