The City of Atlanta is just days away from the 30th anniversary of the 1996 Summer Olympic Games and Channel 2’s Fred Blankenship is taking a look at the major part local universities played.
At the University of Georgia in Athens, the university not only played a big part in the Olympics in the summer of 1996, but they’re now preserving Olympic history, right on campus.
An exhibit at the UGA Special Collections Library holds preserved moments from 1996 Olympic history.
It starts with how Atlanta landed the games, thanks to the efforts of UGA alum and former Bulldog footballer Billy Payne.
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“I just came home from work one day and just, you know, out of the bule said we’re going to bring the Olympics to Atlanta,” Payne told Channel 2 Action News.
Along with former Atlanta Mayor and US Ambassador Andrew young, Payne and a delegation from Atlanta beat the odds to bring the Olympics to the Georgia capital.
“If you objectively asses the odds of us winning when we first began, it was zero,” Payne said.
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But UGA’s connections to the Olympics, even after they were officially coming to Atlanta, didn’t stop at just securing the city as the place to be for the 1996 Olympics.
“Athens was the largest venue outside of Atlanta,” Kaylynn Washnock Stooksbury, a UGA special collections library archivist, said.
While many of the events for the Olympics were held in venues in the metro Atlanta area, UGA hosted the volleyball and rhythmic gymnastics.
Most memorably, the final between the United States and China for women’s soccer happened in Athens, where the U.S. women’s team won gold at Sanford Stadium.
But bringing the Olympics to Athens, even partly, wasn’t without some drama.
“The famous hedges are actually removed. And this was really controversial at the time,” Stooksbury said. “But the hedges...were removed for play and they were actually deposited with UGA alumni in Georgia and Florida that took care of the plants so that they could be replanted after the games.”
Several athletes with UGA ties also competed in the games that year, including Teresa Edwards, who won the gold in basketball with Team USA.
Stooksbury said the exhibit was a tribute to all of the athletes and their Olympic Spirit.
“It’s such an important year and a memorable year,” Stooksbury said. “We’re 30 years out, and I think one of the lasting impacts really is that it solidified Atlanta on an international stage.”
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