Juan Antonio Samaranch, the retired president of the International Olympic Committee died this week in Barcelona, Spain. He was 89.

Samaranch symbolized a lot about the Olympic Movement that was good and some not so good. Under his leadership, the Games became more financially secure, hugely popular and more open to women athletes. In 1996, the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games sold more tickets to women's events alone than Barcelona had sold total tickets in the previous Games. Women now hold 20 percent of the seats in the IOC governing structure.

On the flip side, while he was a self-effacing, almost shy individual, he allowed a culture of arrogance within the organization that was breath-taking to behold. I know. I dealt with a number of his lieges before and during the 1996 Centennial Olympic Games in Atlanta and they beat anything I ever saw in Congress on its most self-important and self-congratulatory day.

Samaranch considered himself a head of state, like our president or the Queen of England. That attitude permeated the entire organization. During the Atlanta Games, a group of us met with the IOC executive committee each morning to discuss what had happened the day before and to look at upcoming issues.

Most of the conversations were about their own creature comforts and personal situations and very little about the athletes. It was like dealing with a roomful of potentates.

However, cut Samaranch a little slack on one thing. He was and remains vilified in Atlanta for not uttering his usual bromide at the end of the Centennial Games about them being "The Best Games Ever," a description he even gave to the previous Winter Games in Lillehammer, Norway, even after he was branded a "Fascist" by Norwegian athletes and after he threatened to boycott those Games.

After Atlanta's Games, he referred to us as having held games that were "Most Exceptional" and wounded the city's civic pride in the process.

He was right and wrong.

The competition inside the venues was the best ever. Athletes managed to set 32 world records and 111 Olympic records. We sold more tickets than Los Angeles and Barcelona combined. More than five million people watched the competitions in person and a quarter of a billion watched on television around the world. Some 50,000 volunteers helped show the world that Southern hospitality is the real deal.

What did not work was just about everything outside the arenas, including a dysfunctional city government, a timid business community and a local media that did not exercise its responsibility to make the city walk its big talk.

While we were trying to raise $1.7 billion privately and indemnify Atlanta from any tax exposure, the city undertook a competitive marketing program, calling on the competitors of Olympic sponsors. As frustrating as that was, it was better than the city's marketing director, who wanted to put ads on stray dogs and beam messages off the moon.

In the meantime, the business community sat on its hands and said nothing lest they offend Atlanta Mayor Bill Campbell and be tagged "racists" in the process. That kind of timidity led to the infamous sidewalk vendors program promoted by Campbell and his henchmen at City Hall that choked traffic and ended up a disaster for all concerned - except perhaps the promoters.

Sadly, the Atlanta newspaper turned a blind eye to what was going on outside the venues. Like the business community, they were not willing to take on Campbell and be accused of racism. This was, after all, the paper of Ralph McGill, and the world was watching it, too.

My own theory about Samaranch's comments is that he had made it clear that there would be no discussion of the 1972 terrorist attacks at the Munich Games during our games. That was a sore subject. and when the bombing occurred in Centennial Olympic Park on July 27, it brought back bad memories.

Call our games "great" and raise questions about the bombing and the traffic snarls.

Call them "exceptional" and risk the ire of a leaderless city whose performance was anything but exceptional.

Whatever the reason, the Olympic chief's poke in the city's eye was not entirely misdirected. The City of Atlanta blew the 1996 Centennial Olympic Games. And for that, don't blame Juan Antonio Samaranch.

Blame a blowhard city that was in over its head.

You can reach Dick Yarbrough at yarb2400@bellsouth.net or P.O. Box 725373, Atlanta, Georgia 31139.