Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, July 13, 1994 TAG: 9408050016
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Jack Bogaczyk
DATELINE: ATLANTA LENGTH: Medium
The Super Bowl was played six months ago at the Georgia Dome. The World Series was played in the home of the Braves two of the past three autumns. The NCAA Final Four hoops it up under the dome's Teflon in 2002.
There is no way those games can hold a candle to the ones that will be staged here July 19 through Aug.4, 1996. The Atlanta Games will have more than 10,000 athletes in 26 sports.
What they will leave behind is more than impressive. At a Tuesday news conference, ``the look'' of the Games was unveiled. They look pretty green in more ways than one.
The look, developed by a team of five design firms from across the country, starts with a quilt of leaves. For the next two years, you'll probably see as much of this look as Izzy, the mascot that looks like a tall Smurf.
In presenting the leaves design, Billy Payne, the president of the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games, said the quilt concept bloomed in several directions.
It is remindful of the pattern formed by nations' teams as they gather on the field for opening ceremonies; it's about a laurel for a victorious athlete and the olive branch of peace; it's for the many trees in the host city, the most heavily forested urban area in the nation; and it dates to the Southern tradition of quilt making.
It's also another design the ACOG can sell on T-shirts, caps, lapel pins and shot glasses. If the $1.58 billion Atlanta Games aren't yet gold-plated, they're reaping revenue faster than expected.
Consider the Georgia license plate for the centennial celebration of the modern Olympics. The ACOG went to the state two years ago and said it wanted to sell a special plate.
The ACOG promised the state $5 of the extra $15 charge for each plate. The ACOG would pay to have the plates made, and make a profit of about $7.50 per plate. The state told the ACOG that only 35,000 to 40,000 would be sold.
Well, the state ran out of plates. Very quickly. To date, more than two years before the Games, more than 600,000 Georgia cars are wearing an Olympic plate. The state has made $3 million from the program.
The Olympics will change the capital of the South forever. The Atlanta Games will leave a legacy of almost $400 million when the flame is extinguished.
More than half of that is the $209 million Olympic Stadium, which is just now beginning to sprout from the earth next to Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium. Work crews have spent 368 days and $15 million on its underground. And after 85,000 watch two ceremonies and track and field there, about 40 percent of the seats will be removed and the Braves will have a new 48,000-seat ballpark.
Then, the Braves' current home will be demolished. The ACOG will pay for that also, and retire the debt on the circular stadium. Before the earth moved, the city and county couldn't believe the ACOG wanted to give away a stadium.
Faith, however, is what put the '96 Olympics in Atlanta. The city wasn't supposed to have a chance for the Games, particularly since it was only three Olympiads since the United States helped stage the Los Angeles Games.
Georgia Tech's campus gets a $15 million natatorium. The predominantly black colleges that are part of the Atlanta University Center will get a new football stadium and new basketball arena. Clark University Atlanta will end up with the best broadcasting facility at any college in the Southeast.
A 60-acre Centennial Park on the edge of downtown will be developed with private funds. The trees there won't stand as tall as the ever-mushrooming skyscrapers, but it's another kind of green to go with the $40 million official sponsorships the ACOG is peddling.
Every day, the prospects get bigger for the Atlanta Games. On Monday, the Republic of Nauru - it's in the South Pacific - became the 196th member of the International Olympic Committee. And the IOC has more member countries than the United Nations.
On Sept.18, 1990, on the fifth IOC ballot, Atlanta stunningly topped Olympic birthplace and favorite Athens for the '96 Games. The joke was many football-crazed Georgians thought that Athens was the one where UGa, the bulldog mascot, lives, the one up the road where the Games' soccer finals will be played between the hedges.
Now, the most oft-told joke about the Atlanta Games is about Izzy, but it can't be repeated here. It's blue material.
Write to Jack Bogaczyk at the Roanoke Times & World-News, P.O. Box 2491, Roanoke, 24010.
by CNB