THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, August 5, 1996 TAG: 9608050165
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C1 EDITION: FINAL
SERIES: OLYMPICS
From Atlanta
SOURCE: Tom Robinson
LENGTH: 49 lines
They are tired and sweaty masses yearning to be done with bag checks, clogged subways and endless lines to buy Olympic lapel pins and boxer shorts.
Yet I sense happiness. I see smiles. I hear new confidence in their voices. And six years after I stunned everybody and got the Games of '96, I feel sad that our time is over.
My Olympics were a success. They were the celebration I promised, the perpetual block party, the carnival. Some folks called me tacky. Coney Island. Unsophisticated. I will not apologize. I gave my people what they wanted. They have said thank you.
I know some vendors went home angry. Maybe I oversold their profits, but business is business - they took their chances. And my Olympics were business like never before. Good business.
I hosted the most sports, the most athletes and the most fans in history. I raised and spent the most money. I put on the biggest Olympic production in 100 years. Very important people walked my streets. I wallowed in their attention.
I am proud.
OK, I admit I wasn't the world's most organized city. Mistakes were made. I covered them with enthusiasm. The media's computer system had problems. The old buses I gave them came late, broke down and got lost. The drivers quit.
I underestimated the media's ability to whine about this. They told their people I was out of my league. My people told me something else.
Still, there is melancholy. The devil stuck a bomb in my park. It blew up and killed my friend Alice Hawthorne and left her child motherless. This hurt me to the core. The spirit of my people picked me up and we carried on with purpose.
So I say a bittersweet goodbye. Goodbye to my pet Kerri Strug, to whom I have given fame and fortune. And, sorry, but goodbye at last to those magpies Janet Evans and Matt Ghaffari, who by managing to be at every photo op at once wore even my Southern hospitality.
Enough.
I give over the Summer Games, badminton included, to Sydney, Australia. I give it my experience, my example, my joy, my pain, my blessing. I give it my wish for safety and health. And I give it the names and numbers of my corporate sponsors, because that's how the Games are played.
I am Atlanta.
Adios. Ciao. Sayonara. Au revoir.
See y'all later. by CNB