1996 Paralympics

The 1996 Paralympic Games in Atlanta, Georgia, United States, were held from August 16 to 25. It was the first Paralympics to get mass media sponsorship, and had a budget of USD $81 million.

It was the first Paralympic Games where International Sports Federation for Persons with an Intellectual Disability athletes were given full medal status.

Bidding history

In an interview with Atlanta-based Reporters and Newspapers website, the CEO of the Organizing Committee (APOC), the disability rights attorney Andrew Flaming thanked and recognized the efforts of Alana Shepherd who founded the world-renowned Shepherd Center which was one of the first hospitals in the world dedicated to the rehabilitation of victims of cervical spine accidents. Since the city was not originally planned to host the Paralympic Games. Even with an initial move, and already with the logo and mascot launched, the city ruined the real risk of not hosting the event, either because of disorganization by the Organizing Committee of the 1996 Summer Olympics, or for financial reasons. And seeing the deplorable situation that was going to happen, the Shepard family ran after large corporate sponsorships and also publicity for the event, which would result in greater public interest and draw attention to ticket sales. Fleming even recalled an interview with Shepard that if Atlanta failed to host the Games, they would return to Great Britain which was already on the radar of the newly formed International Paralympic Committee. Fleming also said that the 1ow-budget organizational model used at 1984 Summer Olympics held in Los Angeles was repeated by Atlanta. As the Californian capital, was the only bidder, they "forget" the 1984 Summer Paralympics.Called as "the last minute games" .The games was shared by New York City and Stoke Mandeville in Great Britain and unlike what had happened with its predecessors Seoul who in a late stage signed late cooperation agreements for the realization of the Paralympics after the Olympic Games and had in part a joint organization and Barcelona, which soon after its Olympic victory agreed to organize the two events under the unprecedented management of the same Organizing Committee. In 1990, when Atlanta surprisingly won the right to host the 1996 Summer Olympics, a group of people led by him thought of submitting a project to bid for the Paralympics, a project that took a year and a half to complete. Fleming further records that the organizers of the Olympic Games were skeptical about holding the Paralympics and did not want to commit in any way with the event. Thus, it would be difficult to achieve the entirety of the planned budget of US$ 80 million, as the Paralympics had no source of funding, nor was there any sale of media rights.
Fleming also recalled that in a previous market survey, only 2% of city locals knew about the Paralympic Games against 4% who knew about the Atlanta Youth Games and the red alert was turned on for the event and upon being aware of this, the Olympic Committee donated a sum of money and decided to help in the organization of the Paralympic Games in some areas. After this turning public, the Shepherd Center co-founder Alana Shepherd's made a crusade to ensure that the 1996 Summer Paralympics were also held in Atlanta and after the bid was accepted, she made an aggressive strategy of going after big corporate sponsors and visibility for the event.
According to press reports at the time, the situation was so drastic that in the first few months, the Organizing Committee of the Paralympics did not have the money to rent offices to work and instead operated from a small basement office at the Center. the Sheperd Center Committee signed some guarantee contracts in 1990, prepared its proposal for 1.5 years and officially presented it during the 1992 Winter Paralympics in Tignes, France.

A different kind of competition

The application procedures were accepted yet there was another race against time--to get corporate and large sponsors. Companies like Microsoft, Coca-Cola, CNN and Home Depot committed to buy sponsorship shares but the United States Olympic Committee (USOC), concerned about all things that might impinge on their "Olympic Games" brand, was uncooperative about the Paralympic Games. The USOC understood that any move by the United States Paralympic Committee (USPC) could affect the USOC. The Department of justice was sued by the USOC over the USPC Games mascot, the phoenix Blaze. Fleming also said the deal was the trap worked perfectly and required them to approach only corporate sponsors who had already inked an Olympics sponsorship agreement. And if the company declined, the Paralympics organizers could only request a competitor with the company's permission. In one example, Fleming said that McDonald's refused to buy a quota and if someone wanted to buy something from a competitor, they would have to ask the company for authorization to deny any type of sale "would not let them solicit Chick-fil-A, even though Dan Cathy, one of its main executives, had a chair at the organizing committee". Upon learning of this, Alana Shepherd tore up the previously signed contracts and called a press conference and released a list of six companies with names written on a piece of paper and dubbed them the "Sinful Six". This nickname was born because there were exactly six sponsors who did not sign the Paralympics contract and blocked eventual negotiations with their competitors. In addition to McDonald's were on this list:Anheuser-Busch, Visa, Bausch and Lomb, John Hancock Financial and Sara Lee. "I keep the list in my wallet," Shepherd told a reporter at the time. In recent interviews, Shepherd declines to say much about this situation and the deal. "I'm taking the high road now… I'm not digging it up," she said, but added, "They were the losers. We were the winners. "She also attended the 1992 Summer Olympics and the 1992 Summer Paralympics in Barcelona, Spain, and in a stroke of fate happened to have Juan Antonio Samaranch, then president of the International Olympic Committee, sitting next to her and in an informal talking she said. "'You know, it's crazy to have two different committees holding events,'" she recalled. "They didn't understand it, they were scared of it," she said of Olympics officials' attitude toward the Paralympics. "It was something they didn't understand would help the city become more accessible."

So, against all odds, APOC got the necessary funds and successfully held the X Summer Paralympic Games which were held from August 15 to 26, 1996.This event was successfully held two weeks after the closing of the Olympic Games and had some competition venues shared. Contrary to predictions, the event made a profit of millions of dollars, and that amount was used to create BlazeSports America, a Norcross-based non-profit organization that runs sports programs for children and veterans with disabilities.

Atlanta aftermath

Flaming and Shepherd believed that Samaranch and others must have heard the message. "After Atlanta, the IOC said it would not accept an Olympic bid unless it also made provisions for the Paralympic Games," Fleming said. "The IOC leadership essentially said, 'The Paralympic movement is not going way, especially after Atlanta…'and this was already happening, a few months after the closing of the Atlanta Games, the International Olympic Committee announced that it had changed the rules of the application process and starting from the 2004 Summer Olympics would not accept more than no city would file a bid without disclosing its plans for the Paralympic Games. Following this difficult process, when is bidding for the 2000 Summer Paralympic Games in 1993, the eventual winner the Australian city of Sydney, promised that they would give the same treatment to athletes who would be participating in both events and that all Games services would be unified. This also encompassed financing, security, logistics, marketing and ticket sales. Even with two separate organizing committees, all functional areas were merged and unified and delivery the best Paralympic Games of all times until that date.
Due to the gigantic amount of these problems, the IOC signed in 1993 a protocol of strategic partnership with the IPC and undertook to include topics related to the Paralympic Games in the questionnaires that would be sent to the cities interested in the 2002 Winter Olympics and the 2004 Summer Olympics.Occasionally,Salt Lake City would be elected to host the 2002 Winter Olympics and the Organizing Committee chose to organize both events under the same umbrella.While of the 11 cities applying for the 2004 Games, 6 had also chosen the joint management model.

Five years later, in 2001, after a change at the Olympic Charter, the International Paralympic Committee became an effective collaborator of the International Olympic Committee, and its president became a compulsory member of the IOC. With that, a cooperation agreement was signed informally called "One city, two events" and from then on, the same city and the same Organizing Committee would be responsible for the Olympic Games and the Paralympic Games of the same year, and this concept started to be used during the process that led Beijing to win the process to host the 2008 Summer Olympics.

Incidents during the Games

In addition to problems related to organization and funding between the two Committees. Other difficulties and problems were recorded when the Paralympic athletes arrived at the Olympic Village. They made public the displeasure of the first delegations that registered with the Olympic Village about the state of conservation of its rooms, the availability of food and especially the conditions of logistics between the village and the venues because of the distances and accessibility of the same. These were not the first problems that were reported in the so-called "transition period" that lasted from August 5th to 16th. Several media, that were covering the games, made public accusations about the fact that the Olympic Games Organizing Committee was showing negligence about the Village services and raised serious possibilities that the situation was a result of numerous contractual failures between the two parties. This agreement also included the infrastructures issues of those sites that were shared and their cleaning and conservation, until APOC could take over their operation. At the exact moment athletes were able to access their accommodations, the athletes and participating delegations also noticed that several electronic devices and sockets were summarily ripped off and there was furniture missing, which turned the residential part of the village into a mess. The amount of criticism was so great that ACOG issued a public denial about the situation, claiming that some delegations arrived two days earlier than planned in Atlanta. As had already happened at the Olympics, logistics and accessibility were serious problems, as competitions were held in 17 venues scattered throughout Metro Atlanta, with only 3 being close to the Village and another 6 exclusive venues for the Paralympics inside member institutions of the Georgia University System that served as training facilities during the Olympic Games, as the only originally signed contract was about to share some competition venues. Another situation that caused many embarrassments was the way APOC dealt with athletes with intellectual disabilities. As this was the first time in the history of the Summer Paralympics that athletes with this type of disability were included in the sports program. As the decision to include them was made late (in 1995), there was no mention of them in official publicity and promotion materials for the Games. Not even they were officially mentioned during the opening ceremony nor during their competitions held in the early days. Even with official complaints, made insistently and repeatedly made by Bernard Athos, then president of the International Association of Sports for People with Intellectual Disabilities (INAS-FHM), were heard by APOC. Their complaints were going unnoticed until they reached the ears of journalists covering the Games and were made public. This situation was only resolved when it was publicly disclosed by local and international newspapers. Soon after, the APOC announced through a press release that the situation had been unintentionally caused.

Look of the Games

The visual concept for this edition was called "The Ascending Flame" and was based at the logo called "StarFire" released in 1992 and was developed by the local design office Copeland Design who had created all the visual concepts for the city's bid for the Olympic Games. The office took advantage of its already being public knowledge that the two events would be held separately. A totally different corporate identity was created. It was from common sense that this would be the biggest edition of the Paralympic Games so far in everything, and that echoed in the logo which is similar to the logo of the Olympic Games bid. The chosen graphic should be connected with the constant expansion and recent recognition of the Paralympic Movement around the world. And also had to be remembered with the fact that the Paralympics "was ceasing to be a second class event and now they are enter into a mainstream visibility". The highest feature at the concept of "The Ascending Flame" is a special feature of the city as one of main logistics hubs in the world due their strategic location between the south and southeast of the United States. This prominence was enhanced when the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport has become one of the main airports in the world and led to the city's first period of rapid development. Another recurring idea was that this issue could serve as the "light of inspiration" for the issue of basic rights for people with disabilities around the world in a parallel with what Martin Luther King Jr. did with the civil rights movement. Another association could be held with the to the city's nickname of "The Phoenix City" because the resilience of its population made it several times completely destroyed to be reborn by the effort and bravery of its population in a parallel with the life story of each participating athlete and the last connection would be in a direct relation with the Paralympic flame, that this time was born from a spark of the eternal flame that burns at King Center.

According to a survey carried out by the Atlanta History Center, there are few recorded materials about the development of this project. However, Copeland Design was also responsible for creating the visual identity. In these documents, the so-called concept of "The Ascendent Flame" is explained and associated with the Games slogan that was "The Triumph of the Human Spirit" along the mascot that was the phoenix Blaze.

Mascot

The mascot for the Paralympic Summer Games in Atlanta 1996 was Blaze. Blaze was created by Trevor Stone Irvin of Irvin Productions in Atlanta.

Blaze is a phoenix, a mythical bird that rises from ashes to experience a renewed life. The phoenix appears in Greco-Roman, Egyptian, Arabian, Chinese, Russian and Native American folklore and in all instances symbolizes strength, vision, inspiration and survival.
The phoenix was an ideal mascot for the 1996 Atlanta Paralympic Games and later for BlazeSports America, a nonprofit organization that is the direct legacy of the Games. The phoenix has long been the symbol of Atlanta's rebirth after its devastation in the American Civil War. But most importantly, it is the personification of the will, perseverance and determination of youth and adults with physical disability to achieve full and productive lives.
Blaze, with his bright colors, height and broad wing span, reflects the traits, identified in a focus group of athletes with disability, as those they believed best represented the drive to succeed of persons with physical disability who pursue sports as recreation and as a competitive endeavor.
Today, Blaze is the most recognizable symbol of disability sport in America.

Sports

The games consisted of 508 events spread over twenty sports, including three demonstration sports.
* Archery
* Athletics
* Boccia
* Cycling
* Equestrian
* Football 7-a-side
* Goalball
* Judo
* Lawn bowls
* Powerlifting
* ''Racquetball''
* ''Sailing'' (demonstration sport, but medals awarded)
* Shooting
* Swimming
* Table tennis
* Volleyball
* Wheelchair basketball
* Wheelchair fencing
* ''Wheelchair rugby'' (demonstration sport, but medals awarded)
* Wheelchair tennis

Venues

In total 17 venues were used at the 1996 Summer Olympics and five new venues were used at the Games in Atlanta.

Olympic Ring

* Centennial Olympic Stadium – opening/closing ceremonies, athletics
* Alexander Memorial Coliseum – standing volleyball
* Georgia Tech Aquatic Center – swimming

Metro Atlanta

* Henderson Arena – judo and wheelchair rugby
* Panther Stadium – lawn bowls and 7-side-football
* Woodruff P.E. Center – boccia
* GSU Sports Arena – goalball
* Marriott Marquis – powerlifting
* Sheffield Building – wheelchair fencing
* Forbes Arena and Omni Coliseum – wheelchair basketball
* Clayton State Arena – sitting volleyball
* Wolf Creek Shooting Complex – shooting
* Stone Mountain Park – archery, wheelchair tennis and cycling

Duluth

* Gwinnett Center – table tennis

Another Venues

* Lake Lanier – yachting
* Georgia International Horse Park – equestrian

Calendar

In the following calendar for the 1996 Summer Paralympics, each blue box represents an event competition. The yellow boxes represent days during which medal-awarding finals for a sport are held. The number in each yellow box represents the number of finals that are contested on that day.

Medal count

A total of 1574 medals were awarded during the Atlanta games: 517 gold, 516 silver, and 541 bronze. The host country, the United States, topped the medal count with more gold medals, more bronze medals, and more medals overall than any other nation. Germany took the most silver medals, with 58.

In the table below, the ranking sorts by the number of gold medals earned by the top ten nations (in this context a nation is an entity represented by a National Paralympic Committee). The number of silver medals is taken into consideration next and then the number of bronze medals.

Participating delegations

A total of 104 National Paralympic Committees were represented at the 1996 Games, and the combined total of athletes was about 3,260.Countries who made their first appearances in the Atlanta Games were : Afghanistan, Angola, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bermuda, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Former Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia, Honduras, Kyrgyzstan, Libya, Mauritius, Moldova, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sierra Leone, Ukraine at the 1996 Summer Paralympics, Ukraine and Zambia.

Gallery

File:Priya Cooper and minor medallists 200 IM.jpg
File:Wheelchair tennis Atlanta Paralympics (14).jpg, Wheelchair tennis
File:Welcome home parade Adelaide Atlanta Paralympics (21).jpg
File:Welcome home parade Adelaide Atlanta Paralympics (14).jpg, Welcome home parade
File:Swimming Atlanta Paralympics (12).jpg
File:Wheelchair tennis Atlanta Paralympics (1).jpg

See also

* 1996 Summer Olympics
* BlazeSports America, the legacy organization of the 1996 Paralympic Games

References

External links

International Paralympic Committee
*

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Paralympics
Sports competitions in Atlanta
Paralympics
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1996 in sports in Georgia (U.S. state)
1996 in Atlanta
Multi-sport events in the United States
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