With the 1998 Goodwill Games just around the corner, those who have long said that the international event will help promote Nassau as an extraordinary place to compete, do business and visit, will be hard-pressed to make their case.

It's not that we are willing them to fail ¬ quite the contrary, we would love for the Goodwill Games to be everything our local officials have said they would be in terms of further revving up our local economy.

More than anything, we would love to see county, town and village coffers swell. We'd love local restaurants and retail establishments to do gangbuster business, but the truth is, the Goodwill Games, an extraordinary event, are still just a one-shot deal.

If local officials are truly intent on promoting Nassau and the local municipalities therein through sports ¬ and all indications are that they are ¬ then it's going to take more than "goodie bags" and flyers distributed at local railroad stations. Promoting Nassau through sporting ¬ and for that matter, cultural events ­ will take time, patience, and effort.

For examples of what we'd like to see happen in the future, one need look no further than the efforts promoted by Louisville, Kentucky and Baltimore, Maryland, surrounding the first two legs of the Triple Crown in horse racing (particularly relevant to Nassau, given that the third leg of the Triple Crown is run here each June).

Rather than just considering the Kentucky Derby an historic horse race, the city fathers in Louisville, Kentucky long ago, determined that it would be to their, and their constituents benefit to try and capitalize on the event, which was bringing tens of thousands of spectators to the periphery of the city.

What they came up with was a multi-tiered approach to civic promotion, the centerpiece of which is the annual Kentucky Derby festival. The list of individual events for this dynamic undertaking, printed out from the Derby's internet site, fills 16 pages.

The events include balls, parades, a hot air balloon race, night time cruises, amateur athletic competitions, specific activities geared toward young people and seniors, several "academic challenges," art contests, and concerts.

In all, just looking at that calendar, there are more than 40 different events planned in Louisville for the two weeks leading up to the Derby ¬ and very few of them transpire at Churchill Downs, which is busily preparing for the race itself.

In addition, in other parts of the city, more than two dozen other athletic events, both participatory and spectator, have been held over the past two weeks, including everything from laser tag to tae kwon do.

All of this is built around a two-minute horse race which is held late on a Saturday afternoon every May.

Going on at the same time as all this are the Derby balls, 11 in all, for which the average Joe with a few bucks to spare can buy tickets and at which are always a host of Hollywood, media, and sports celebrities.

Baltimore, Maryland, where the Preakness Stakes is held the second week of May, takes a similar, though somewhat smaller scale approach.

Their Preakness-related festival lasts about a week, but like Louisville, they have everything from hot air balloon flights to concerts to schooner races and ice cream eating contests.

As in Louisville, these are big, big doings, and they spread the benefits of a very brief horse race throughout an entire city.

What's Nassau to do? Well, to begin with, it has to do more to capitalize on the Belmont Stakes, the third leg of the Triple Crown, which is held in early June.

Estimates released by the office of New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani shortly before last year's Belmont Stakes put the economic impact of a potential Triple Crown run at $13 million for New York City and surrounding communities.

Typically the metropolitan area nets about $7.7 million as a result of the Belmont Stakes, mostly from tourist spending, including entertainment and transportation, and the "ripple effect" associated with such expenditures throughout the economy.

With that kind of revenue coming into the area, surely we can afford a series of events ¬ concerts, art and scholarly competitions, balloon races and the like ¬ that will distribute the economic fruits of this annual event more evenly throughout the county.

Further, as more and more sports venues are developed in Nassau, ranging from the proposed new Veterans Memorial Coliseum, the new soccer fields at Mitchel Park, and the new aquatic center, more has to be done to make these places not just "facilities," but part of the fabric of each of our lives whenever a significant event is held at one of them.

Of course, not much of this can be put into place for this year's Goodwill Games, but the games themselves can allow the groundwork to be set in place.

Let's do the best we can to emulate the Louisville and Baltimore example. If we do, in the long, run, Nassau may well become a more affordable, more exciting, and more viable a place to live.