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Show 'Official' pledge: Atlanta Olympics will be best ever By MARC RICE ASSOClATED PRESS WRITER ATLANTA (AP)- Olympics organizers have said it until they're as blue in the face as their official mascot, Izzy: the 1996 Atlanta Games will be on time, on budget and the best ever. Their chance to prove it is now just one year away. Once the improbable dream of Atlanta lawyer Billy Payne and a few of his pals, the moment of truth is finally coming into view. With 85,000 people filling a brand new stadium, and millions more watching Uve on prime-time television, Atlanta's torch will be lighted on what figures to be a typically humid evening July 19, 1996. In turns envied, admired and derided for landing the Centennial Olympic Games, Atlanta has long waited for the opportunity to prove to the world that this Deep South city is not in too deep. In many big ways, Atlanta looks like it will make good on its promise. A m aje tic Olympic stadium and other sports ven ues across and beyond the city are taking hape, ome nearly completed. Television rights have been sold for record sum , and ticket sales are off to a strong start. The area's best and brightest have tlevised a plan they a sure will prevent gridlock in this car-crazy town. Jackhammers furnish Atlanta's summer oundtrack a crumbling bridges and treets are rebuilt. City leaders teem with coniidence. "Nobody thought Atlanta had a chance of winning the Olympics, and l think it's that ame cynical sen e that causes people to doubt our ability to do it," said Mayor Bill Campbell. "All you can do is to do t he be t you can," he aid. "The bes t revenge is living well." If Payne, the president of the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games, ever entertained doubts that Atlanta's Games would be a roaring success, he's never let on. " I've always felt good," Payn s.ud. "That's my job." Skeptics, he said, will be proven wrong. Yet things keep happening to encourage the doubters: Hotels are accused of flouting a law designed to bar price-gouging. Rural Barrow County refused to let Somali athletes train, a payback for wrongs against U.S. troops in 1993. Organizers angered people across the state by giving politicians a break on hard-to-get tickets. Advocates for the poor say the city has blown a oncein-a-lifetime chanc to uplift Atlanta's neediest citizens. Just last week, it was disclosed that two dormitory buildings for athletes in the Olympic Village are settling excessively, sinking as much as nine inches into the ground. The state has brought in consultants to figure out why. And money, always money, stays in the forefront. Unlike most Olympic Games, Atlanta's is being financed without major government help. So even as the pages of the calendar flip toward the final months, ACOG likely will still be earching every nook and cranny to raise enough dollars from corporate sponsors to meet its $1.58 billion budget. That could mean more deals that make Olympic purist cringe - such as the one that made "Wheel of Fortune" and "Jeopardy" the official game shows of the Games. After all, the Games have put an "official" stamp on everything from jet planes to pistachio nuts. What has long made folks in Atlanta cringe is the thought that their city, a mere babe on the international stage, will embanass itself before the largest audience in history. Atlanta residents, even those who eagerly await the Games, are impatient for proof that the city really is ready. "The biggest thing the Olympics are going to do for Atlanta is we'll truly become an international city 15 years before we would have ... but we've got to get on with the show," said Stuart A. Peebles, who owns an office-supply store a few blocks from three of the major Olympic sites. "I've had people ask me on the street: Where do you buy a foreign newspaper in Atlanta, where's a foreign exchange? We've got to start doing that," he said. The allegations of price gouging by some Atlantans prompted tate consumer officials to begin everal investigation , although no charges have been brought. The Somali team quickly found a new training hom e in Gordon County. And AGOG is playing down the dispute as an isolated incident. ACOG staunchly defended its ticket policy, even though ome lawmakers who were potential recipients denounced it. The plan won praise from Dick Pound of the International Ol ympic Committee, who aid at lea t the politicians were paying for their seats. With most of the Olympic activity occurring downtown, Atlanta' penchant for traffic jams ha resident Dick Eho.i concerned. A traffic management plan that clo es most downtown streets to individual cars oEfers scant omfort, he .ud. "You can ' t plan enough," Ehn i said. "All you need is one rotten apple to me up ... and all beck break loo e." AP/Karl Gude The traffic may run as calm ly as a Georgia creek. T he city m ay shine like none before. The athletes may run, jump and dive into the record books. But to some, the Games have already f.uled. "Five years ago, I had high hopes for what the Olympics could do to benefit the community. It's a dead is ue now," aid the Rev. Tim McDonald, who heads the Olympic Conscience Coalition, an advocacy group for poor people in Atlanta. "A few people have benefited - in the construction industry, particularly." The huge influx of money into Atlanta for the Games should have created a windfall of job training programs and development in poor neighborhoods, McDonald said. McDonald's notion of lost opportunity is not universally shared in Atlanta's poor neighborhoods. In Summerhill, a community near the site of the Olympic stadium whose vacant lot provide a jarring contrast to the sky crapers that tower nearby, banks are now financing construction of new homes and businesses. "No doubt about it. First Union and NationsBank wouldn't be here if not for the Olympics," said Summerhill community leader Douglas Dean. "Crumb from the table," responded McDonald, who plans demon trations during the Olympics to bring attention to problems such as homelessness. "When the international press comes in, they're going to be looking for an i ue. And we' re going to give it to them on a silver platter," he said. "I don't have a monop ly on truth, but there is another ide of the tory than Billy Payne's." British Open begins on Thursday-with no favorite ST. ANDREWS, Scotland (AP) - What better place than at the oldest golf cour e prior to the oldest tournament to consider who is the best golfer around. The simple an wer may imply be: No one. When the 124th British Open starts on the Old Course a t St. Andrews on Thursday, golf will have come full circle from the first Open in 1860. That tournament was an a ttempt to identify the best golfer. The answer then was Willie Park, the first British Open champion. This yea.r's British Open may provide no answers. The champion at 450-year-old St. Andrews may very well simply be the one of among many very good golfer who happens to b the b st this particular week. "The competition around the world is ju t so much stronger that is was 20 years ago, 10 years ago even," U.S. Open champion Corey Pavin said before leaving for St. Andrews. Consider this. Since the 1990 British Open, when Nick Faldo won his second major title of the year and third in two years, there have been 19 major championships. They have been won by 17 different golfers. The only repeat winner was Nick Price, with two PGAs and a Briti h Open. And the only perennial favorite is Greg Norman. '1 guess the only constant there is is that h e's the only constant," Jay Haas said about N nnan. "It's been a different winner lin the major I each time. A few more shots here and there, a one-putt here or there, and you'd ay, 'Well, he's the guy who has dominated the last 10 year ."' Bat no one has dominated for a 10-year run since the Tom Watson Era ended with his victory in the 1983 British Open. Price from August, 1992 through the end of last year was the dominant golfer, a reign of less than three years. Price's run may not be over, though he has not won this year. The door also may not be closed yet on the Faldo Era, though he has not won a major ince the 1992 British Open. And Norman may yet truly step up among those who can dominate major championships. But he needs to win somewhere beside the British Open. Credentials for greatness for all three - Price, Faldo and Norman - would be helped enormously by a victory this week at St. Andrews. Beyond the Big T hree, picking pos ible winners at St. Andrews amounts to rounding up the usual suspects. Pavin had his breakthrough victory in a major and Davis Love' econd place in the Ma ters finally gave him a top-10 finish in a major. Ernie Els bas shown flash of the form that won the U.S. Op n last year, while Fred Coupl sand Paul Azinger continue to tea e tha t they axe back from injury and illness. Watson, a Eive-time British Open cha mpion, still strikes the ball as well as anyon e, putts equally poorly, but is alway a threat in Scotland, particularly if the wind blows. It seems like only a matter of time until Scotsman Colin Montgomerie wins a major championship. And Lee Janzen is as good as anyone at protecting a lead on Sunday, if he gets one. But for now, this seems to be true: The time at the top has gotten shorter. For whatever reason - the distrac tion of outside business interests, the comfortable living that can be made just finishing 10th every week, or the growing number of good golfers around - this is true. No one is king for long anymore. |