Muhammad Ali at the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in Atlanta in July 1996
Picture: Getty
The greatest boxer of all time did not experience his most difficult fight in the ring, but at the 1996 games with the Olympic torch in the hand trembling with fear and Parkinson’s. In Atlanta, Ali showed the stamina of the fighter again.
WITHFor a ghost hour the man in white suddenly stood there. It was shortly after midnight. President Bill Clinton had the XXVI Games after the seemingly endless march in of the athletes. Olympiad just opened on the scheduled date, on July 19, 1996 at 11:59 p.m. Only a few steps were left to end the 15,000-mile relay of the Olympic fire through America in Atlanta – the sight of the figure at the foot of the flame tower left 10,000 athletes in the interior of the Olympic Stadium, 83,000 spectators in the stands and three billion on television Take your breath away.
Olympic opening ceremonies, originally a somewhat old-fashioned mixture of archaic symbolism and ritual pathos, with oath and invasion, flag, flame, doves of peace, had developed into their own Olympic competition since the Disney Show of the Los Angeles Games in 1984 – an Olympic Games competition with each other, whose dramaturges, choreographers, make-up artists succeed in creating the most modern, artistically gripping and emotionally moving opening.
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