BARCELONA ’92 OLYMPICS / DAY 14 : Controversy Mars American’s Victory : Freestyle wrestling: Booing drowns out national anthem after Jackson beats CIS foe in overtime.

Imagine you are Kevin Jackson, a 27-year-old wrestler from Ames, Iowa, and you have won a gold medal. It is, quite naturally, the culmination of a lifelong dream, because gold medals usually are. So you are standing on the medal stand and “The Star Spangled Banner” is playing . . . and you can’t hear a note, because virtually the entire arena is booing and whistling.

That happened here Friday and it was one of the more unpleasant moments of these Games.

It happened on the last day of the freestyle competition, on the day that John Smith won his second consecutive gold medal in the 136.5-pound class and Chris Campbell won the bronze at 198 pounds.

It happened one day after super-heavyweight Bruce Baumgartner had won his second gold medal--the first was in 1984--giving the U.S. a total of three golds. Not since 1924 had the United States won more than that in a non-boycott Olympics.

Jackson’s was the third gold. He beat Elmadi Jabraijlov of the Commonwealth of Independent States, 1-0, in sudden-death overtime. But that hardly tells the story.

The match went into overtime as a scoreless tie, and 46 seconds into the three-minute extra period, Jabraijlov drove Jackson toward the edge of the mat with an attempt at a single-leg takedown.

Jackson countered by getting into what he called “the crotch-lift position,” a defensive move, and got out of bounds. No points where awarded and CIS Coach Ivan Yarygin rushed onto the mat.

“It was total chaos, ridiculous,” Jackson said.

Yarygin argued for a minute, then walked off. Barely a minute later, Jackson scored his only point on a single-leg move, similar to Jabraijlov’s. And as soon as Jackson was awarded the point, he began to prance around the mat, shouting, “Gold medal! Gold medal!”

But the Russian coach and assistant Lukman Jabraijlov, the beaten wrestler’s older brother, were far more animated. The coach jumped to the mat and demonstrated that Jackson’s elbow had touched. The brother screamed repeatedly, at one point throwing both of his shower clogs across the arena.

A protest was filed immediately.

“It is known that this referee (a Bulgarian) is not fair,” Yarygin said. “The referee said equal points for equal moves.”

The protest was quickly denied.

“If a move takes place outside the mat, you cannot score points,” Mario Saltenig of Italy, chairman of the jury of appeals, said of the first dispute.

“We viewed the videotape, frame by frame, several times. The vote (by six members of FILA, wrestling’s international governing body) was unanimous.”

Which left only the medal ceremony. Jackson entered the arena with bronze medalist Rasul Khadem Azghadi of Iran. Jabraijlov was not with them.

But as the ceremony progressed, Jabraijlov appeared at the side of the arena, weeping as he was carried by his hulking coach. He was forced toward the stand and propped up above the No. 2 stand. He never stopped crying, although he did shake Jackson’s hand.

When an official moved toward Jabraijlov to put the silver medal around his neck, the wrestler refused. Instead, he took the medal in his hand.

Then came the playing of the national anthem, which was drowned out by a cascade of whistles and boos. Two Russian assistant coaches stood behind the medal stand and encouraged the crowd to boo more. Jabraijlov stood, bent at the waist, hands on his knees, sobbing. He left the stand immediately after the ceremony, still crying.

“It made me a little upset,” Jackson said. “I tried to keep myself up. Who’s going to remember that this happened, 20 years from now? All they’re going to remember is that I won the gold medal. It made (them) look bad, that’s all it did.”

Wrestling Medalists

* (125.5 POUNDS)

GOLD: Alejandro Puerto Diaz (Cuba)

SILVER: Serguei Smal (CIS)

BRONZE: Kim Yong Sik (North Korea)

* (136.5 POUNDS)

GOLD: John Smith (United States)

SILVER: Asgari Mohammadian (Iran)

BRONZE: Lazaro Reinoso (Cuba)

* (181.5 POUNDS)

GOLD: Kevin Jackson (United States)

SILVER: Elmadi Jabraijlov (CIS)

BRONZE: Rasul Khadem Azghadi (Iran)

* (198 POUNDS)

GOLD: Makharbek Khadartsev (CIS)

SILVER: Kenan Simsek (Turkey)

BRONZE: Chris Campbell (United States)