By the time Gina Hemphill approached Rafer Johnson with a burning Olympic torch in the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, on that never-to-be-forgotten Saturday night July 28, 1984, so much already had happened.
The International Olympic Committee was struggling. The murders of Israeli athletes at the ’72 Games in Munich were still fresh in many minds. The huge cost over-runs and the negative image of a large crane from unfinished construction that hung over the main Olympic Stadium throughout the ’76 Montreal Games further damaged the Olympic image. And then the U.S., at the behest of President Jimmy Carter, boycotted the 1980 Moscow Games to protest the Soviets invading Afghanistan.
So, the competition for which city would be host for the ’84 Games came down to a choice between Los Angeles and Tehran. Even the IOC couldn’t screw up that one.
Civic activist John Argue, and mayor Tom Bradley led the charge, but for several years, Los Angeles wasn’t buying it. Too much traffic. Too much distraction to daily life. Probably too much cost to taxpayers, the vast majority who couldn’t care less about shot putters and people shooting arrows at targets.
Eventually, Argue and Bradley, plus the chairman of the L.A. Games, prominent local lawyer Paul Ziffren, took on the gamble. Then they found a travel executive from the San Fernando Valley named Peter Ueberroth to run the show. Ueberroth brought on sidekick Harry Usher, another local lawyer, and the next four years were like nothing that had ever hit the city before, even counting its first Olympic hosting run with the 1932 Games.
Sponsors needed to be found. Places to host all the sports had to be identified. Volunteers had to be recruited. A roster of highly skilled additional executives had to be convinced to sign on, often without much in the way of salary until closer to the games. They needed an organizational chart that would have made IBM proud. Most important, TV networks had to be grabbed by the lapel and convinced they needed to put money up front just for the right to compete to carry the Games on their airspace. When Ueberroth took over his Olympic office, he was handed a set of keys and a bill for the rent. Little more.
It was a higher-than-Everest mountain to climb, and years later, by the time Hemphill, Jesse Owens’ granddaughter, reached Johnson, only 32 crucial steps were left to the summit, 32 steps to ratify all the work and justify all the effort.
Peter Ueberroth, the architect of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games, in 2008.
(M. Spencer Green / Associated Press)
There were 92,515 people in the Coliseum for the opening ceremony, every one of them thinking how lucky they were just to be there. They had seen Rocket Man flying and 1,000 volunteers on the Coliseum floor holding balloons that spelled out “Welcome.” Soon, 84 grand pianos played “Rhapsody in Blue” and President Ronald Reagan officially opened the Games.
All that was left was the symbolic torch lighting, the moment when the host city says it is turning on the lights for all to come in and enjoy. A moment of such joy.
Jim Murray, The Times sports columnist and eventual Pulitzer Prize winner, captured this like few others could, when he wrote: “The opening ceremony is not the start of the Olympics, it’s the culmination. It makes the Olympic statement. It’s a Valentine to tomorrow. Tomorrow will be all right. Tomorrow is in good hands.”
Forty years ago, the City of Angels danced and celebrated and felt as if it were the No. 1 place in the world, at least for a couple of weeks.
The weather was near perfect. People who had been lukewarm about the whole thing eventually scrambled to get tickets to an event, any event. Ueberroth and his team figured out ways to reduce traffic — lots of busing and work-shift schedule changes. Also, thousands of people fearing the worst left town.
So, traffic cooperated and so did the athletes.
Carl Lewis was a huge story because he hoped to do what Owens had done in ’36 in Berlin — win four gold medals. And he did. Lewis won the 100 and 200, anchored the winning 400 relay and took the long jump.
Evelyn Ashford and Valerie Briscoe Hooks were golden in the women’s sprints.
The IOC never had allowed women to have their own marathon. Until L.A. Then Joan Benoit of Maine, all 5 feet 2 inches and 100 pounds, breezed into the Coliseum for her last lap and a joyous celebration. That was only tempered a bit later when Gabriela Andersen Schiess, an Idaho ski instructor running for her native Switzerland, entered the Coliseum suffering from possible heat stroke. She somehow made her way around that last lap contorted in pain and walking much of the way, but not allowing anybody to touch her and disqualify her. She stepped across the finish line and doctors were there to get her on a stretcher, wrap her in ice and take her away. She recovered and ran another race a few weeks later.
Rowdy Gaines and Tracy Caulkins starred in the swimming events, and Greg Louganis dominated the diving, as most expected he would.
With the Soviets doing their payback boycotting, the U.S. dominated both basketball tournaments, with coach Bobby Knight and his Michael Jordan-led men’s team and coach Pat Summitt and her Cheryl Miller/Kim Mulkey-led women’s team each taking gold.
The men’s soccer event surprised even the organizers, when the third-place game sold out. Attendance at Yugoslavia’s bronze-medal victory over Italy at the Rose Bowl was 100,374. For France’s gold-medal win over Brazil, they squeezed in a few more: 101,799. The international soccer community started thinking that a World Cup in the U.S. and Los Angeles might work, after all.
Mary Lou Retton became a household name with her joyful performance in gymnastics, and the underrated U.S. men’s team — led by Bart Connor, Mitch Gaylord, Peter Vidmar and Tim Doggett — stunned the sport with a late-night team victory that few saw coming.
U.S. gymnast Mary Lou Retton celebrates after her gold-medal winning performance in the women’s all-around at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics.
(Tony Barnard / Los Angeles Times)
Then came the women’s 3,000 meters, on the last Friday night of the games, with the Coliseum crowd expecting greatness from local star Mary Decker and also wondering what it would be like to see a teenager from South Africa, competing for England, run barefoot in the same race. Zola Budd, barely 100 pounds, 18 years old, too shy to defend herself when she needed to, was about to become part of the biggest story of the ’84 Olympics.
Midway through the race, Budd went past Decker to the front. Decker stayed close and tangled a bit with Budd. A few strides later, Budd’s left foot brushed Decker’s thigh, causing Budd to lose her balance and run into Decker’s path. Decker then appeared to step on the back of Budd’s heel. Decker stumbled, lunged toward Budd as she went down and tore Budd’s number off her back.
Decker was injured and writhed in pain in the infield. Budd looked back as Decker went down and kept on running. Soon, she was greeted by a chorus of boos from the Coliseum crowd. She stayed near the front for a while, then drifted back, eventually finishing seventh.
Years later, Budd told a Times reporter that she knew she could have won a medal. She knew that the eventual winner, Maricica Puica of Romania, was the best in the field and was sad she got lost in the Decker-Budd hype. Budd said she was fearful of standing on the medal podium and getting booed.
Decker missed one Olympics in her prime because of injury, another because of the U.S. boycott in Moscow and despite being one of the sports premier distance runners, never medaled in an Olympics.
When Budd approached Decker in the Coliseum tunnel after the incident, Decker yelled at her to get away. Budd went back to her Los Angeles hotel with her mother, then was warned there were death threats against her. The next day, security people drove her and her mother directly to LAX and right out onto the tarmac, where they boarded a flight taking her back to South Africa and away from her Olympic nightmare.
Months later, Ueberroth was clearly in the running for Time Magazine’s Man of the Year. He had paid all the bills and still produced a net income of $232.5 million from the Games, which still provide to this day, through the LA84 Foundation, funds for sports programs all over Southern California. One day, he was told the magazine was out and he was on the cover. He decided to walk to a local store near his home in Laguna Beach, where he knew there was a newsstand.
“I hadn’t shaved and I just threw on some old clothes,” Ueberroth said. “I got to the store and there I was, on the cover of Time Magazine.”
He picked up a stack of the magazines, went to check out, and the clerk looked annoyed. Ueberroth, sensing hesitation, told the clerk he was the person on the cover. The clerk, taking a long look at this unshaven, casually dressed customer and glancing at the magazine cover of a man in a suit and tie, told Ueberroth all the copies had been reserved by other customers.
Ueberroth always chuckles when he tells the story. Turns out, the Man of the Year had zero leverage with the clerk of the day.
