THE biggest, most commercial, most hyped Olympic Games in history. The last of this century. A Games which represents a turning point for sport.

These were the Olympics where US television shoved back the track and field timetables so that Michael Johnson would go prime time, coast to coast, as he swooshed into the history books. Just before he swooshed in, the cameras came to rest on Johnson's pair of gold, running shoes and, somewhere, Nike executives high fived each other.

These were the Games when five athletes out of almost 11,000 competitors were banned for drugs, when commercial imperatives prevented sport from truly going after its cheats, when the science of cheating actually lapped the science of detection.

These were the Games when US television edged the sport of boxing closer to Olympic extinction. NBC hardly showed a punch. Gymnastics, the systematic exploitation of female adolescents, dominated. NBC sent Olympic officials off this week to come up with ways of creating more gymnastics. Television shall have what television demands.

These were the Games where US television campaigned nakedly and belatedly for Carl Lewis to be included in the US relay team. When Lewis, track and field's greatest showman, won his fourth long jump gold, his ninth gold overall, America finally fell in love with him and he became a ratings ticket. Television immediately looked for a way to get Lewis back into the Olympics.

There was more. Baywatch with balls made its debut in the form of beach volleyball. A truly global sport like squash still awaits its turn. Any guesses as to why squash will never be in the Olympics?

These were the Games held in the home of boosterism, where all the private money that goldcard America could muster still came up short, where the glitches threatened to submerge the sport, where the naked hucksterism almost strangled sports' dignity, where the price gouging and tourist fleecing were turned into an art.

These were the Games where Irish women made the stories and Irish men made fools of themselves, squabbling like children as the cameras of the world recorded it all.

That's the bad news. As is usual with Olympic celebrations, the deluge of good news moments are what will be written into the history books.

It was good that Erv Hunt stuck to his guns and kept Carl Lewis out of the relay. It was good that journalists asked questions about drug cheats. Given the level of official malfeasance running through the top levels, sport journalists (sad to say) are the only hope sport has got. To be cynical is not to ask questions about remarkable improvements. To be cynical is to say that everybody is doing it, so why shouldn't we. To be cynical is to allow sport be turned into a battlefield for chemically inflated grotesques. So that was good.

Good, too, that 76,000 attended the women's soccer final and saw skills to justify their time, good that the rest of the world appears slowly to be catching up on the US basketball dream teams.

Lots of good things. Cuban baseball excellence. Donovan Bailey erasing the memory of Ben Johnson. The greatest weightlifting competition in history: Suleymanoglu and Leonidas toughing it out as the stakes kept getting impossibly higher. There was the grace of Perec, the eyes of the Russian Greco Roman wrestler Karolen. There was the divding of Fu Mingxia, the running of Johnson, the grit of Pinsent and Redgrave, and the sense of big time brought by Lewis.

There were the disappointments like O'Sullivan, Sotomayor and Bubka and there were the surprises like Hemmings, Rodal and Enquist. There was the lost dignity of Christie and Evans and there was the radiance of Cuban boxer Ariel Hernandez and the determination of Gebrselassie.

For all the corporate feasting and overcrowding and standing in line, there was a genuine friendliness from Atlantans, and a sense of hospitality which was too insistent to be counterfeit.

There was the relentless hype and there was the artistry of the marketing which surrounded these Games. Sport enjoys a tremendous spin off boost from the packaging the corporate world has put on it. This reporter was most taken with the moody black and white add, shot on a beach at dusk, with a quiet voice intoning: "I throw a shot putt 29 feet, I run the 100 metres in under 11 seconds, I have jumped further than all but 128 men in history. My toenails are painted red."

There, as the shot switches, is a fleeting glance of Jackie Joyner Kersee's wonderfully expressive features. She has been one of the greatest athletes in history, she said farewell at these Games with dignity and warmth. Her toenails are painted red.

Other goodbyes, too. Marcus O'Sullivan won't see another Olympics. Nor will Sally Gunnell or Linford Christie. Carl Lewis is gone now, too. A classroom of gymnasts will pass into troubled adolescence. Shaquille O'Neal will ponder how to spend $127 million. Francis Barrett will fret about getting electricity for his home.

In Atlanta, the weather blessed these Games by being merely moderately hot and there was the elegance of some of this burgeoning city's sports facilities. All who saw them agreed that the prospect of a Dublin Olympics is a cynical joke.

If sport is to have a chance, sport must always come first. Ahead of cheats, bickering officials, corporate expediency and ratings wars.

For many, many moments in the past fortnight, sport came first. The excellence and genius of the world's best was enough to take our breadth away and distract us from the daily grind.

For that alone these Olympics have been worthwhile and memorable.