1992 Summer Olympics

For the world's greatest athletes, the final Olympic event will not be held on a field of play. Instead, it will occur behind closed doors.It is called a drug test.Four years after Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson tested positive for an anabolic steroid and was stripped of a 100-meter gold medal, the Olympic cops are back on the beat, ready to flag down potential drug abusers at the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, Spain.The weapons: beakers, sealed specimen bottles, and state-of-the-art labs.

She is everywhere. On magazine covers. On television. Bobbed brown hair and shimmering eyes. Infectious smile. Irresistible story.Kid swims fast. Very fast. Gets a world record. Becomes an Olympian before she even has a driver's license.Reporters crowd her life. They come from Europe and Asia and across the United States. Two hundred of them. NBC-TV personnel camp out in her home in Towson for two days. They film family meals. They follow her to school. They even troop into her basement bedroom, making sure not to puncture the water bed, and watch as she dresses up for a prom date.

With new uniforms, a new name and a generic flag and anthem, Yugoslavia may have a place in the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, Spain.International Olympic Committee officials in Lausanne, Switzerland, yesterday revealed details of a compromise that would enable Yugoslav athletes to skirt U.N. sanctions and appear in the Summer Games that begin July 25.The agreement:Wear white uniforms. Call themselves the Independent Team. Play under the Olympic flag and anthem.Yugoslav Olympic officials have until today to accept the proposal.

NEW ORLEANS -- Gail Devers crawled and cried.The soles of her feet were charred and covered with blood. They were so swollen she looked like she was wearing five pairs of athletic socks. They hurt so badly that she would hop from one foot to the other, until she finally fell to the floor, dragging herself across the hardwood from her bed to the bathroom, silver scales appearing on her knees, spreading to her arms and face.She had been an Olympian, a sprinter capable of soaring over hurdles.

Her back may be broken, but Betty Okino's Olympic dream isn't yet shattered.The woman considered the second-best gymnast in the United States is unlikely to compete at the Olympic trials, Saturday through June 13 at the Baltimore Arena. Yet with a resume that includes three world championship medals, Okino may receive a reprieve -- and a ticket to the team's final training session before the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, Spain.Confused? Don't be. In a subjectively judged sport, in which the goal is to put together the best team possible, Okino still could receive a spot on the six-woman team.

It's being billed as The Paddle Battle on the Savage River in Western Maryland.There will be clowns, mimes, bands and concessions. The more adventurous can even paddle a canoe or take a white-water raft ride down a river. But the main event, May 16-17, will be the 1992 U.S. Olympic team trials for white-water slalom racing.State officials presented their final plans for the Olympic trials yesterday. Tickets for each session will be $10, free for children under 12 accompanied by an adult. Tickets for the trials, which will be held near Bloomington, are available at all area TicketMaster outlets.

He will sit in the stands. He will watch the split times. He will offer advice.At the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, Spain, Murray Stephens will officially be nothing more, or less, than a spectator. But as the coach of 15-year-old swimming superstar Anita Nall of Towson, Stephens will be heard.Unofficially, of course.With the Barcelona Games destined to be the most bloated and overcrowded in history, there wasn't any room to place Stephens on the U.S. Olympic coaching staff. But he'll still go to Europe, supervising Nall's pre-Olympic workouts at a training camp in France, and then accompanying her to the Barcelona Games.

Pete Sampras will make sacrifices.He'll give up two weeks of easy money in tennis exhibitions. He'll stay in an athletes' village without air conditioning. He'll even play on red clay, which is about as appealing to him as watching a tractor pull.Ah, the things Sampras will do to represent the United States at the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, Spain."Playing the Olympics is something that I've always wanted to do," Sampras said. "No matter when they are or where they are, I wanted to go."

FAIRFAX, Va. -- When Terry Liskevych was named the U.S. Olympic women's volleyball team coach in 1985, he had only a few small problems."I didn't have a player, a file or a videotape," he said.But what Liskevych had was a dream -- to put together a program that would contend for an Olympic medal."I thought it would take four years," he said. "I was wrong."Now, with four months to go before the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, Spain, Liskevych and his U.S. team are making their final push to what they hope will be a gold medal.

LANDOVER -- Chicago Bulls superstar Michael Jordan announced last night that he will definitely participate in the 1992 Summer Olympics after settling a dispute over the use of his image on Olympics apparel."