ATHENS, Greece - Paul Hamm had his golden moment, and he grabbed it like a starving wolf latching onto a lamb chop. And now he has a golden opportunity, worth a lifetime of moments, and if he doesn’t grab it right now, it will be gone forever.

He may already have missed his chance to show the world that Americans still believe in sportsmanship and to generate the kind of goodwill that this country will never recover, no matter how many times the White House issues statements about how much better off Iraq is now than it was before we brought peace, harmony, democracy and full employment there.

On Sunday night, Hamm competed for individual medals in two disciplines. All he had to do was call members of the South Korean delegation beforehand, tell them to meet him in the packed arena before the competition, and hang his medal around Yang Tae-young’s neck.

A packed arena would have erupted in cheers that you could have heard at the bottom of a well in Montana. Women everywhere would still be weeping a week from now at the nobility of the gesture, and not a few men would be weeping with them.

Not because it is something Hamm had to do, but because it is something he or anyone in his situation should do.

Yang is the man who, had the judges been able to count to 10, would have won the all-around gold that went to Hamm last week. Hamm’s victory was the first for an American male, and it was earned with one of the greatest comebacks that sport has ever seen.

Hamm won his gold fairly by the rules of his sport, and the medal — along with all the parting gifts that go with it — are his to keep.

But there’s a little problem. Even though the rules say he should keep the medal, the fact remains that he won it because the judges goofed in rating the parallel bar routine of Yang, giving it a starting value of 9.9 instead of the 10 it should have had. The extra one-tenth of a point would have given Yang the gold.

It was an honest mistake, but that makes it no less stupid. And it could have been corrected on the spot if the Koreans had noticed it and brought it up before the competition on the bars was concluded. But the rules say once the contestants moved on to the next apparatus, all avenues of appeal are closed.

The Koreans discovered the mistake a day later, as Hamm was making the rounds of the Today show and all the other channels and networks. They say they made the protest right away, but the judging panel disagrees. The South Koreans protested mightily, but the rules are the rules, no different than the rules in a football game that say a bad call can’t be corrected once play resumes.

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Even officials want Hamm to give up his gold medal. The International Gymnastics Federation wrote to him, saying they would be “highly appreciate the magnitude of this gesture.” U.S. officials shot back right away, saying it was “outrageous and improper” to do that to Hamm.

In golf, they call it rub of the green. In life, we say stuff — or something that starts with the same letter — happens.

But you have to understand how this is reading in other countries in general and in Korea — North and South — particularly. Two years ago at the Salt Lake City Winter Games, U.S. short-track speed skater Anton Apolo Ohno got tangled up with a South Korean skater on the last turn of a race and ended up with a medal while the Koreans got nothing.

The judges ruled that Ohno did not commit a foul. I wrote a column supporting that position. In the next few days, I got more vile and vituperative e-mail from Koreans than I had ever received on anything I have ever written. And not just a few more. Hundreds and hundreds more. My e-mail account was attacked and overwhelmed, and I finally had to block e-mail coming from Korea.

I’m not defending the people who wouldn’t accept an honest opinion and wouldn’t engage in civil discourse. But it taught me that in Korea, the episode was accepted as an American plot to steal a little bit of glory from a people who want winners just as badly as we do.

It’s just incredibly bad luck that Hamm’s medal was won at the expense of a Korean. But in that country, it’s taken as proof that America is an arrogant and bloated monolith that won’t be satisfied until it owns the world and all the gold medals in it. That’s an absurd belief, but so are a lot of the things we believe in.

The point is if you collected all the ill will toward America on the planet and wadded it up into a ball, it would be a really big ball. We can’t turn all of it into goodwill overnight. But if we can perform one selfless act on a stage that the entire world is watching, we can put a dent in it.

Just tell Yang to come down to the gym and hang the medal around his neck. That’s all Hamm had to do. Instead, he got a bit snippy when asked about the affair, saying he was angry, he won it by the rules, and he’s keeping it. End of discussion.

You have to ask what’s more important, doing the right thing or having a gold-plated hunk of bronze that tens of millions of people are going to say from now until forever that you wouldn’t have won if the dumb judges — and, aha, one of them was an American — had been able to count?

And go ahead, be greedy about it. Think of how much more one magnanimous act like this would be worth. Think of billions of people seeing you do the right thing by giving up the medal you worked your tail off to win and handing it to the guy who got screwed through no fault of yours or his.

FREE VIDEO Judging to blame in Hamm controversy Aug 23:  Robert Colarossi, president of USA Gymnastics, discusses what went wrong in the judging of the men's all-around gymnastics competition and what he thinks Paul Hamm should do with his gold. Today Show Olympics

If you thought the first shot on the Today show was cool, forget it. You’ll get a second one that will be longer. Letterman and Leno will put you on speed-dial. Everywhere you go, people will say, "There goes the man who gave up his medal, not because he had to, but because it was the right thing to do."

Do you have any idea how much that’s worth? Hamm doesn’t. Otherwise, he would have done it already.

Very quickly it’s going to be too late, because the opinion mongers, a union of which I am a card-carrying member, are weighing in on this. And it’s not going to look as gracious if you do it only after every columnist in America has beaten you over the head with the course material from Ethics 101.

Wait long enough, and all people will say is, "There goes the guy who had to be shamed into doing the right thing."

The window’s still open, Paul. Do the right thing.

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