Atlanta will commemorate one of its proudest moments, hosting a reunion to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the city being awarded the Olympic Games.
The event will be held Sept. 18 in Centennial Olympic Park — constructed for the games — and include members of the delegation who represented the city in its final Olympic bid presentation in Tokyo.
The celebration is being organized by President and Chief Executive Officer of the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games Billy Payne and former Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young.
The Olympic Committee’s decision in 1990 to award the games to Atlanta catapulted the city onto the international stage. Atlanta defeated Athens, Greece; Toronto, Canada; Melbourne, Australia; Belgrade, Serbia (then-Yugoslavia) and Manchester, England for the right to host the games.
“It was like expecting a small present for Christmas and getting the best bicycle in the world,” Payne told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in an interview.
Payne, who was in Tokyo when the International Olympic Committee decided to award the games to Atlanta, said his first thought on hearing the announcement was “I want to be back in Atlanta so I can share in the excitement.”
As the news spread that Atlanta had won, car horns blared and celebrations popped up spontaneously around the city.
“It was a crazy day. I don’t think Atlanta has seen anything like it before or since,” Payne said.
A larger public celebration of the 20th anniversary of the Games will take place in the park in July 2016.
Atlanta was the last United States city to host the summer games. Salt Lake City was the site of 2002 winter games.
“This was Atlanta at its best,” Young said in a news release. “The easy part was getting the votes but it took tens of thousands of Georgia’s citizens to get the job done.”
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