For Alaska organizers, the World Winter Games are history. But for others, who came to Anchorage to gather pointers for hosting their own large-scale events, it was only prologue.

The 2003 Special Olympics World Summer Games in Dublin is projected to bring 7,500 athletes -- at least three times as many as the World Winter Games -- and will involve 30,000 volunteers and 160 towns in Ireland.

Absorbing the many details involved in planning can be "mind-boggling," said organizer Shelagh Leech, one of 22 Irish observers who roamed Alaska's Special Olympics venues last week. Sometimes, she said, "we wonder if we're ready."

A warm welcome from Alaska event coordinators -- who opened their files and shared postgame analysis of what had gone well and what had gone wrong -- helped ease the planners' jitters.

"They didn't hide anything," said Caroline O'Brien, host town project manager for 2003. Not that the polite Irish visitors were sharing the behind-the-scenes revelations with reporters. "We're an observing group, not a knocking group," Leech said. "We're not here to knock."

A small group of the Irish visitors touring venues Friday commended Alaska organizers for a friendly environment and successfully creating a sense of place by repeating Alaska themes in printed materials, signs and decorations.

They will take that lesson home, said Leech -- but with an Irish flavor. "You might see something good, but you don't want to copy it," she said. Among the events planned for 2003 is a torch run including law enforcement officers from both northern and southern Ireland.

Also in town seeking ideas were organizers for the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, which is expected to draw 70,000 visitors per day over two weeks.

According to Utah Olympic Public Safety Command spokesman Christopher Kramer, the Alaska event was the last in a series of large events his group has visited over the past six years, including the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta and the Super Bowl.

"All of the cities and host agencies have this kind of unwritten mandate that we help each other out as much as we can," Kramer said. Already, he said, organizers of the 2004 Games in Athens, Greece, are observing their work.

"There's so much to learn from," Kramer said. "Every time you go through something like this you get better at it. You make mistakes, and you pass on these lessons to the next ones to do it."

"It's kind of like eating an elephant," Kramer said. "You have to do it one bite at a time."

Special teams of FBI and Treasury agents were also in Anchorage to plan for the larger -- and riskier -- Olympics. And some service providers, like the transportation coordinators in Anchorage, will have the same jobs in Salt Lake City and can take their lessons learned with them.

Among the ideas the team brought back from Alaska, Kramer said, was a simple sign-in board technique used to track the locations of staffers and volunteers ("It was simple, but I'd never seen it used before,") and the importance of ensuring public safety members from different organizations had compatible radio systems.

Other lessons were more general.

"The thing I saw that had the biggest impact had nothing really to do with public safety efforts," Kramer said. He watched at a speedskating oval as an athlete who fell was cheered back to his feet, with the encouragement following him to the finish.

The moment was a reminder, Kramer said, that the best planning efforts should remain invisible, letting the event and the athletes shine.