OLYMPIC GLORY TAKES BACK SEAT.

Byline: KAREN CROUSE

SYDNEY, Australia - I want to celebrate the Olympics. I want to write about hurdler Glory Alozie's courage in competing two weeks after her fiance was struck and killed by a car here.

I want to record the rapture on sprinter Marion Jones' face when she crossed the finish line and realized she's living her girlhood dream here.

I want to believe that if you keep banker's hours at the pool and in the weight room and at the aerobics studio you can cash in like swimmer Inge de Bruijn did here.

I don't want to doubt Inger Miller when she says she has a hamstring injury and Regina Jacobs when she says she has a viral infection and Marie-Jose Perec when she behaves as though she's a woman on the verge of a breakdown and C.J. Hunter when he says knee surgery kept him from throwing here.

I want to revel in the human condition, not be revolted by it.

But the Bulgarian weightlifting team won't let me.

A Romanian rower won't let me.

The Uzbekistan track-and-field trainer won't let me.

The Chinese won't let me.

Every new drug cheat outed here chips away at the Olympics' glossy veneer. Pretty soon it's going to be all over, except for the hypocrisy.

Maybe it already is.

If the Olympics can be bought at any cost, why shouldn't athletes want to win at any price?

Today dawned dark and cloudy for Olympic romantics. ``The Sydney Daily Telegraph'' dropped a bomb on Olympic Millennium Park. It reported that Hunter, the reigning world champion in the shot put and Jones' husband, tested positive for the steroid nandrolone, hastening his withdrawal from these Games.

The IAAF later today confirmed: Hunter didn't have a knee problem; he had a pee problem.

The Hunter story quickly grew legs and took off like Maurice Greene.

Lord knows it's going to be no small distraction for Jones, who is trying to become the first women in track and field to win five gold medals in a single Olympics.

At the Atlanta Olympics four years ago, Irish swimmer Michelle Smith aroused suspicion because her husband, Erik de Bruin, had been banned from competing internationally in the discus because of a failed drug test.

Of course, this guilt by association would later become guilt by administration when one of Smith's drug tests was found to have been tampered with.

The sad truth is it no longer takes a tainted drug test to besmirch a reputation.

I want to believe Jones is different. In my heart, I hope she's purer than spring water. But my head is spinning.

The mere hint of scandal is a disgrace to U.S. track. The sport's national governing body already is reeling from accusations by Arne Ljungqvist, the chief anti-doping official of track and field's international governing body, that U.S. track bigwigs have withheld information on up to 1 1/2 dozen positive tests over the past two years.

Anything to grow the sport, I guess. Hypocrisy, thy name is U.S.A.

Who cares if athletes are ingesting stuff that makes their jaws jut out and their blood vessels constrict and their hearts enlarge when there's a cash cow to be milked?

Every new doping allegation is disastrous for the other athletes competing here, none of whom is fast enough or strong enough to avoid the fallout.

Track and field may be a sport of individuals, but those who truly love it bear a collective responsibility to clean up the sport the way Olympic organizers, in concert with environmentalists, did Homebush Bay in preparation for these 27th Summer Games:

With a sound blueprint, lots of money and a deadline.

Until the Games are sanitized, all the compelling human interest stories will inevitably take a backseat to human growth hormone and the like.

I wish I could have used this space to describe Alozie's first race since the death of her 22-year-old fiance Hyginus Anayo Anugo. How the Nigerian blasted out of the blocks, as though propelled by some invisible force, and won her heat to advance to the quarterfinals.

Afterward, Alozie said she was powered by God's grace.

``God is my strength,'' she said. For the sake of the Olympics, I found myself praying she was telling the whole truth.