HERE'S A VOTE FOR GRACIOUSNESS IN VICTORY.

Byline: KAREN CROUSE

SYDNEY, Australia - Someone defected Saturday night at Olympic Stadium.

It happened right after the men's 400-meter relay final, right there in the stands. Watching the victorious U.S. squad of Jon Drummond, Bernard Williams, Brian Lewis and Maurice Greene wear Old Glory as a turban, wear their immaturity on their sleeves, wear out the infinite patience of the Games' Australian hosts, I decided I could no longer in good conscience let them represent me.

So I defected. I threw a blue fleece with AUS on the back over my USA T-shirt. Australia, you see, does more than juxtapose the same three letters nonsimilarly, it has its priorities in a different order, too.

Grace and modesty matter here. They will tolerate arrogance but never admire it.

Drummond, Williams, Lewis and Greene might have picked up a few slang expressions in their three weeks here but obviously none of the Aussies' manners rubbed off on them. After repelling the challenge of Brazil and Cuba, the American foursome made a mockery of the victory lap.

Williams couldn't go three steps without stopping to strike a comic pose for the camera; Lord knows his eyebrows had more arch than his feet.

Greene kept stopping to cup his ears, as if to let the Olympic Stadium sellout crowd know it wasn't loving him enough.

Lewis wrapped an American flag around his head and imperiously made his way around the track like a sheik coming around to be adored by his subjects.

Drummond tried to drum up chants of ``U-S-A'' from a decorous Australian crowd that was rendered speechless by what it was witnessing.

Watching the scene unfold, I felt the same annoyance as when a linebacker makes a tackle and then breaks into a dance over his victim. I wanted to scream, ``Act like you've been there before.''

Shedding emotions is a lot like shedding clothing; there's a time and a place to let your exuberance all hang out. On the world's stage, in front of a television audience in the billions, is not it.

As irony would have it, Henry Kissenger was enlisted to hand out the medals in the men's sprint relay. I'm quite sure Kissenger didn't see this much posturing in all his diplomatic dealings with Communist leaders in the 1970s.

As the national anthem played on, the Americans took the medals the former U.S. Secretary of State had just draped around their necks and bounced them off their foreheads (Lewis), raised them to their eye like a monocle (Williams) and posed for posterity (Williams, Greene and Drummond).

Star-spangled blemish?

Nanceen Perry, a member of the U.S. sprint relay team that won the bronze medal, thought so. She said she and relay mates Chryste Gaines and Torri Edwards watched the men's medal ceremony and ``were kind of ashamed.''

Greene and Co. clearly got so caught up in the moment, they forgot they weren't pro wrestlers acting in their own narrow self-interest but athletes representing the United States of America.

``How do you expect anybody to respect our flag if you don't respect our flag?'' Perry said. ``I think foreigners think (Americans) are rude, anyway. It just kind of confirms the whole image the world has of us.''

Most young men and women who wear USA on their backs understand they are diplomats in track suits.

``We come to this competition to represent the USA proudly,'' said Antonio Pettigrew, a member of the victorious U.S. 1,600 relay. ``It's more of a spectrum than just what's here. It's for all the world to see.''

It's a good thing the world wasn't privy to the American sprinters' antics in their post-ceremony press conference. Williams stood on a chair behind the dais and - what else? - posed. All four broke into a silly song.

At length the Americans were joined by the Cuban team and one of its sprinters was asked a question. While the question was being translated and the Cuban was answering in his native tongue, Williams made noises into his microphone as though he were laying down a bass-heavy track and Lewis rocked back and forth in his chair as if the earphones he was wearing were channeling music instead of the English translations of the Cuban's musings.

When a U.S. reporter called them out on their behavior on the awards podium, Greene and Drummond at first tried to turn it into one more comedic sound byte. When he realized his bombastic act was falling flat, Greene seemed genuinely stricken.

For the past four years he and Drummond have been the ringleaders of a circus pitched by Emanuel Hudson and UCLA coach John Smith with an eye toward drawing more attention to track and more corporate interest in its stars.

Sometime during the contentious question-and-answer session, it seemed to dawn on Greene that in their drive to become American icons, he and his teammates had come off looking like idiots.

By the time he left the podium, all the hot air had left Greene. He looked as deflated as a punctured balloon.

``I don't think we offended anybody by our actions,'' he said. ``If (people) were offended, I'm sorry.''

The apology is a good start. But as any sprinter can tell you, the finish is what really matters.

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Photo: U.S. 400 relay team members, from left, Brian Lewis, Bernard Williams III, Maurice Greene and Jonathan Drummond, celebrate after winning gold.

Doug Mills/Associated Press