Summer Olympiad (1992)

The 1992 Summer Olympic Games, officially known as the Games of the XXV Olympiad, celebrated in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. Men's basketball was open to all professionals, and the US sent a "Dream Team" that included Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan and Larry Bird. Gymnast Vitaly Scherbo won six gold medals, including a record four in one day. Derartu Tulu of Ethiopia won the 10,000m run to become the first female black African Olympic champion. Her victory lap with silver medalist Elana Meyer, a white South African, symbolized hope for the future of the Olympic Movement.

Opening date: 25 July 1992

Closing date: 09 August 1992

Ceremonies

Official opening of the Games by: His Majesty King Juan Carlos I

Lighting the Olympic Flame by: Antonio Rebollo (paralympic archer)

Olympic Oath by: Luis Doreste Blanco (sailing)

Official Oath by: Eugeni Asencio (water polo)

Participation

169 NOCs (Nations)
9,356 athletes (2,704 women, 6,652 men)
257 events
34,548 volunteers
13,082 media (5,131 written press, 7,951 broadcasters)

Country of the host city: Spain (ESP)

Candidate cities: Amsterdam (NED), Belgrade (YUG), Birmingham (GBR), Brisbane (AUS) and Paris (FRA)

Sports

• Aquatics
• Archery
• Athletics
• Badminton
• Baseball
• Basketball
• Boxing
• Canoe / Kayak
• Cycling
• Equestrian
• Fencing
• Football
• Gymnastics
• Handball
• Hockey
• Judo
• Modern Pentathlon
• Rowing
• Sailing
• Shooting
• Table Tennis
• Tennis
• Volleyball
• Weightlifting
• Wrestling

Demonstration sports

• Basque pelote
• Roller hockey
• Taekwondo
• Valencian pilota

Highlights

• Men's basketball was open for the first time to professionals, allowing the creation of the "Dream Team" (USA-basketball), which included Magic Johnson, M. Jordan, L. Bird and C. Barkley. In eight matches, the team attained an average of 117 points and never asked for a time out.

• In the last lap of the 10,000m final, Derartu Tulu (ETH-athletics) darted into the lead and went on to win. At the finish line, Tulu, the first black African woman to earn an Olympic medal, waited for her opponent Elana Meyer, a white South African. They set off hand in hand for a victory lap that symbolized hope for a new Africa.

• Paralympics archer Antonio Rebollo lit the Olympic Flame by firing a burning arrow towards the cauldron. The arrow passed over the cauldron, which was emanating gas at that moment. The gas ignited and the flame appeared in the cauldron.

• South Africa was allowed again to participate in the Olympics after a 28 years suspension in the Olympic Games for its apartheid policy.

• After being demonstrated six times, baseball became an Olympic sport, with Cuba winning the gold medal, Chinese Taipei winning silver, and Japan, the bronze.

• Roller Hockey, specifically Roller hockey (Quad) , was a demonstration roller sport in the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona.

• Badminton and women's judo became part of the Olympic programme, while slalom canoeing returned to the Games after a 20-year absence.

• There were two main musical themes of the 1992 Games. One was "Barcelona", written five years earlier by Freddie Mercury and sung as a duet with Montserrat Caballé. The duo were to have performed the song during the opening ceremony, but due to Mercury's untimely death the year before, the song was played over a travelogue of the city at the start of the opening ceremony. The other was "Amigos Para Siempre" (Friends for Life), written by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Don Black, and sung by Sarah Brightman and José Carreras during the closing ceremonies.

Facts

• In the years that followed the 1988 Games, the world witnessed important political changes. Apartheid was abolished in South Africa, which allowed the country to participate in the Olympic Games again, for the first time since 1960. Then there was the fall of the Berlin wall and the reunification of West and East Germany, as well as North and South Yemen. Communism was wiped out in the Soviet Union and the USSR was divided into 15 separate countries. At the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, the independent teams of Estonia and Latvia made their first apparition since 1936 and Lithuania sent its first team since 1928. The other ex-Soviet republics participated as a "unified team", although the winners were honored under the flags of their own republics.

• Andreas Keller of the gold medal-winning German field hockey team was the third generation of his family to win a medal in the event. His grandfather, Erwin, earned a silver medal in 1936 and his father, Carsten, gold in 1972.

• The only controversy concerned Yugoslavia, which was the subject of United Nations sanctions because of its military aggression against Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. In the end, Yugoslavia was banned from taking part in any team sports, but individual Yugoslav athletes were allowed to compete as "independent Olympic participants". Croatia, Slovenia and Bosnia-Herzegovina competed as separate nations for the first time.

• The International Olympic Committee (IOC) launched an appeal for the observance of the Olympic Truce for the first time.

• Spain's coxswain in the eights, 11-year-old Carlos Front, was the youngest competitor in the Olympic Games since 1900.