SYDNEY -- So you liked watching the world's best-ever Olympic Games? Wait, there's more. Hold that remote control for the next sports extravaganza from Australia, the Sydney 2000 Paralympics.

Now arriving from 125 countries are 4,000 athletes who have overcome some horrific physical handicaps to compete for gold medals in sports that are beyond the capacity of most of us able-bodied couch potatoes.

And if the billions who admired the televised sporting entertainment from Homebush, Sydney, in recent weeks thought they had seen the ultimate in spectator hype, wait till these brave young men and women show real human courage. Already the Paralympic flame, lit in front of Parliament House, Canberra, by Ngunnawal Aborigines, is doing the rounds of state capitals before arriving at Stadium Australia for the Oct. 18 start. There, the "disabled" are in peak form, ready to perform physical feats most of us can only envy.