WILL ATHENS SHINE?

For tourists now descending on Athens, it may matter that the Greeks failed to finish the roof on the Olympic swimming pool. That ticket sales disappoint. That troops from 16 NATO nations are in place for the opening ceremonies Friday, a reminder that clashing ideologies threaten the Games once again. But so long as those forces see no action, the billions who will watch only on TV could witness the Olympic spectacle of their lives. For the further the cold war recedes, the less angry and divisive the Games become. Wasn't Sydney 2000 grand?

Athens could be even better. Politics no longer divide the big powers sharply enough to reach the field of play. All the major teams are products of unique national spins on the global move to free-market reform. At one extreme, the United States uses a venture-capital model, picking winners from among business plans pitched by individual sports authorities. Germany has introduced performance bonuses to resharpen the competitive edge of a team that won mainly bronze in Sydney. Russia is rebuilding Soviet-era sports programs with a distinct emphasis on favorites of its president (and judo enthusiast), Vladimir Putin. Even in China, the last of the big communist state powers, Nike is a major team sponsor.

Every big power now sees the Games essentially as a business, battling over medals as a company battles for sales, says Helmut Digel, head of the Sports Science Institute at Tubingen University.

--This is not the stuff of Olympic warfare. Even state-run systems no longer skew investment toward sports in order to score ideological points. While isolated drug scandals have roiled the American and Australian teams, Frederic Donze of the World Anti-Doping Agency says, "Systematic doping on a national level doesn't seem to exist anymore." That couldn't be said four years ago in Sydney, when drug charges still dogged China. Now big powers no longer think it's worth cheating to achieve Olympic domination.

This new, saner sense of priorities shows up in the medal counts. The share of medals taken by the top-10 nations has fallen from 74 percent in 1988 to 56 percent in 2000, and Dartmouth University Olympics watcher Andrew Bernard predicts it will fall to 53 percent in Athens. This leveling is encouraged by the International Olympic Committee, which devotes some of the broadcast revenue, already a record $1.48 billion in Athens, to help small powers participate. That's how Iraq managed to field a team.

In the following pages, NEWSWEEK traces the evolution of the big sports machines as what the consultants might call "strategic partners" in Olympics Inc. They compete hard for medal share, but cooperate to make sure the enterprise as a whole is a success. Yes, Athens could shine, particularly if you're not there.