25. Olympic Summer Games
Olympic Medals in the games of 1992 in Barcelona
815 Medals in 29 Sports in 257 Events
After the fall of the Berlin Wall, Germany also took part in the 1992 Summer Games after reunification as a nation. As with the Winter Games in Albertville a few months earlier, there was a “United Team” for the successor states of the Soviet Union, with the exception of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which were represented as independent states. Because of the Balkan War, Yugoslavia was excluded from the games. However, individual athletes were participating in the IOC as independent Olympic participants.
9,356 participants, including 2,851 women, were a new record, as were 169 countries and 257 competitions. Because of the global political changes, the Barcelona Games were completely boycott-free 20 years after Munich. Even South Africa was there again after the abolition of apartheid. New sports were badminton and baseball, women had competitions in judo for the first time. In 1972 medals were awarded for the first time in the canoe slalom, in 1992 the white water slalom was reintroduced into the Olympic program and an integral part of the Olympic competitions.
Freddie Mercury had already recorded from Queen together with the opera singer Monserrat Caballé in 1987. It was intended to sing this duet at the opening. Unfortunately, Freddie Mercury died of AIDS in late 1991. Still, it was the epitome of the Barcelona Games. From the opening ceremony, many people remember the ignition of the Olympic flame: the Paralympic archer Antonio Rebello closed a burning arrow across the audience in the flame bowl.
"Dream Team" was rightly the name of the US team in basketball. The best NBA professionals like Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan, Charles Barkley, Chris Mullin, Larry Bird gave the opponents no chance. In the following games, other basketball teams in the USA also called themselves the Dream Team, but only the team from Barcelona in 1992 really deserved this name!
The most successful athlete was the Belarusian Vitaly Sherbo for the United Team starting with six gold medals, four of which he won in the single device finals on the same day! The Hungarian swimmer Krisztina Egerszegi won three gold medals on individual courses. She was at the height of her career. She had already won over 200m back in 1988 in Seoul and was supposed to do that in 1996 in Atlanta. So far only Dawn Fraser has won three individual medals in the same competition. Carl Lewis won his 7th and 8th gold medals in the long jump and in the 4x 100m relay.
Many hotels were built for the games in Barcelona, neighborhoods were modernized, and an attractive residential area was created by the sea. All of this has given tourism a big boost, the city has benefited from the Olympic Games like no other.