When 'the world' came to Gainesville

The start of the Summer Olympics in Athens has me thinking how differently I view the Olympics everytime they roll around, especially the summer games. That's because of my experiences when Atlanta hosted the games in 1996.

I look at them now with the knowledge of what the host city and the organizing committee must have gone through in securing the games and then getting the venues built, the volunteers linedup, and, finally, pulling the thing off. All of that after having watched closely from "day one" as Atlanta built toward July 1996.

A big part of that, of course, was watching Gainesville and Hall County in its pursuit of a piece of the pie.

As I recall, the first choice of those in the community who thought Gainesville should be the site of some of the Olympic competition was the equestrian events. But, as time went on it became obvious that those events would be held in Conyers. But, the "locals" never gave up.

A formal committee was organized - initially using the word "Olympic" in its name - until ACOG, the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games had its lawyers politely inform the committee members that that was a "no, no." The reason: trademarks, exclusive rights and all that.

I think it was December 23 - the year I can't remember - but the date I'm fairly certain of because it's my birthday, that Gainesville got the word that months of hard work had paid off. Someone with the local committee - Jim Mathis, Jr., or maybe Steve Gilliam - or someone at city hall called and said "Ken, we got it." We were in the middle of our Christmas luncheon for the staff at Jacobs Media when I was called to the phone and the whole theme of the gathering seemed to change from one of anticipating the coming holidays to one of "can you believe it? What's gonna happen now? Will we be ready?"

But things quickly fell into place. Professionals were hired by ACOG and came here and quickly transformed the Clarks Bridge Park area into a world class rowing, canoe/kayak venue.

I was at the site for about three hours every morning as a reporter for all but one day of the two weeks of the competition. The one day I missed was a day I took off to take my family to see some of the competition - probably a once-ina-a-lifetime thing for all of us.

The governor visited the venue one morning as did the then president of the International Olympic Committee, Juan Antonio Samaranch. I found it to be a well-organized venue with plenty of volunteers to help the crowd of national and international spectators and journalists find their way around.

One of the international journalists I meant was a newspaperman from Sweden. On the first or second day of competition, as we sat side-by-side in the sun-drenched press section, he turned to me, with his milky-white Scandinavian skin beginning to turn red, and asked if I had any sunscreen. I did and I shared.

And, then, almost as quickly as it began, it was over.

The games were history and the world began packing up and leaving - but, many of us, especially the Greater Hall Chamber of Commerce, have not forgotten the way NBC's Charlie Jones signed off his coverage of the events on Lake Lanier that final day as he declared Gainesville "the hospitality capital of the world," something I have known since arriving here more than 30 years ago.

But, that's another story for another time.



Ken Stanford is the longtime news director at WDUN NEWS TALK 550, AM 1240 WGGA, and MAJIC 1029 and is News Editor for accessnorthga.com.