1984 Summer Olympics

Games of the XXIII Olympiad
Host city Los Angeles, California, United States
Nations participating 140
Athletes participating 6,829
(5,263 men, 1,566 women)[1]
Events 221 in 21 sports
Opening ceremony July 28
Closing ceremony August 12
Officially opened by Ronald Reagan
President of the United States
Athlete's Oath Edwin Moses (athlete)
Judge's Oath Sharon Heber
Olympic Torch Rafer Johnson (decathlete)
Stadium Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum
"Olympic Fanfare and Theme"
composed by John Williams for the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles and performed by the Boston Pops Orchestra
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The 1984 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XXIII Olympiad, was an international multi-sport event held in Los Angeles, California, United States in 1984. When Tehran, the only other interested city on the international level, declined to bid due to the concurrent Iranian political and social changes, the IOC awarded Los Angeles the Games by default. This was the second occasion Los Angeles hosted the games; it previously hosted in 1932.

In response to the American-led boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow, 14 Eastern Bloc countries, including the Soviet Union, Cuba and East Germany, boycotted the Games; only Romania elected to attend. For differing reasons, Iran and Libya also boycotted. The USSR announced its intention not to participate on May 8, 1984, citing security concerns and "chauvinistic sentiments and an anti-Soviet hysteria being whipped up in the United States."[2] Boycotting countries organized another large event in June–September 1984, called the Friendship Games; however, not even a single competition was held between July 28 and August 12. Representatives of the organizing countries, the Soviets in particular, underlined it was "not held to replace the Olympics". Elite athletes from the U.S. and USSR would only compete against each other at the 1986 Goodwill Games in Moscow, organized in response to the boycotts.

Where ambitious construction for the 1976 games in Montreal and 1980 games in Moscow had saddled organizers with expenses greatly in excess of revenues, Los Angeles strictly controlled expenses by using existing facilities except a swim stadium and a velodrome that were paid for by corporate sponsors. The Olympic Committee led by Peter Ueberroth used some of the profits to endow the LA84 Foundation to promote youth sports in Southern California, educate coaches and maintain a sports library. The 1984 Summer Olympics are often considered the most financially successful modern Olympics.[3]

The host state of California was the home state of U.S. President Ronald Reagan, who officially opened the Games. He had served as Governor of California from 1967 to 1975. The official mascot of the Los Angeles Games was Sam the Olympic Eagle. The logo of the games featured five blue, white and red stars arranged horizontally and struck through with alternating streaks; it was named "Stars in Motion."

On July 18, 2009, a 25th anniversary celebration was held in the main stadium. This celebration included a speech by the former president of the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee, Peter Ueberroth, and a re-creation of the lighting of the cauldron.

Host selection

The selection process for the 1984 Summer Olympics consisted of a single finalized bid, with the International Olympic Committee accepting the bid of Los Angeles. A bid from Tehran was withdrawn before the selection. Los Angeles had unsuccessfully bid for the two previous Summer Olympics, for 1976 and 1980. The United States Olympic Committee had at least one bid for every Olympics since 1944, but had not succeeded since the Los Angeles Olympics in 1932, the previous time a single bid had been issued for the Summer Olympics.[4]

Torch relay

The 1984 Olympic Torch Relay began in New York City and ended in Los Angeles, traversing 33 states and the District of Columbia. Unlike later torch relays, the torch was continuously carried by runners on foot. The route covered more than 9,320 mi (15,000 km) and involved 3,636 runners, including 200 from the sponsoring company AT&T. Noted athlete O.J. Simpson was among the runners, carrying the torch up the California Incline in Santa Monica. Gina Hemphill, granddaughter of Jesse Owens, carried the torch into the Coliseum, completed a lap around the track, then handed it off to the final runner, Rafer Johnson, winner of the decathlon at the 1960 Summer Olympics. With the torch, he touched off the flame which passed through a specially designed flammable Olympic logo, igniting all five rings. The flame then passed up to cauldron atop the peristyle and remained aflame for the duration of the Games.

Music

John Williams composed the theme for the Olympiad, "Olympic Fanfare and Theme". This piece won a Grammy for Williams and became one of the most well-known musical themes of the Olympic Games, along with Leo Arnaud's "Bugler's Dream"; the latter is sometimes attached to the beginning of Olympic Fanfare and Theme. Composer Bill Conti also wrote a song to inspire the weightlifters called "Power". An album, The Official Music of the XXIII Olympiad—Los Angeles 1984, featured three of those tracks along with sports themes written for the occasion by popular musical artists including Foreigner, Toto, Loverboy, Herbie Hancock, Quincy Jones, Christopher Cross, Philip Glass and Giorgio Moroder.[5] The album was released on Columbia Records and the catalogue number was BJS 39322.

The Brazilian composer Sérgio Mendes also composed a special song for the 1984 Olympic Games, "Olympia," from his 1984 album Confetti. A choir of approximately one thousand voices was assembled of singers in the region. All were volunteers from nearby churches, schools and universities.

Etta James performed "When the Saints Go Marching In" at the Opening Ceremony.[6]

Vicki McClure along with the International Children's Choir of Long Beach sang "Reach Out and Touch".

Lionel Richie performed a 9-minute version of his hit single "All Night Long" at the closing ceremonies.[7]

Highlights

Arts Festival

The 1984 Summer Olympics was preceded by the 10-week-long adjunct Los Angeles Olympic Arts Festival, which opened on June 2 and ended on August 12. It provided more than 400 performances by 146 theater, dance and music companies, representing every continent and 18 countries. It was organized by then-CalArts President Robert Fitzpatrick.

General

Track and field

Other sports

Post Closing Ceremony Fanfare

Venues

The Opening Ceremony at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum

Los Angeles venues

Southern California venues

Other venues

Medals awarded

The 1984 Summer Olympic program featured 221 events in the following 21 sports:

Demonstration sports

Calendar

All times are in Pacific Daylight Time (UTC-7); the other two cities, Boston and Annapolis uses Eastern Daylight Time (UTC-4)
 ● Opening ceremony   Event competitions  ● Event finals  ● Closing ceremony
Date July August
28th
Sat		29th
Sun		30th
Mon		31st
Tue		1st
Wed		2nd
Thu		3rd
Fri		4th
Sat		5th
Sun		6th
Mon		7th
Tue		8th
Wed		9th
Thu		10th
Fri		11th
Sat		12th
Sun
Archery ● ●
Athletics ● ● ●
● ●		 ● ●
● ●		 ● ● ● ●
● ● ● ●		 ● ●
● ●		 ●
● ●		 ● ●
● ● ●		 ● ● ●
● ● ● ●
● ● ● ●		 ●
Basketball ● ●
Boxing ● ● ● ●
● ● ● ●
● ● ● ●
Canoeing ● ● ●
● ● ●		 ● ● ●
● ● ●
Cycling ● ● ● ● ●
● ●		 ●
Diving ● ● ● ●
Equestrian ● ● ● ● ● ●
Fencing ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●
Field hockey ● ●
Football (soccer) ●
Gymnastics ● ● ● ● ● ● ●
● ● ●		 ● ●
● ●		 ●
Handball ● ●
Judo ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●
Modern pentathlon ● ●
Rowing ● ● ●
● ● ●		 ● ● ● ●
● ● ● ●
Sailing ● ● ●
● ● ●
Shooting ● ● ● ●
● ●		 ● ● ● ● ●
Swimming ● ●
● ●		 ● ●
● ● ●		 ● ●
● ● ●		 ● ●
● ● ●		 ● ●
● ● ●		 ● ●
● ● ●
Synchronized swimming ● ●
Volleyball ● ●
Water polo ●
Weightlifting ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●
Wrestling ●
● ●		 ●
● ●		 ● ●
● ●		 ●
● ●		 ●
● ●		 ● ●
● ●
Total gold medals 9 8 13 10 12 16 25 21 10 5 14 11 20 43 3
Ceremonies ● ●
Date 28th
Sat		29th
Sun		30th
Mon		31st
Tue		1st
Wed		2nd
Thu		3rd
Fri		4th
Sat		5th
Sun		6th
Mon		7th
Tue		8th
Wed		9th
Thu		10th
Fri		11th
Sat		12th
Sun
July August

Medal count

These are the top ten nations that won medals at the 1984 Games.

Rank Nation Gold Silver Bronze Total
1 United States (host nation) 83 61 30 174
2 Romania 20 16 17 53
3 West Germany 17 19 23 59
4 China 15 8 9 32
5 Italy 14 6 12 32
6 Canada 10 18 16 44
7 Japan 10 8 14 32
8 New Zealand 8 1 2 11
9 Yugoslavia 7 4 7 18
10 South Korea 6 6 7 19

Participating National Olympic Committees

Participating nations
Number of athletes

Athletes from 140 nations competed at the Los Angeles Games. The following countries made their first Olympic appearance in 1984: Bahrain, Bangladesh, Bhutan, British Virgin Islands, Djibouti, Equatorial Guinea, Gambia, Grenada, Mauritania, Mauritius, North Yemen, Oman, Qatar, Rwanda, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, and the United Arab Emirates. The People's Republic of China made their first appearance in a Summer Olympics since 1952, while for the first time the Republic of China team participated as Chinese Taipei.

The Soviet Union led the Warsaw Pact and other Communist and Socialist countries on a boycott of the 1984 Summer Olympics, in retaliation for the U.S.-led boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow over the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. Three Socialist countries disregarded the boycott and attended anyway: Yugoslavia (which hosted the 1984 Winter Olympics), the People's Republic of China, and Romania. The fact that Romania, a Warsaw Pact country, opted to compete despite Soviet demands led to a warm reception of the Romanian team by the United States. When the Romanian athletes entered during the opening ceremonies, they received a standing ovation from the spectators, which comprised mostly U.S. citizens. Romania won 53 medals, including 20 golds, more than the nation has in any other Olympics.

The number of athletes representing that nation is shown in parentheses:

Participating National Olympic Committees

Boycotting countries

Boycotting countries shown in red

Fourteen countries took part in the Soviet-led boycott of the 1984 Olympic Games:[11]

Iran and Libya also boycotted the games, citing political reasons, but were not a part of the Soviet led boycott. Iran was the only country to boycott both the 1980 and 1984 events.

Los Angeles as host city

Newspaper vending machine bringing news of the 1984 Summer Olympics.

Following the news of the massive financial losses of the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, only Los Angeles and New York City expressed serious interest in hosting the 1984 games. Given only one city per country is allowed to bid for any Games, the USOC vote for an American bid city was essentially the deciding vote for the 1984 Olympics host city. In this case, Los Angeles's bid won by a vote of 55 to 39. New York City's 1984 bid fell 16 votes shy of winning the Games and is the closest the city has ever come to becoming a host city for the Olympics, coming even closer than they did in their 2012 bid.[12]

Los Angeles is the only US city to host the Summer Olympics twice.

The low level of interest among cities was seen as a major threat to the future of the Olympic Games. However, with the financially successful Los Angeles Games, cities began to line up to be hosts again. The Los Angeles and Montreal Games are seen as examples of what to do and what not to do when organizing the Olympics, and serve as object lessons to prospective host cities. Montreal organizers had run up a substantial debt eight years earlier by constructing many new, overly ambitiously designed venues, but as the only bidding city the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee was able to extract concessions from the IOC: namely, that the city would not be responsible for any cost overruns and that it could use area venues that were already in existence, particularly Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, which was also the Olympic Stadium for the 1932 Summer Olympics.[13] The Olympic Velodrome and the Olympic Swim Stadium, funded largely by the 7-Eleven and McDonald's corporations respectively, were the only two new venues constructed specifically for the L.A. Games. The resulting low construction costs, coupled with a heavy reliance on private corporate funding, allowed the Games to generate a profit of more than $200 million, making them by far the most financially successful in history.[3]

In addition to corporate support, the Olympic committee also made use of the burgeoning prices being paid for exclusive television rights. Starting with the Los Angeles Games, these contracts would be a significant source of revenue. Adjusted for inflation, the Los Angeles Games received twice the amount received by the 1980 Moscow Summer Olympics and four times that of the 1976 Montreal Summer Olympics.[14] Because these contracts were signed well in advance of the Games, Los Angeles found itself in an easier planning position as most of its revenue was already assured before the Games.[15] On September 1, 2015, Los Angeles has been chosen as the U.S. candidate to bid for the 2024 Summer Olympics.[16]

In popular culture

McDonald's ran a promotion entitled "When the U.S. Wins, You Win" where customers scratched off a ticket with the name of an Olympic event on it, and if the U.S. won that event then they would be given a free menu item: a Big Mac for a gold medal, an order of french fries for a silver medal, and a Coca-Cola for a bronze medal. The promotion became a near financial disaster due to the Soviet boycott which led to the U.S. winning far more Olympic medals than expected.[17]

This promotion was parodied in the The Simpsons episode "Lisa's First Word", where Krusty Burger runs a similar offer. The promotion was intended to be rigged so that prizes would only be offered in events dominated by the Eastern Bloc, but the Soviet-led boycott causes Krusty to personally lose $44 million. He vehemently promises "to spit in every fiftieth burger," to which Homer retorts "I like those odds!" Chief Wiggum also exclaims that he could kiss Carl Lewis, who won four gold medals at the Games.

On NCIS, Tim McGee has an obsession with jet packs, stemming from having attended the 1984 Olympic ceremony as a child and having Bill Suitor fly over his head in his jet pack.[18] This storyline is based on the real experience of executive producer and writer Jesse Stern.[19]

Pop punk band Bowling For Soup references the games in the song "I Can't Stand LA". During a section showing appreciation for the city, the song states, "thank you for hair metal and the '84 Olympics."

Jilly Cooper's novel Riders has a storyline set at the show jumping event in the 1984 LA Olympics.

Broadcast rights

The games were covered by the following broadcasters:

See also

People

Notes

  1. ↑ "Games of the XXIII Olympiad". International Olympic Committee. Archived from the original on August 30, 2008. Retrieved August 31, 2008.
  2. ↑ Burns, John F. (May 9, 1984). "Protests are Issue: Russians Charge 'Gross Flouting' of the Ideals of the Competition". New York Times.
  3. 1 2 Abrahamson, Alan (July 25, 2004). "LA the Best Site, Bid Group Insists; Olympics: Despite USOC rejection". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved August 17, 2008.
  4. ↑ "Past Olympic host city election results". GamesBids. Retrieved March 15, 2011.
  5. ↑ "Various – The Official Music Of The XXIIIrd Olympiad – Los Angeles 1984 (LP) at Discogs". Archived from the original on September 12, 2009. Retrieved September 10, 2009.
  6. ↑ Los Angeles 1984 Olympic Opening Ceremony Complete. YouTube. September 6, 2014.
  7. ↑ Malone, MacKenzie (July 19, 2012). "Tuning into the Games, Watching the Olympics is the next best thing to playing". Times Union. Retrieved April 4, 2014.
  8. ↑ Reuters – Li Ning, "Prince of Gymnasts" and businessman – Aug 8, 2008
  9. ↑ Wolper, Davide (August 12, 2009). "Out of the sky, some Hollywood magic". LA Times. Retrieved December 30, 2015.
  10. ↑ FLASHBACK 1984: Los Angeles Olympics UFO. YouTube. April 23, 2012.
  11. ↑ "1984 Olympics". infoplease.com.
  12. ↑ No Olympics No Problem by Andrew H. Levin. April 27, 2007. page 27. Accessed July 24, 2009. Archived July 26, 2009.
  13. ↑ "Let Boston 2024 pay for the Olympics - The Boston Globe". Retrieved July 28, 2015.
  14. ↑ Shoval, Noam. "A New Phase in the Competition For The Olympic Gold: The London and New York Bids For The 2012 Games." Journal of Urban Affairs 24.5 (2002): 583–99.
  15. ↑ No Olympics No Problem by Andrew H. Levin. April 27, 2007. page 13. Accessed July 24, 2009. Archived July 26, 2009.
  16. ↑ "USOC names Los Angeles the official U.S. bidder for the 2024 Summer Olympics". LA Times. September 1, 2015. Retrieved September 5, 2015.
  17. ↑ Hollie, Pamela G. (August 10, 1984). "Advertising; Big Mac's Olympic Giveaway". The New York Times. Retrieved April 20, 2010.
  18. ↑ "Ignition". NCIS: Naval Criminal Investigative Service. Season 7. Episode 11. January 5, 2010. 43 minutes in. CBS.
  19. ↑ Stern, Jesse. The Future is Now: NCIS meets the jet pack (NCIS: The Seventh Season (Disc 3 special features)). CBS Studios.

Go to time stamp 29:40 for Etta James' performance. A previously cited Associated Press story (in which James was credited for singing the national anthem) was an AP reporting error. The national anthem was performed by a choir, and James appeared to perform 'When The Saints Go Marching In' later in the ceremony.

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to 1984 Summer Olympics.
Preceded by
Moscow		 Summer Olympic Games
Los Angeles
XXIII Olympiad (1984) 		Succeeded by
Seoul
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