1996 Summer Olympics

Atlanta Games' caldron draws little attention

Atlanta, meet yours: The 1996 Olympic caldron.

While other Olympic cities celebrate and even cash in on their caldrons, Atlanta’s erstwhile icon languishes at the traffic-choked intersection of Fulton Street and Hank Aaron Drive.

Once the center of worldwide exhilaration as Muhammad Ali shook off the effects of Parkinson’s disease and lit the flame to open the Games, the caldron now idles in relative obscurity next to a parking lot.

“It just sits there,” Andrew Young, former Atlanta mayor and chairman of the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games, said recently, with an audible sigh.

“I pass right by it and I don’t see it.”

Fifteen years after the Summer Olympics in Atlanta, the caldron is neither a historic destination point nor is it honored by being fired up again for special occasions, as its peers are in Sydney and Vancouver, British Columbia.

Mostly, it leads to headscratching.

“I knew it had something to do with the Olympics, but I wasn’t sure what,” said David Ponder, 32, gazing up recently at the 116-foot structure casting shadows over the blue lot at Turner Field, where he parks as a Georgia State student. “Why don’t they ever light it up?”

Please. The caldron was lucky even to find a home after the Olympics.

The Braves, who took over the converted Olympic stadium after the Games, didn’t want it. Enter the retired caldron’s version of assisted living: It was moved up the street and ACOG set up a $200,000 trust fund to maintain it when it handed ownership over to the Atlanta-Fulton County Recreational Authority.

The authority spends about $2,500 annually on routine maintenance and lighting of the structure, said executive director Violet Travis Ricks. Previously, loose decking has been repaired and damaged stair treads replaced.

A large-scale refurbishment planned for the near future could cost several hundred thousand dollars.

But that just takes care of the physical side. Rehabbing the beleaguered caldron’s image will be much harder — but well worth the effort, some people contend.

It’s time to give the caldron its due, they say.

“It’s been sitting there doing its job for 15 years, and it’s time for someone to come along and build off of the great memories it created,” said Richard Monteilh, former executive director of the Metropolitan Atlanta Olympic Games Authority, which oversaw all Olympic construction contracts and built the stadium.

A Look Back at the 1996 Summer Olympics | Sports Then and Now

Atlanta was a surprise selection to host the Centennial Olympic Games in the summer of 1996, as many observers believed that the Games should be held in Athens, Greece since the inaugural games were held there in 1896.

But thanks to lobbying from former Atlanta mayor Andrew Young, Atlanta was chosen to host the Centennial Games on September 18, 1990.

Nearly six years later, the city hosted the opening ceremonies in front of 85, 000 fans at Centennial Olympic Stadium (now Turner Field).

The ceremonies ended in dramatic fashion with 1960 Olympic Gold Medalist Muhammad Ali, lighting the Olympic Torch, signifying the start of the Games. Ali would receive a replacement gold medal for the one he lost, at halftime of the men’s basketball gold medal game.

As far as the competition was concerned, the Americans were expected to dominate the medal count as this would be the first Olympics with the former countries of the Soviet Union participating as individual countries.

The individual with the highest expectations entering these Olympics was U.S. sprinter Michael Johnson, who was trying to become the first man to win the 200-meter and 400-meter races in the same Olympiad.

Johnson had performed this feat at the 1995 Track & Field World Championships, and one month earlier, he broke the world record in the 200 m with a time of 19.66 seconds.

Wearing golden shoes, Johnson won the 400 m with an Olympic record time of 43.49 seconds, and then won the 200 m with by shattering his own world record, running that race in a remarkable 19.32 seconds.

It was redemption for Johnson who had entered the 1992 Olympics as the favorite to win the 200 meters, but failed to qualify for the final heat.

Johnson was not the only U.S. Olympian to pull off a historic feat in Atlanta as U.S. swimmer Amy Van Dyken became the first woman to win four gold medals at the same Olympiad.

Van Dyken won two individual races, the 50m freestyle and the 100m butterfly, and was part of the 4 x 100 meter freestyle relay and the 4 x 100 meter medley relay in earning her four gold medals.

Van Dyken’s performance came in a banner Olympics for American woman, as the woman’s basketball, softball, soccer, and gymnastics teams all won gold medals.

The most memorable gold-medal winning performance came courtesy of the gymnastics team and Kerri Strug.

Heading into the final rotation, the U.S. held a 0.897 point lead on Russia and barring an epic collapse, would win their first gold medal in the team event of woman’s gymnastics.

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