BEACH VOLLEYBALL : MISSION COMPLETE KIRALY AND STEFFES WIN BEACH GOLD MEDAL.

Byline: Christopher Clarey New York Times News Service

Now we know what a beach-volleyball star wears to an Olympic medal ceremony: a red, white and blue warm-up suit, a pink cap and bare feet.

Former UCLA star Karch Kiraly stood on the podium again Sunday, only this time there were flecks of sand clinging to his toes and eight more years of digs, spikes, cuts and sets clinging to his memory as he stared at the American flag rising before him.

Otherwise, it could have been Los Angeles or Seoul. There in the stands were his family, including his lean and proud father, Las, the Hungarian immigrant who was tearfully waving the flag of his adopted nation.

There around Kiraly's neck was a third Olympic gold medal - the result of a 12-5, 12-8 victory over Mike Dodd and Mike Whitmarsh - the most ever won by a men's volleyball player.

Kiraly's first two golds came indoors in 1984 and 1988, when he helped lead the American team to the top of a sport long dominated by Eastern Europeans. Sunday's gold came with his partner - another ex-Bruin, Kent Steffes - on the beach. Or, to be more accurate, a rain-swept, sand-filled pit laid down next to an artificial lake in suburban Atlanta.

The nearest real beach was more than a three-hour drive away in Savannah, but that was somehow appropriate because professional beach volleyball has proved resolutely flexible in its sun-block-slathered push to prominence.

Tournaments have been played in land-locked states; they have been played in the dead of winter in arenas in Paris. And now for the first time, the sport's practitioners can say they have played in the Olympics.

``This was an awesome feeling,'' Kiraly said. ``What I am most proud of is that I was able to win gold medals in both forms of volleyball.''

Kiraly, 35, and Steffes, 28, were never in serious danger of losing to fellow Californians Dodd and Whitmarsh. Before the match, none of them could remember precisely how many times they had met, but all agreed that Kiraly and Steffes had won a large majority of the matches.

And when Sunday's victory ended with Steffes triumphantly blocking Whitmarsh, there was neither surprise nor rancor.

``What can you say?'' Dodd asked. ``Losing to Karch Kiraly is nothing to go home ashamed about.''

Steffes also played a vital role with his big jump-serving, big hitting and sparkling defense, and it was defense that made the difference after Dodd and Whitmarsh evened the second game at 5-5.

Kiraly and Steffes won the next four points, the most memorable coming at 8-5 when Kiraly managed to get a piece of a Whitmarsh spike with his left arm. The ball sailed beyond the endline.

Steffes lunged and threw up a desperation, long-range underhand set that turned out to be perfectly placed. Kiraly smashed it away for perhaps the easiest of his 17 kills.

There was more to this match than athleticism, however. It was also charged with symbolism. Despite being a relatively new sport, beach volleyball already has two competing tours: the AVP (Association of Volleyball Professionals), based in the U.S., and the FIVB tour, run by the sport's international governing body, which is based in Lausanne, Switzerland.

Kiraly and Steffes, like Dodd and Whitmarsh, play on the AVP tour. But the FIVB set the rules and format for the Olympics, and its president, Ruben Acosta, mandated that only two of the three American teams could be chosen at the Olympic trials.

The other representative would be the top-ranked American team on the FIVB tour, which turned out to be two other former Bruins, Carl Henkel and 39-year-old Sinjin Smith, a beach legend who was no longer at his peak.

This did not sit well with the AVP tour, where nearly all the top Americans earn an increasingly good living. Nor did the fact that the ball, court dimensions and setting rules chosen for the Olympics all differed from AVP norms. With Kiraly acting as a spokesman, there were threats of a boycott of the trials, but those threats never materialized.

And after Kiraly and Steffes barely beat Smith and Henkel in the fourth round here, the All-American Olympic final turned out to be an All-AVP final, as well.

Acosta still was on hand to shake hands with the winners and runners-up at the medal ceremony.

``This was a chance to show that we have the best players in the world, as we have said all along,'' Kiraly said.

It was also significant that Kiraly's 61-year-old father was in Jonesboro to see it. Because of his anger with the FIVB's qualifying rules, Las Kiraly had refused to come to the Olympics but flew in at the last moment at his son's urging.

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2 Photos

Photo: (1--color) Kent Steffes, left, and Karch Kiraly w ave to the crowd after winning beach's volleyball's first gold medal. Kiraly helped popularize the sport after winning two golds in indoor volleyball.

(2--color) Karch Kiraly digs the ball in the gold-medal match against Mike Dodd and Mike Whitmarsh.

Associated Press