Photo by Kerri Phox
City leaders who helped Atlanta win its bid for the 1996 Olympics, including Ambassador Andrew Young and bid committee founder Billy Payne, joined Atlanta magazine on July 23 to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Games. In a private room at Pricci, attendees enjoyed a four-course meal and shared memories from their push to bring the Olympics to the city.
“I learned that when you join forces with wonderful friends, you can accomplish the impossible,” Payne said during his toast. Payne was the original driving force behind the bid, convincing city leaders like Young and friends like Charlie Battle to team up with him in his quest.
Photo by Kerri Phox
Among those Payne tapped was George Hirthler. “When Billy Payne hired Brad Copeland and I to be the creative team behind the Olympic bid, he changed both our lives,” said Hirthler, whose documentary, The Games in Black and White, explores Payne and Young’s partnership and friendship. Copeland, also in attendance, has advised every Olympics since Atlanta, up to PyeongChang in 2018.
Photo by Kerri Phox
Former Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin, who worked in the office of then-mayor Andrew Young at the time of the bid, shared that when she first heard Atlanta was going to try to win the Olympics, she told her boss: “There’s no way we’re going to beat Athens.”
She recalled him saying, “Shirley, even if we lose, this is good for the city because it unifies this city around a common cause. But I think we can win.”
There was much laughter throughout the night. Battle, who served as the bid committee’s director of international relations, had those seated next to him in stitches as he recalled forcing himself to eat the heart of a peking duck while dining with an Olympic delegate. And there were a few good-natured ribs at Izzy, the 1996 Olympics’ widely panned mascot. “There’s an Izzy costume in my attic,” said Harry Shuman, the bid’s director of public information. “It’s never coming out.”
Young described Atlanta’s Olympics as a “religious” experience. “It was very spiritual,” he told the group. “I think God used us in a miraculous way, and I don’t think we would have had the World Cup if we hadn’t done 30 years ago what we did.”
World Cup Host Committee President Dan Corso, fresh off Atlanta’s hugely successful eight-match run, agreed. “When we said we were going to be able to host the World Cup, it’s because of what everyone here did in 1996,” he said during a toast. “That is the only reason we were able to do it.”
