1992 Barcelona Olympics
Also called: Games of the XXV Olympiad, Barcelona 1992
The first Games after the Cold War held without a boycott, with a unified Germany and a Unified Team of former Soviet republics. Hwang Young-cho won the marathon, the first Korean Olympic marathon victory since Sohn Kee-chung 56 years before.
Enric · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source
Some 9,300 athletes from 169 nations took part from 25 July to 9 August 1992, the first Games since 1972 without a major boycott. Germany, reunified in 1990, sent a single team; twelve republics of the Soviet Union, dissolved in 1991, competed together as the Unified Team, while the three Baltic states took part separately. South Africa, having abandoned apartheid, returned after 32 years, and athletes from Yugoslavia, under UN sanctions, competed as individuals. The United States fielded its first “Dream Team” of NBA professionals in basketball. At the opening ceremony a Paralympic archer lit the cauldron with a flaming arrow.
On the final day, 9 August, Hwang Young-cho broke away from Japan’s Koichi Morishita on the climb up Montjuïc and won the marathon in 2:13:23—exactly 56 years to the day after Sohn Kee-chung’s victory in Berlin, with Sohn watching from the stands. South Korea finished seventh with twelve gold medals at Games where badminton became an official sport.
