AN OLYMPIC CENTURY REVEALED IN DOCUMENTARY.

Byline: Ray Richmond Daily News Television Writer

For anyone but Bud Greenspan, trying to boil 100 years of Olympic Games down to three hours of film would prove an editing nightmare.

But it's merely business as usual for the 69-year-old moviemaker who has made the definitive documentary about every Olympics since 1964, when he released the landmark ``Tokyo Olympiad.'' He checks in tonight with a three-hour highlight reel titled ``100 Years of Olympic Glory'' (7:35 p.m. on TBS).

Greenspan is accustomed to paring bundles of material down to a workable space. Each Summer Olympics, he and his Cappy Productions staff shoots nearly a million feet of film over the course of 16 days for what will ultimately be a two-hour movie.

The problems of compiling the most memorable moments in the 100 years of the modern Olympic Games dating back to Athens in 1896 (and looking ahead to Atlanta this summer) were not what to include, but what to leave out, Greenspan said.

Indeed, what distinguishes Greenspan's work - besides the dramatically spare narration and utter lack of pro-America jingoism - is his focus on the human drama involving all Olympic competitors, not just the winners, and not merely in the marquee events such as track and field, boxing, basketball, gymnastics and swimming.

``I don't do jocks,'' Greenspan insisted. ``I tell human-interest stories in a sports context. Sometimes, the guy who finishes last is more interesting than the gold medalist.

``We never pay enough honor to those athletes who put in the same training as the winner, lose by a fraction of an inch and wind up fourth best in the world. And even if you lose in the generic sense, you've won in the game of life.''

A perfect example is a story in ``100 Years of Glory'' about John Stephen Akhwari, a 1968 marathoner from Tanzania who was seriously injured during the race and was forced to finish bloodied and bandaged an hour after the winner.

``I asked him afterward why he finished when he had no chance,'' Greenspan recalled, ``and he said, `My country did not send me 9,000 miles to start the race. They sent me 9,000 miles to finish the race.' To me, that's a great athlete.''

The special also recalls a French distance runner named Alain Mimoun who finished second to Czechoslovakia's Emil Zatopek in three consecutive Olympic races and finally beat him in 1956.

Greenspan also has an admitted fascination with athletes who overcome great injuries to triumph. He honors two of those in the special: Japan's Shun Fujimoto, who won a gymnastics gold medal in 1976 despite having to dismount from his rings routine onto a broken knee, and American discus thrower Al Oerter, who won the gold medal in four straight Olympics from 1956 to '68 despite never being the favorite or the world champion going in. Oerter's toughest one came in '64, when he tore cartilage in his rib cage yet still competed.

``He couldn't get any drugs or anesthesia to numb it, either,'' Greenspan said. ``On his fifth throw, he broke the Olympic record and then blacked out for a few seconds from the pain. I'll never forget what he told me later: `Bud, when you make the Olympic team, you die before you don't compete.' That really stuck with me.''

The ``100 Years of Olympic Glory'' special likewise focuses on many of the more familiar great Olympic champions like track and field legend Jesse Owens, swimmer Mark Spitz, Russian gymnast Olga Korbut and Cuban boxer Teofilo Stevenson.

Greenspan also includes material on the politics and tragedy that have marred the Games, including the terrorism that struck the '72 Olympics, the Black Power salute of American sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos in '68, and the 1980 and '84 Olympic boycotts by the United States and the Soviet Union, respectively.

But as Greenspan points out, all of the negativism tends to stop when it comes to the athletic competition itself.

``You almost never find bad sportsmanship in the Olympics,'' he said. ``All of the competitors know they all got there for the same reason, because they're the best. There are no political appointments, no salary demands. It's pure.''