Late the night Atlanta won the 1996 Olympics, I consumed a fine Cuban cigar and a few killer scotches in a Tokyo hotel suite with Andy Young, Billy Payne, Charlie Battle and the rest.
It was a rare moment during the bidding days when we let our guards down. A kind of detente replaced the tension between touchy bidding committee and irritating reporter.
I had lurked for more than a year as the Atlanta bidders argued their case from Bali to Berlin. The newspaper had assigned me to cover the Olympic bid with orders to keep a close eye on the prospect for disaster. I had been covering plane crashes, so I guess it seemed an obvious transition.
For all those months, Billy and the gang had kept me at arm’s length – always the reasonable distance for the press.
But that night was different. We toasted. We laughed at the silliness of competing bidding teams. We regaled one another with the comic oddness of the members of the International Olympic Committee, then an exotic menagerie populated by faded aristocrats, former junta operatives, aging athletes and sly, self-serving bureaucrats.
It was that moment of supreme satisfaction when you grasp something unspeakably rare and precious. Something you thought was beyond your reach. You can’t reconcile reality and dream, so you celebrate.
By sunrise, I would resume my job as chief Atlanta Olympics skeptic.
But that night, I was a proud Atlantan, no more, no less.
By and by, I said goodnight and wobbled toward the tourist-class floors of the New Takanawa Prince Hotel. As I boarded the descending elevator, I was greeted by a smiling Agustin Arroyo, the chatty IOC member from Ecuador.
“So, my friend, congratulations,” he said with genuine warmth. “It seems the dog has indeed caught the car.”
He had used the line earlier in the day, before the announcement by Juan Antonio Samaranch, the legendary IOC president and former fascist who nearly successfully masked his contempt for Atlanta. At the close of the Games, he damned Atlanta’s as “most exceptional” instead of his customary rating: “Best Games ever.”
Arroyo’s metaphor held a kernel of truth. While barking is rare, bidding for the Olympics often is reduced to a crazed, frantic and generally futile chase.
To be sure, the Atlanta bidders had a plan, but this little-known city at times seemed overmatched by the enormity of the Olympics and its multitudes.
Yet Atlanta’s pursuit of the Games had a raw, elegant and innocent simplicity. In a world that has become so fractious, frustrating and focus-grouped, it is refreshing to reconsider the immense power of being single-minded.
Imagine this storyline in 2015: A relatively unknown man decides in the wee hours to undertake a multi-billion-dollar quest about which he is deeply naïve to obtain something of which he is nearly ignorant.
Payne was untroubled by this fundamental absurdity. “There is no doubt that we’re going to win the Games,” Payne would say in the early days, when he was seen as very nice crackpot.
Selecting Atlanta, he believed, was inevitable if only enough IOC members would come see this wondrous place for themselves. They would see this dynamic capital of the South — a distinct American region, practically another country — and experience the nurturing cradle of the civil rights movement. Moreover, compared to Athens, Manchester and Belgrade, Atlanta seemed a bright, young thing.
Payne explained his strategy to me this way. “We did what we know how to do: Get to know folks and people that vote,” he said, in a tone that suggested he was stating the obvious
More than two-thirds of the IOC members did visit Atlanta — an unusually high number. They generally liked what they saw, in particular a skyline decorated with the words “Coca-Cola,” the oldest and most loyal Olympic sponsor. Even so, I believe I detected a hint of revulsion on Samaranch’s face as the Old World aristocrat and art collector toured the old World of Coca-Cola attraction.
Samaranch was an Athens man, even after he assured Billy that Atlanta would be given a fair shot.
By the night of the vote, it was hard to see a way for Atlanta to lose. Ultimately, Atlanta didn’t need Samaranch’s vote, capturing 51 IOC votes (precisely what Young had predicted.)
I’m without words to express what it felt like in that great hall when Samaranch said the word “Atlanta.” (Is it me, or did he look as if the word left a bitter taste in his mouth?) The more than 300 Atlantans who had come to Tokyo, sitting together like Bulldog fans at an away game, exploded.
It was the moment, 25 years ago Friday, when the arc of Atlanta’s story bent.
Much has been written – including by me – about whether it was all worth it. The reality of the Olympics never quite lived up the lofty dreams and fantasies that filled that hotel suite in Tokyo. Reality is messy that way.
But was it all worth it?
Silly question: Of course it was.
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