COMMENTARY\Foreboding for the Olympics.

Byline: Hal Bock Associated Press 

With 159 days to go before the Opening Ceremonies at Atlanta, America's Olympic movement steps center stage today. It is a shaky stage, however, a stage that would have been best avoided.

In Philadelphia, there will be a memorial service for Dave Schultz, gunned down two weeks ago in a bizarre episode that shook the wrestling community.

In Orlando, U.S. Swimming launches a hearing into 15-year-old Jessica Foschi, already on probation and facing a possible suspension from the sport for two years.

The sad part of all this is that Schultz wanted nothing more than to wrestle and Foschi wants nothing more than to swim.

Once, those would have been simple, wholesome ideals, endorsed by the Olympic movement. Instead, those goals deteriorated rather rapidly, doomed by the complicated modern world of sports.

"We've seen dramatic changes in sports and not necessarily changes to make sports more noble," said Richard Lapchick, director of the Center for the Study of Sport in Society at Northeastern University. "The stakes are no longer striving for a higher level. It has become winner takes all. Our attitude toward winning is different. Now you must win.

"Sport now is played in a society that has unraveled dramatically."

Nowhere was that more evident than in the strange death of Dave Schultz.

Schultz won a gold medal in the 1984 Olympics and for some athletes, that might have been enough. For him, it was not. The passion for his sport still burned brightly within him and he had embarked on a comeback, training for a chance at competing in Atlanta.

That led him, and a number of other freestyle wrestlers, to the Pennsylvania estate of chemical heir John E. du Pont, an eccentric who enjoyed tooling around his grounds in a tank.

It wasn't good enough for du Pont, a main underwriter of the U.S. Wrestling Federation, to be simply a fan of the sport. He felt a need to be more involved, dangerously involved, it turns out. And, armed with deep pockets, he was welcomed into the community, his peculiar behavior notwithstanding.

Now, Dave Schultz is dead and John E. du Pont is charged.

"Because we do not subsidize our Olympic athletes - and I wouldn't have it any other way - the system creates aberrations and awkward situations," said John Lucas, professor of sports history at Penn State University. "Wealthy individuals and companies like Coca-Cola and Reebok step in. Schultz was a victim of this. From an amoral, not immoral, point of view he allowed himself to be a supported by a millionaire, to do what one must do to pursue the goal.

"Foschi was caught up in the same syndrome. She wanted to be a great Olympic athlete and so she may have turned to devices beyond the ordinary rules."

Foschi tested positive for steroids at last August's national championship at Pasadena. She was placed on two years' probation by U.S. Swimming and now, in what amounts to a retrial, could be banned from the sport for two years.