swimmer was Pablo Morales, who won the men’s
100-meter butterfly. In the women’s competitions,
Summer Sanders won the 200-meter butterfly, but
elsewhere the challenge from Hungary, China, and
the UT was too strong. However, in the second week,
the synchronized swimming events took place, and
the U.S. teams proved unrivaled there.
The gymnastics events were also held the first
week. Shannon Miller emerged as the most success-
ful American gymnast, earning silver medals in the
women’s all-around and the balance beam and
bronze medals in the uneven bars and floor exercise.
The only U.S. gold was won by Trent Dimas in the
men’s horizontal bar.
The athletics events were held the second week,
and, as usual, U.S. athletes excelled. Gail Devers was
seeking to become the first woman since Fanny
Blankers-Koen in 1948 to win the 100-meter and the
100-meter hurdles double, despite having been seri-
ously ill for several years before the Olympics. She
had only resumed training in March, 1992. She man-
aged to win the 100-meter but found the hurdles
race, held later in the week, beyond her. In the 200-
meter, Gwen Torrence edged out two Jamaicans
to win, and in the women’s 4-by-100-meter relay,
Evelyn Ashford won her fourth Olympic gold, with
Torrence adding a second. The other outstanding
female athlete on the U.S. team was Jackie Joyner-
Kersee, who won the heptathlon.
Among the men, the veteran Carl Lewis won the
long jump at his first attempt, setting up an Ameri-
can clean sweep of medals. He then added an eighth
gold to his overall tally in the 4-by-100-meter relay to
bring an outstanding Olympic career to an end.
Mike Marsh was also in the relay team, whose time
was a new world record. Marsh had previously taken
gold in the 200-meter, with an Olympic record time
in the semifinals. Michael Johnson, the 200-meter fa-
vorite, had been surprisingly knocked out at that
stage.
Other U.S. triumphs in track and field included
Quincy Watts’s victory in the men’s 400-meter, with
the United States also taking silver. In the 400-meter
hurdles, Kevin “Spiderman” Young set a new world
record time to win gold. The 4-by-400-meter men’s
relay was also a U.S. victory. A new world record was
set in the triple jump, in which the U.S. team took
both gold and silver, as they did in the shot put, with
Mike Stulce’s outstanding performance beating the
heavily favored Swiss Werner Gunther.
In other sports, the Dream Team won the men’s
basketball competition, defeating Croatia in the fi-
nal game, and Jennifer Capriati won the women’s
singles tennis gold, beating the much-favored Ger-
man Steffi Graf in the final. Elsewhere, successes
were more moderate. In boxing, for example, U.S.
boxers gained only three medals in all, a bronze, sil-
ver, and gold, finishing behind Cuba and Germany
in the boxing medals count. In men’s volleyball, the
team that had won at Seoul was knocked out in the
first round. The baseball team also failed to make a
great impression. Overall, however, it was a good
Olympics for the United States, narrowly behind the
UT in the medals count, but well ahead of the Ger-
mans.
Impact The Summer and Winter Games were great
successes, both in terms of records broken and out-
standing performances achieved, but also because
they were not marred by boycotts or any great con-
troversies. Drug problems were minimal, and a dis-
qualification of the Moroccan winner of the 10,000-
meter was quickly overturned on appeal. The Games
were well organized and the financial backing se-
cure. It marked a particular triumph for IOC presi-
dent Juan Antonio Samaranch on his home turf.
Further Reading
Goldstein, Gabriella, and Brad Lewis, eds.Olympic
Results, Barcelona 1992: A Complete Compilation of
Results from the Games of the XXV Olympiad.New
York: Garland, 1993. This volume of the Garland
Reference Library is one of the most comprehen-
sive results lists available.
Hargreaves, John.Freedom for Catalonia? Catalan Na-
tionalism, Spanish Identity, and the Barcelona Olympic
Games.Cambridge, England: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 2000. An investigation into the wider
political and cultural forces at work in the Olym-
pics of recent years.
Rendell, Matt, ed.The Olympics: Athens to Athens 1896-
2004.London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 2004. A
pictorial survey of the Summer Olympiads, pick-
ing out the highlights from each of the Games.
U.S. Olympic Committee.The Olympic Centur y: XXIV
Olympiad, Seoul 1988, and Albertville 1992.Tona-
wanda, N.Y.: Firefly Books, 1997. Includes the offi-
cial report on the 1992 Winter Olympics from the
U.S. point of view.
_______.The Olympic Centur y: XXV Olympiad, Barce-
lona 1992, and Lillehammer 1994.Tonawanda,640 Olympic Games of 1992 The Nineties in America