International Olympic Committee : News

Egerszegi Krisztina

9/9/1992 12:00:00 AM

Krisztina Egerszegi won three Olympic gold medals in Barcelona, the 100m backstroke, the 200m backstroke and the 400m medley. Affectionately known as ‘the Little Mouse’ in her native Hungary, which was a play on her name and a reflection of her diminutive size, Egerszegi became only the third female swimmer in history to win three individual events at one Olympic Games, Debbie Meyer and Janet Evens, both of the USA, being the other two.

Mighty Mouse

Krisztina was just 14 years old when she won her first gold medal at the 1988 Seoul Olympic Games in South Korea, making her the youngest-ever female Olympic swimming Champion. She won the 200m backstroke, the same event she would win both in Barcelona four years later and again in Atlanta at the Olympic Games after that. Only Australia’s Dawn Fraser has won three consecutive Olympic titles in the same discipline, swimming the 100m freestyle.

2:06.62

A five-time Olympic Champion in all, Egerszegi also took silver at the Seoul Games in the 100m Backstroke and a bronze medal in Atlanta in the 400m medley. She broke the 100m and 200m backstroke world records during her career. Her 200m record time of 2:06.62 stood for almost 17 years.

Hide & Seek

Egerszegi learnt to swim at the age of four under the tutorship of Hungarian team coach Laszlo Kiss. She arrived in Seoul for her first Olympic Games weighing just 46 kilograms and standing only 166 centimeters tall. Kiss later said he believed Egerszegi was too young to experience any competition nervousness. “It was more a question of playing hide and seek with her in the Olympic Village to keep her from getting bored.” He revealed.

Retirement

Egerszegi retired from swimming after the 1996 Olympic games in Atlanta at the age of only 22. Seven-times Hungarian Sports Woman of the Year, she was inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame in 2001.

Lip Oleniuc

9/8/1992 12:00:00 AM

Elisabeta Lipa-Oleniuc of Romania is the most decorated Olympic rower ever. With five gold medals, two silver, and a bronze over an astonishing 20-year period, the Romanian won an Olympic medal every time she competed. Lipa is one of just four rowers to have taken part in six different Olympiads.

First taste of Olympic glory

Born in the town of Siret, Lipa started rowing at the age of fourteen in 1980 and competed in her first Olympic Games just four years later at Los Angeles where she won her first gold medal in the double scull event.

Champion in the Catalan capital

At Barcelona Lipa won gold, this time in the single sculls event. Having pulled away from the rest of the field early on to establish a comfortable lead, she managed to hold off the challenge of silver medallist Annelies Bredael of Belgium. Lipa covered the 2000m distance in a time of 07:25.54. She also picked up a silver medal in a double scull boat with Veronica Cochela.

Olympic Dominance

The South Korean Seoul Games delivered Lipa Olympic silver and bronze in the double scull and the quadruple scull boats. And there were to be three more Olympic gold medals, at Atlanta in 1996, Sydney in 2000 and Athens in 2004. No other rower in Olympic history had won so many honours. Lipa’s final Athens gold medal came at the age of 39.

Women’s 10,000m Final

9/8/1992 12:00:00 AM

Derartu Tulu grew up tending cattle on the dusty plains of Ethiopia but went on to become an Olympic legend. The 21-year old from the village of Bekoji became the first black African woman to win an Olympic gold medal. She claimed the Womens 10,000m title in Barcelona with a personal best time of 31:06:02, beating South Africa’s Elana Meyer into second place.

Africa united

In a symbol of hope for a new Africa, Tulu joined hands with the white South African silver medallist for a victory lap. South Africa had been banned from Olympic competition since 1964 because of its black and white separation politics and the image of these two sporting heroes united in a poignant show of post-apartheid harmony captured the imagination of the globe..

Olympic Dominance

Tulu grew in stature, status and confidence after Barcelona. Four years later she became the first woman to retain the 10,000m title, winning the gold medal in Sydney against fiercely talented opposition. It was a breathtaking victory that saw the top six athletes in the race finish inside the Olympic record. Tulu retained her Olympic title in a time of 30:17.49, helped by her incredible penultimate lap of 60.3 seconds.

Three times an Olympic medal-winner

Having given birth to her first child and become an international superstar of women’s distance running Tulu claimed a third Olympic medal at Athens in 2004, again in the 10,000m event and this time a bronze.

USA Men’s 4x100m

9/7/1992 12:00:00 AM

The United States has traditionally dominated the Men’s Olympic 4x100m relay event, winning well over half of the titles awarded since 1912. The USA team was the first to run the event under 38 seconds and has continually set, and broken, new World Records for this distance. The most memorable performance in Olympic history came from the quartet of Mike Marsh, Leroy Burrell, Dennis Mitchell and Carl Lewis at Barcelona: the fantastic four ran a time of 37.40 seconds - a world record that stood for 16 years.

1st leg - Michael Marsh

Mike Lawrence Marsh was born in Los Angeles, and attended Hawthorne High School in the state of California. Marsh failed to qualify for the individual 100m event in Barcelona but more than made up for his disappointment by winning Olympic gold for the 200m distance in a time of 20.01 seconds.

2nd leg - Leroy Burrell

Leroy Russel Burrell grew up in Lansdowne, Pennsylvania and attended Penn Wood High School. In 1986 he tore the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee while taking part in a long jump competition and was plagued by injury niggles throughout his career. His achievements are thus all the more remarkable. Burrell twice set the 100m World Record with times of 9.90 seconds and 9.85 seconds, his second and faster time stood for two years until the 1996 Olympic Games.

3rd leg - Dennis Mitchell

Dennis Allen Mitchell was born in Havelock, in North Carolina and received a scholarship to attend the University of Florida in Gainesville. Mitchell claimed a bronze medal in the individual 100m event at Barcelona, finishing third behind Namibia’s Frankie Fredericks and winner Linford Christie of Great Britain.

4th Anchor leg - Carl Lewis

Frederick Carlton Lewis was born in the City of Birmingham, Alabama and studied at the University of Houston, Texas. He claimed a total of 10 Olympic medals, 9 of them gold, during a glittering career and was voted ‘Sportsman of the Century’ by the International Olympic Committee. At Barcelona he won the long jump title with a leap of 8.67 metres and brought home the 4x100m baton in 8.85 seconds, the fastest officially recorded time for a 4x100m anchor leg.

Yolanda Gail Devers

9/7/1992 12:00:00 AM

A true champion, Yolanda Gail Devers’ track success came after years of misdiagnosed health problems. The American failed to qualify for the 1988 South Korean Olympics games in Seoul due to symptoms of an enlarged thyroid caused by an undiagnosed condition. After suffering with severe headaches and blurred vision, Devers lost 23 pounds of body weight before finally being correctly diagnosed with Graves’ disease in 1990. Two years of healthy training followed, enough to win gold at the Olympic Games in Barcelona.

An incredible photo finish

Devers won the Womens 100m race in a time of 10.82, snatching victory from Juliet Cuthbert of Jamaica in a photo finish that saw an incredible five women, cross the line just 0.06 seconds apart. Devers also competed in the Womens 100m hurdles but hit her last hurdle, finishing fifth.

Olympic Dominance

Devers became an American sprinting sensation with her trade mark extra long fingernails and went on to become the first woman to retain the Olympic 100m title since fellow American Wyomia Tyus in 1968. Four years after Barcelona and this time on home soil in Atlanta, Devers forced another photo finish, this time with Merlene Ottey of Jamaica. Both women finished with the same time, but a look at the photo gave Devers that second Olympic title. Another gold in the Womens 4x100m relay race gave Devers her third Olympic title.

High School Honour

Born in Seattle, Washington State, Devers grew up in San Diego, California and graduated from Sweetwater High School in 1984. The school named its athletics stadium after Devers, their most famous alumna.

De La Hoya

9/7/1992 12:00:00 AM

The name Oscar De La Hoya is so synonymous with boxing it’s easy to forget how his remarkable career started. The young Mexican-American avoided confrontation as a child, preferring non-contact sports such as skateboarding and baseball to his family sport of boxing. But with a father and grandfather who had both fought professionally in the ring, it was no surprise when De La Hoya put a pair of gloves on.

For his mother

De La Hoya, from East Los Angeles, California, graduated from Garfield High School and began to think about competing at the Olympic Games. It was the dream of his mother Cecilia to see her son winning an Olympic medal for his country. So when Cecilia became terminally ill with breast cancer and later died in 1990, her son decided to dedicate himself to achieving his mother’s dream for him.

Tale of the Olympic tape

At 180 and just under 60 kilograms Oscar De La Hoya qualified for the lightweight category in Barcelona, and fought his way to the final where he met Marco Rudolph of Germany. Rudolph was a fighter De La Hoya knew well having suffered his only amateur defeat to the German one year earlier, at the World Championships in Australia.

The final blow

De La Hoya knocked Rudolph off his feet with a powerful left in round three and the German never really recovered. The young American dominated the bout, winning it by seven points to two. Still full of energy at the end of the fight De La Hoya continued to bounce on the spot as the match referee raised his arm to signal De La Hoya as the new Olympic champion. The American went down on one knee for a short private prayer as his father and family celebrated in the stands. With an Americanflag in one hand and a Mexican flag in the other, De La Hoya was nicknamed ‘The Golden Boy,’ a title that stuck with him throughout his professional career.

Pound for pound one of the best amateurs ever.

During his amateur boxing career De La Hoya's record was an outstanding 223 wins, 5 defeats and an incredible 163 knockouts.

Mens Basketball - The Dream Team

2/9/1992 12:00:00 AM

NBA players included

In 1989 the international governing body of basketball opened the door to America’s professional NBA players to compete at the Olympics Games for the first time. The USA assembled its best athletes for the 1992 Games in Barcelona and appropriately nicknamed them, ‘The Dream Team.’

Huge victory margin

Team USA didn’t lose a match on their way to claiming the Olympic gold medal and scored over 100 points in every game they played. Michael Jordan, Earvin ‘Magic’ Johnson, Charles Barkley, Patrick Ewing and Larry Bird were just a few of the household names from the NBA playing for their country and in the same team for the first time.

Star-struck opposition

Coached by Chuck Daly, who twice guided the Detroit Pistons to NBA Championship glory, the ‘Dream Team’ played Brazil, Germany, Angola, Spain and Croatia, the team they were to beat 117-85 in the Olympic final.

So overwhelmed and star-struck were America’s basketball opponents they even requested photograph and autograph-signing sessions before playing them. Ten of the twelve USA players at the Barcelona Olympics Games were later named among the 50 greatest players in NBA history.

Charles Barkley claimed the honour of becoming America’s leading scorer in Barcelona, averaging 18.0 points per game.

The full USA squad

No. 4 Christian Laettner, Duke University (Only player selected without professional experience.)
No. 5 David Robinson, San Antonio Spur
No. 6 Patrick Ewing, New York Knicks
No. 7 Larry Bird, Boston Celtics
No. 8 Scottie Pippen, Chicago Bulls
No. 9 Michael Jordan, Chicago Bulls
No. 10 Clyde Drexler, Portland Trail Blazers
No. 11 Karl Malone, Utah Jazz
No. 12 John Stockton, Utah Jazz
No. 13 Chris Mullin, Golden State Warriors
No. 14 Charles Barkley, Phoenix Suns
No. 15 Earvin “Magic” Johnson Jr, Los Angeles Lakers