Soviet Union’s Flame Goes Out for Good : Future: CIS, the last vestiges of an old power, wins the most medals, but its breakup leaves a void for the United States to fill in Atlanta.

More countries than ever came to the 1992 Summer Olympics, not to praise the Soviet Union but to bury it.

By any other name, the former Soviets, known here as the Unified Team or the Commonwealth of Independent States, were still No. 1 in the medal standings, as they have been in seven of the nine Summer Games they have entered since 1956.

But Barcelona is the end of the line. As of today, the 12 former republics competing as part of the CIS--Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania seceded earlier--will begin organizing their own teams.

That will leave a void at the top, but it will remain unfilled no longer than it takes to say Tara.

After American athletes won their 108th medal Sunday, their most in a non-boycotted competition since 1908, U.S. Olympic Committee officials predicted that the results will be even more impressive in the 1996 Games at Atlanta.

“There are a lot of young people out there who are focusing on the Games in the United States,” the USOC’s executive director, Harvey Schiller, said.

These are heady times for the USOC. Four years after it commissioned George Steinbrenner to solve its problems, many of them simply disappeared, beginning with the gold medal-oriented, government-funded sports systems of two former countries, the Soviet Union and East Germany, that were making it difficult for U.S. athletes to compete in many sports.

The USOC also benefited from an unexpected development when the International Olympic Committee chose Atlanta over sentimental favorite Athens to organize the 1996 Summer Games.

Expecting increased corporate support over the next four years from U.S. companies hoping to be associated with the Atlanta Games, the USOC is planning on a $100-million increase in its quadrennial budget--from $400 million to $500 million--and its treasurer, LeRoy Walker, said Sunday that it might reach $600 million.

Equally important is the increased exposure that the so-called minor sports are expected to receive between now and 1996. Considering that more than half of the U.S. medals, 57, were won in only two of the 26 medal sports--swimming and track and field--the USOC is hoping that many of the other sports can regain the momentum they had before the 1984 Summer Olympics at Los Angeles.

But despite the optimism, not all is well with the Olympic movement in the United States.

Of the four athletes who were disqualified for testing positive for banned, performance-enhancing drugs through Sunday, two, throwers Jud Logan of North Canton, Ohio, and Bonnie Dasse of Costa Mesa, were Americans. Traces of an anabolic steroid, clenbuterol, were discovered in their systems.

“We were not embarrassed as much as we were disappointed,” Schiller said. “Both athletes were tested at the Olympic trials. Clenbuterol is a drug that takes less than 48 hours to clear the system. With full knowledge of that, they both took the drug.”

The USOC, Schiller said, is more concerned about the development of its athletes. That, traditionally, has been provided by high school and college athletic programs, but they are cutting back because of financial constraints, particularly in the area of non-revenue producing sports. That, in most cases, includes track and field, which produces the most U.S. medals.

“We have, as a nation, the responsibility and opportunity to make sure that our young people have a chance to compete,” Schiller said. “That’s our challenge at the USOC and a national challenge as well.”

Schiller said the USOC is working with the NCAA to develop a plan to provide tuition assistance to athletes in Olympic sports so that the colleges do not have to bear the entire cost.

“We have to be ever-changing and reflect,” Schiller said. “We are in the long-range planning process to look at our organization beyond the year 2000.”

The USOC will have to be creative to assure that its athletes maintain their advantage over rapidly improving competitors, particularly Africa and Asia. China finished fourth in the medal standings here and could join the United States as a sports superpower by 2000, particularly if Beijing wins its bid for the Games of that year.

Sixty-four countries won medals this year, 12 more than in 1988, and 20 of them won at least 10.

“To that extent, we now truly have a world games,” Walker said.