Waltham-based Lycos Inc. hopes a global deal with the sponsors of the 2000 Summer Olympics will provide a major boost to the company's worldwide visibility.

Lycos said it will run more than 200 Internet community sites related to the Olympic Games, which will take place in Sydney this month. The company will operate 199 sites, one for each of the countries represented in the Games, as well as 35 sites devoted to particular sports, such as gymnastics and soccer. The Lycos Olympics communities will be based on the online community system already used at the Lycos Web portal, in which visitors can create their own communities devoted to particular interests, such as politics or movies. Anthony Antonuccio, director of Lycos Communities, said the service currently hosts about 200,000 such user-created communities. The Olympics communities, however, will be created by Lycos and overseen by about 50 moderators, who will screen messages. Most of this screening will involve the sites' photo albums, where visitors will be able to publish favorite pictures. Antonuccio said moderators will check pictures to see that no inappropriate or offensive images appear on the sites. Visitors to the sites will need basic knowledge of English, because Lycos has not translated the home pages of each community site into the various national languages. The main Sydney Olympics Web site, at www.olympics.com, is expected to receive 1.4 billion page views during the games, he said, and Lycos will have a prominent link to its communities on the Olympics home page. Vistors also will be able to get to the Lycos Olympics communities by going to clubs.lycos.com.