THE expression on the face of Hicham El Guerrouj said it all after he had loped in at the back of the 12-man field in the Olympic 1,500 metres championship final in Atlanta on Saturday night.

Words were superfluous as the Moroccan grimaced and then kicked off his shoes as Noureddine Morceli celebrated the first moments of his reign as Olympic champion by hugging his coach.

One of the great duels of the Centennial Games had ended prematurely in a blur of legs and arms when, right on schedule, Morceli made his thrust for victory approaching the bell.

In his determination to cover the break, El Guerrouj got too close to the leader, clipped his heel and was trampled all over by the pack as he fell.

Among those affected was the holder, Fermin Cacho of Spain, who had to jump over the stricken Moroccan to avoid being brought down in the turmoil which followed.

The effect was to leave Morceli in glorious isolation in the lead and after a quick glance over his shoulder to survey the wreckage behind, he was on his way to a first Olympic triumph in three minutes 35.78 seconds, ironically, the slowest of his three runs in the championship.

There was a moment when Cacho appeared to be closing the gap down the back straight but that proved to be illusory. Morceli, denied by the Spaniard in Barcelona four years ago, lengthened his stride and Cacho grudgingly settled for the silver medal ahead of the Kenyan, Stephen Kipkorir.

In these kind of situations, the inquests are long and painful. The Moroccan camp acknowledged that El Guerrouj had been the author of his own misfortune but were adamant that, had he stayed on his feet, the 20-year-old would have reversed the Gothenburg world championship placings with Morceli.

Cacho, too, was adamant in his claims that he had a genuine chance of winning at the time of the mishap but that is to overlook the proven finishing powers of Morceli who, himself, was the victim of traffic problems in the Barcelona Games.

Like El Guerrouj, Venuste Niyongabo of Burundi has frequently been cold-shouldered by Morceli this season in the careful orchestration of the Algerian's Grand Prix programme.

Oddly, Niyongabo himself now chose to opt out of the confrontation which Morceli could not have avoided, by declaring for the less competitive 5,000 metres championship and his pragmatism was vindicated in a decisive win in 13 minutes 08.16 seconds.

With the four fastest men in the world at the distance this season missing for various reasons, it was a fine piece of opportunism by Niyongabo who, before arriving in Atlanta, had run only two major 5,000 metres races.

It was Burundi's first gold medal success and the manner in which Niyongabo accelerated at the end of an absorbing tactical race in which the three Kenyans, Shem Kororia, Thomas Nyariki and Paul Bitok filled influential roles for a long part of the journey, brooked no argument.

Bob Kennedy, the American representative, led briefly on the second last lap and Dieter Baumann of Germany came from a long way back to make distant contact with the leaders as the charge for home took off.

Realistically, he couldn't expect to take ten metres out of a man of Niyongabo's pace over the last lap and, to the dismay of the big German contingent in another capacity crowd, he had to settle for fourth place behind Bitok and Khalid Boulami of Morocco.

The women's 1,500 metres championship, the event in which Sonia O'Sullivan dominated all the preGames discussion, went, as expected, to the Russian Svetlana Masterkova in a time of four minutes 00.83 seconds.

As ever, Kelly Holmes of Britain was profligate in terms of courage, choosing to run at the front of the race for two laps but, when it came down into a test of power and raw speed, she just didn't have the equipment to cope with Masterkova or the other two medallists, Gabriela Szabo of Romania and Theresia Kiesl of Austria.

Szabo was overcome with emotion after gaining the silver and, in hindsight, she was never going to catch Masterkova who won the 800 metres title earlier in the week.

Jan Zelezny denied Steve Backley the javelin title but the more gripping competition by far was the women's high jump championship which held he crowd spellbound until the Bulgarian, Stelka Kostadinova emerged to clear 2.05 metres and relegate the Greek athlete, Niki Bakogianni to second place.

Even the most partisan home supporters identified with the drama of that but, inevitably, it was the non-inclusion of Carl Lewis in the squad which surrendered the 4x100 metres relay title to Canada, which dominated their discussion.

Erv Hunt, the American rack and field coach, was one of the most unpopular men in town after he had denied Lewis the chance of taking his place in history as the most decorated Olympian of them all.

Instead, he preferred to go with the quartet which competed in the semi-finals - Jon Drummond, Tim Harden, Mike Marsh and Dennis Mitchell - and, in the event, it wasn't up to the challenge of matching the Canadian squad, anchored by Donovan Bailey.

After a stuttering start by Drummond, who, at one point, appeared to step on the lane markings, the Americans were always struggling and it is doubtful if even a vintage Lewis could have hauled in the reigning 100 metres champion over the last leg.

The point was not lost on Bailey. Hinting that Lewis had no appetite to run the relay, he said: "Carl's a smarter businessman than that. He wanted to stay golden. It wouldn't have been a smart investment to go out there and embarrass himself."

It was the first time that an American squad had lost a 4x100 metres relay, other than by disqualification, but the imbalance was redressed in part when local woman Gwen Torrence applied the gloss to victory in the women's equivalent.