Over the next four months, Atlanta will host 18 major national and international competitions–18 of them in a three-week period starting July 29-at Olympic sites. They are designed to test arenas, security, technology–virtually everything but the impact of hundreds of thousands of tourists trying to buy peaches to ship home. The first test event, the U. S. rowing championships at a new course on Lake Lanier, 60 miles north of Atlanta, won four-star reviews. “The first run gives people confidence,” says Dave Maggard, ACOG’s managing director of sports. “It gets people jacked up.”

Payne is always jacked up. His constant refrain: “We’re going to have the best Olympic Games ever.” Some folks at AGOG tried to curb his optimism–especially when it came to projecting financial surpluses–fearing that everyone would arrive hat-in-hand. For a while Billy restrained himself, talking about how he could only control the Games “within the fences.” But he was soon working “outside the fences” – most notably in the poor, black neighborhoods that abut the principal venues as well as the Olympic village.

Residents of one of those neighborhoods, Summerhill, were particularly wary since 30 years before, Atlanta’s baseball stadium had been built there without so much as a “by your leave.” Now the new Olympic Stadium would be constructed right next door. Summerhill feared that the Olympics would prove to be one more economic windfall from which it would be excluded. Instead ACOG consulted a neighborhood committee on jobs, traffic patterns and parking. “We wanted to use the Olympics to leverage change in the neighborhood,” says committee president Douglas Dean, who ultimately negotiated $17 million in bank commitments for mixed-income housing. “Everything we put on the table, Billy tried to deliver. He’s a man of his word.”

For Payne, such attention to detail meant years of 14-hour days, seven-day weeks. The IOC’s Carrard says he can call Billy’s office at 5 a.m. with absolute assurance that he’ll already be there. But his colleagues fear the toll of such effort. Payne’s father and grandfather both died of heart attacks and Billy, 47, has already had two triple bypasses. Though friends say he’s mellowed since the surgery–he has taken up golf-there’s little evidence of that. Asked about his health, Payne complains that “nobody’s challenging me to a basketball game anymore.” Then he changes the conversation back to the beauty of forklifts and cranes and the miracle of what’s ensuing in his beloved Atlanta. “We’re reshaping this community, and everybody is coming out a winner,” says Payne. But nobody disputes that the gold medal will go to Billy.

Event: boxing Capacity: 9,900

2 Atlanta Fulton County Stadium

Event: baseball Capacity: 52,000

3 Clark Atlanta Univ.

Event: field hockey New construction cost: $25 mil. to $30 mil., includes the expansion of stadium 9 Capacity: 5,000

4 Georgia Dome

Events: basketball, artistic gymnastics Capacity: 35,500

5 Georgia State Univ.

Event: badminton Capacity: 3,300

6 Georgia Tech Aquatic Center

Events: diving, modern pentathlon, swimming, synchronized swimming, water polo New construction cost: $17.5 million Capacity: 18,600

7 Georgia World Congress Center

Events: fencing, handball, judo, modern pentathlon, table tennis, weight lifting, wrestling Capacity: 7,900

8 Morehouse College

Event: basketball New construction cost: $7 mil. to $8 mil. Capacity: 5,700

9 Morris Brown College

Event: field hockey Capacity: 15,000

10 Olympic Stadium

Events: opening and closing ceremonies, marathon, race walk New construction cost: $160 mil. to $170 mil. Capacity: 83,100

11 Omni Coliseum

Event: volleyball Capacity: 15,000