PRESIDENT CLINTON turned up at the Georgia Dome on Thursday night, but he was 48 hours too late to share in the joy and glory of America's tiny female gymnasts. Having registered the nation's first triumph in the team event, they found their separate routes to failure in the individual all round championship.

For the first time since the great Ludmilla Tourischeva in 1972, the reigning world champion also won the Olympic gold medal. Lilia Podkopayeva of the Ukraine, who will be 17 next month, came through in her final floor exercise to defeat a trio of Romanians. The silver went to the 18 year old Gina Gogean, while Simona Amanar and Lavinia Milosevici finished with a bronze medal apiece after tieing their scores.

Podkopayeva won the world all round title in Sabae, Japan in 1995 and added the European Championship in Birmingham earlier this year. She scored a total of 39.255 in her four exercises, 0.180 ahead of Gogean, the 1994 European champion. Amanar was a late replacement for Alexandra Marinescu, while. Milosevici had also taken the bronze in this event in Barcelona.

Of the American heroines of Tuesday night's team event there was, by the end, practically no trace, despite President Clinton's presence, and although a fire storm of flashbulbs and thunderous cheers from around the Dome accompanied every effort by Dominique Moceanu, Shannon Miller and Dominique Dawes.

After a promising opening the home crowd were to taste disappointment long before the end of the four rotations, in which the 32 athletes selected via the marks obtained in the team event moved in groups of eight between the asymmetric bars, the balance beam, the vault and the floor exercise.

Moceanu, replacing the injured heroine Kerri Strug, was the first US gymnast to appear in the opening rotation, but a big wobble on the beam produced an unexceptional mark of 9.600. A solid 9.750 on the bars for Miller preceded a 9.812 on the same equipment which gave Dawes second place at the end of the first round behind Rozaliya Galiyeva of Russia, who opened with a 9.825 on the balance beam.

Third at that stage was Huilan Mo of China, with 9.799 from the vault. Podkopayeva was in sixth, with Miller eighth and Moceanu down in 17th place, which she shared with the former world champion Svetlana Boguinskaya of Belarus, who is saying a regal farewell to the Olympics at the impossibly advanced age of 23.

Miller scored a 9.862 on the beam, but it was not enough to take her above Dawes, whose 9.825 gave her the lead at the end of the second rotation. Miller shared second place with Dina Kochetkova of Russia, after a 9.825, for another excellent beam exercise, with Mo fourth and Podkopayeva up to fifth. A poor floor routine had already done for Galiyeva.

A mark of 9.800 on the beam gave Mo the lead in the third rotation while a chill fell over the hall as two sloppy landings produced a 9.475 on the floor for Miller, leaving her sobbing. A couple of minutes later there was another American in tears after Dawes had fallen back on to her bands after a front somersault in the same exercise, an error rewarded with a harsh 9.000 from the floor judges, who included Nelli Kim, a silver medal winner for Russia in Montreal 20 years ago.

Suddenly the US hopes for, an individual medal were in ruins, although the fans produced an all American roar when Moceanu landed square and true at the end of a prodigious vault. The judges moderate mark of 9.706 drew boos but it pulled her up to 14th, between Miller in tenth and Dawes in a disastrous 20th.

Back on the floor Kochetkova registered a 9.777 to move up to second. Behind her came Podkopayeva, with 9.787 on the beam. Gogean had also been making steady progress. Twelfth after her performance on the bars, she was sixth after the beam and moved up to fourth when the floor produced her second consecutive 9.800. Milosovici was now fifth, and Amanar sixth.

A medal for Kochetkova disappeared with two unsteady landings in the vault, her final, exercise, just before Podkopayeva went out and produced an immaculate floor routine, using every inch of the mat with tremendous verve and pulling the highest mark of the night, a thoroughly justified 9.887, from the judges.

As the very last act of the competition, Mo came out to respond. Her first sequence ended with a solid landing, and a first gold for China in this event looked possible. Her second, however, cost her everything. At the end of a front somersault, she leapt clean off the carpet and out of the medals.

Respectable closing performances from the three US gymnasts 9.762 for Moceanu on the asymmetrical bars, 9.687 for Dawes and 9.724 for Miller on the vault pleased the crowd and ensured an improvement in their placings. Miller finished eighth, Moceanu ninth and Dawes 17th, but it was all a long way from the glory they had tasted only two nights earlier.

I don't have any regrets," Miller said. I'm going home with a gold medal, so I don't think there's anything to be unhappy about. But for Dawes, who had narrowly missed medals at the last two world championships, it was particularly hard to take.

I guess I was able to deal with it then, so I can now," she said at the press conference, and burst into tears again.