IT RAINED, mercifully, in Atlanta yesterday. Heavy, monsoon like, it washed the streets and the pristine Olympic complex in readiness for the opening of the Centennial Games here on Friday.

For six years now, much of Georgia's burgeoning economy has been pumped, enthusiastically, into the city which aspires to out strip all others in the extravagance and occasional vulgarity of Olympian pageantry.

Yet, with the watch tower in downtown Peachtree Street, monitoring the countdown to the kindling of the flame in the Olympic Stadium, it is the mundane matter of the weather which dominates conversation.

Across in the athletes' village where some 150 of the 19 competing teams, are now in situ the Irish were among the arrivals yesterday the rain was the topic which, untypically, took precedence over more conventional talking points such as statistics and performances.

At this advanced stage of preparation, training for most amounted to no more than light jogging in the village. But the waves of steam rising from the track suited figures, portrayed the graphic evidence of people in trouble and, in some instances, fear.

"I've trained for four years, worked harder than at any time in my life and I'm scared," said Alex Storey, a member of the British rowing team.

"You prepare as well as you can but, deep down, you worry intensely about the heat and humidity and how it's going to affect you."

For many, the decision to put the finest of all sporting celebrations at risk on the alter of commercialism, in the land of Coca Cola, is a travesty which calls into question the very principles of Olympicism.

One of the hundreds of billboards in the main press centre reminds us that that there is a symposium in Atlanta today to debate the effects of heat and humidity on horses.

As yet, there are no formal arrangements in place to discuss the consequences of the city's notorious weather cocktail to humans or how long distance runners, for example, can be expected to react from gulping mouthfuls of air which, in other regions of the north American continent, might be construed as smog.

Mary Slaney, like the majority of the American team, is shunning the familiarity of the athletes village to get ready at the squad's main base, safely removed from Georgia.

She makes no attempt to dodge the points at issue but emphatically refutes the commonly held theory that conditions will favour her compatriots.

"There is no cop out it's the same for everybody," she said. "You take it as you find it and I guess the story will be the same as it's always been the people who perform best on the day, get the medals."

Pragmatism at work, or just another piece of talk up in the making of a great American dream? The drama about to unfold will tell all but, for a city about to put itself in the eye of the world, the growing sense of excitement is palpable.

You know that the action is ready to roll in an Olympic city when police and security personnel begin to outnumber construction workers. And, when the custodians of law and order in turn find themselves in a minority with tourists, the hour of decision is almost upon us.

Yesterday, some 220,000 travellers passed through Hart field International Airport, a massive logistical exercise which, even by the most critical standards, was undertaken with precision.

By the end of the week, close on a million tourists will have converged on a city which, even in normal times, grapples with enormous road traffic problems. Ironically, the approaches to the Olympic complex yesterday were, at times, almost deserted, save only for the camera carrying tourists, craning their necks at the buildings breaking the skyline.

That's down, directly, to the fact that the local populace many of whom are now working staggered hours to reduce the hazards of peak hour travelling are not permitted to bring their cars within designated areas.

Elsewhere in the city, the International Olympic Committee was in session for the 105th time, still being queried on the sanctions to be invoked against athletes taking performance enhancing drugs and still recoiling from perceptive action.

Chastened by the infamous Butch Reynolds saga, IOC officials, no less than their counterparts in the IAAF, are now, it seems, markedly less willing to shoot from the hip in addressing the malpractices of modern sport.

Juan Antonio Samaranch, the IOC President, is under pressure on a different front, from the relatives of the 11 Israelis who lost their lives in the Munich massacre 24 years ago.

Fourteen of those orphaned on that fateful day, have been invited to watch the Games in which Palestine, ironically, will be represented for the first time. But Samaranch, it would appear, has retreated from an earlier undertaking to refer to the dead Israelis during his oration before the official opening of the Centennial Games.

Anouk Spitzer, whose father Andrei, a fencing coach, was one of those murdered by Palestinian gunmen, maintains that the IOC President promised to refer to the matter when she discussed it with him last year.

"Now he informs us that the matter is to sensitive she said "All we ask is for a few words to commemorate our parents but even that, it appears, is too much for the people who run the Games."

. Sweden's leading morning daily newspaper Dagens Nyheter said yesterday that the Swedish capital was favourite among the members of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to host the 2004 Olympic games.

"Officially there are no comments from (IOC president) Juan Antonio Samaranch, but DN sources say that Stockholm is the winner," the paper said.

A presentation by Stockholm to the IOC in Atlanta in support of its bid was the best of the 11 candidate cities, DN said.

"Top brass in the IOC think, according to DN's sources, that Stockholm won the battle of the Olympic Games 2004" the broad sheet said.

In contrast, a majority of Stockholmers said in a recent poll they believed the city should withdraw its bid for financial reasons.