1992 Barcelona Olympic Games
 |
1992 Barcelona Olympic Games
|
The year IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch brought the Olympics to his native Spain marked the first renewal of the Summer Games since the fall of communism in Eastern Europe and the reunification of Germany in 1990.
Medal Count Gold Silver Bronze Total Unified Team
USA
Germany
China
Cuba
Hungary
South Korea
Spain
France
Australia45
37
33
16
14
11
12
13
8
738
34
21
22
6
12
5
7
5
929
37
28
16
11
7
12
2
16
11112
108
82
54
31
30
29
22
29
27A record 10,563 athletes from 172 nations gathered without a single country boycotting the Games. Both Cuba and North Korea returned after 12 years and South Africa was welcomed back after 32, following the national government's denunciation of apartheid racial policies.
While Germany competed under one flag and ideology for the first time since 1936, 12 nations from the former Soviet Union joined forces one last time as the Unified Team.
This was also the year the IOC threw open the gates to professional athletes after 96 years of high-minded opposition. Basketball was the chief beneficiary as America's popular "Dream Team" of NBA All-Stars easily won the gold.
|
|
Carl Lewis earned his seventh and eighth career gold medals with a third consecutive Olympic win in the long jump, and an anchor-leg performance on the American 400-meter relay team that helped establish a world record. Gail Devers of the U.S., whose feet had nearly been amputated by doctors in 1990 as a result of radiation treatment for Graves' disease, won the women's 100 meters.
Other track and field athletes stumbled, however. After Olympic favorite and world champion Dan O'Brien failed to even make the U.S. team, Dave Johnson, the new favorite, settled for the bronze. Ukrainian pole vaulter Sergey Bubka, who had dominated the sport for the past decade was the heavy favorite but failed to clear any height.
China's Fu Mingxia, 13, won the women's platform diving gold, becoming the second-youngest person to win an individual gold medal. In gymnastics, Vitaly Scherbo of Belarus, competing for the Unified Team, won six golds. Cuba made their Olympic return rewarding, capturing seven boxing golds as well as the gold in baseball.
Source: 1996 Information Please Sports Almanac
|
 |
