Atlanta – 1996

Normally, there’s nothing as special as an Olympics in your own country.  It was certainly true of the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, in spite of a significant Eastern bloc boycott of those Games.  Los Angeles was a previous Olympic city (1932) and there had been multiple Winter Games in Lake Placid (1932 & 1980) and Squaw Valley (1964).

However, most people who were there will tell you that Atlanta is NOT an Olympic city.  Athens, Greece had managed to shoot itself in the foot back in 1990 when they thought it was their birthright to host the Centennial Games.  The IOC went looking for any viable alternative to the hubris that was the Athens Organizing Committee.  Toronto, Canada was a leading contender too but their citizenry was insisting on no public money going into the effort and they had a mayor who couldn’t keep his mouth shut when he should have.

In stepped Billy Payne, President of the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games.  Atlanta was making a cursory bid for the 1996 Olympics in hopes of positioning themselves for a later quadrennial.  They had fudged the weather statistics, substituting the average low temperature for the average high during the weeks of the Olympic competitions.  When the other leading contenders made themselves unattractive recipients, the default was Atlanta.

The weather was brutal and the city is laid out all wrong for the Games.  Events were too spread out and ticket prices made it nearly impossible for local residents to share in the experience.  There wasn’t adequate housing available for the influx of people but a tremendous boom to the local economy.  However, no lasting Olympic legacy was established, the Games simply came and went.

At the Closing Ceremonies, IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch, who usually states in his closing speech that “these” Games were the “greatest ever”, simply stated, “These were great Games.” At that he was still engaging in a high level of hyperbole.