History
Fast Facts
Host City: Atlanta, GeorgiaOpening date: July 19, 1996
Closing date: Aug. 4, 1996
Nations: 197
Athletes: 10,320 athletes (3,523 women, 6,797 men)
271 events in 26 sports
The Atlanta Olympics of 1996 were widely regarded as an athletic success but an artistic failure.
A host of problems with logistics and organization plagued the games. The much-touted computerized scoring and results system kept crashing and the transportation system was inadequate. Atlanta never got around to building an Olympic village; instead, athletes were housed in dorms at Georgia Tech University.
On July 27, eight days after the opening ceremony, a bomb exploded in Centennial Olympic Park, killing one person and injuring more than 100 others. Although the park seemed to be part of the Olympic setting, it wasn't, and therefore it was not covered by Olympic security.
Atlanta set new records across the board: 197 nations send 10,320 athletes, 79 nations won medals, and 53 won gold medals.
Beach volleyball, lightweight rowing, mountain biking, soccer, and women's softball were added to the program, bringing the number of events to a record 271.
Four was the lucky number for U. S. track star Carl Lewis. By taking the gold medal in the high jump, he became one of only three athletes to win the same event four times, and he also became the fourth athlete to win nine gold medals during his career.
But Lewis was overshadowed by teammate Michael Johnson, who set a world record of 19.32 seconds in the 200-meter dash and became the first male runner to double in the 200 and 400-meter events. Marie-Jose Perec of France scored the same double on the women's side.
Three athletes won their third gold medals in a single event: Krisztina Egerszegi of Hungary in the 200-meter backstroke, Aleksandr Karelin of Russia in Greco-Roman wrestling, and Naim Suleymanoglu of Turkey in weightlifting.
They were surpassed by Birgit Schmidt of Germany, who won a fifth gold medal in kayaking. She had won her first in 1980.
