future Olympians are to "reach beyond what they thought they were ever capable of''.

Vice-president of the Bermuda Olympic Association, Mr. James Amos, delivered this message to Hamilton Lions yesterday, after describing the "Barcelona experience''.

Mr. Amos praised members of the Olympic team for their years of dedication, sacrifice and self-discipline. The qualifying levels for the Games were "gradually creeping upwards'' he said, requiring more effort and skill than ever before.

Pointing out that half the 1992 team were students, and the rest were young adults and amateur athletes with outside careers, Mr. Amos said athletes "from a small country like Bermuda ... deserve our admiration and support.'' Mr. Amos addressed the achievements of the athletes which represented the Island in Barcelona, and said the entire contingent was deserving of praise despite the lack of medals.

On this note, Mr. Amos mentioned an Italian statistical analysis of the Games' results, published last month in The Royal Gazette , which said Bermuda was the big Olympic winner on the basis of population.

He said he felt a full report, which is due out next month, would show that smaller nations "contribute the most to the overall success of the Olympic Games''.

The Olympic Association officer also took a well-placed swipe at the United States' NBA basketball team, saying Bermuda sent its own "dream team''. But unlike the Americans who were there "to put people in their place'' (to quote one of the NBA players), Bermuda's team was "more valuable to the principles of the Olympic movement as it is not driven by money''.

Calling the modern Olympic Games a combination of "media monster'' and "the greatest sports show on Earth'', Mr. Amos said it cost $600 million to buy the television rights to beam the Games to 3.5 billion worldwide viewers.

On top of this, companies such as Coca-Cola, Mars and Visa paid $30 million each for "the exclusive right to be linked to the five rings''.

Although much of the money does filter down to Olympic sports development programmes, Mr. Amos said the "media monster ... must be fed with something new and different in each successive Oympiad to extend the previous interest level by television and sponsors''.

This, he said, was the reason behind more and more professionals being allowed to participate in the "amateur'' Games.