Sometimes It's True: Winning Isn't Everything.

Based on recent headlines, it would be tempting to think of the Olympic Games as a big business in which professional athletes, sometimes pumped up on performance-enhancing drugs, compete for lucrative commercial contracts.

But before you let your cynical imagination run wild, consider the case of two American athletes competing recently for one spot on the U.S. Olympic tae kwon do team, Esther Kim and Kay Poe.

After all the preliminary bouts, the final match came down to Kim and Poe, close friends who had trained together for 13 years. The winner would qualify for the Olympic Games in Australia this September; the other would stay home.

Trouble was, Poe, 18, had dislocated her knee in an earlier match. Unable to fight, she was compelled to forfeit, despite having previously beaten Kim. That's when, for one brief shining moment, the Olympic spirit flared up in Kim's heart. The 20-year-old told her friend she would drop out of the match, guaranteeing Poe a chance in Australia for a gold medal.

"It felt like the only right thing to do," Kim says. "It did hurt, but winning a gold medal isn't everything."

Contrast that with various recent events that have cast a pall on the Olympic flame: Investigators are currently examining whether officials in Salt Lake City made illegal payments and gifts to Olympic officials to win the city the right to host the 2002 Winter Games. Australian representatives made similar payments to bring this fall's Games to Sydney.

Add to that a series of drug scandals in which athletes have been caught using performance-enhancing drugs to boost their bodies into the gold-medal range--including the suspension last summer of two Olympic gold medalists for drug use. Not a pretty picture--and all the more reason Kim's sacrifice will stand out as one of this year's Olympic highlights, even before the Games have begun. Poe, in return, plans to buy Kim a ticket to Sydney.