Can’t make it to London for the coming Olympics, but yearn to connect with the spirit of the Games? Come listen to the echoes of the 1996 Atlanta Games.
Start at the Atlanta History Center’s Centennial Olympics Games Museum. If the magic of the Olympic torch touches something deep inside (remember Muhammad Ali when he lit the flame back in ’96?), then you’ve come to the right place. The museum houses the largest collection of such lights in the United States. Test your abilities against interactive athletic games: push a rowing machine to the limits, execute a long jump.
Crave the real thing, but a 26.2-mile run is just not in the cards? Atlanta Running Tours scratches the itch nicely. Book “The Atlanta Experience,” a six-mile tour led by a savvy guide who takes you through the same areas of downtown and midtown run by the 1996 marathon Olympians. No need to compete for your personal best here. Just enjoy.
Take time and spend a while at Tom Lowe Trap & Skeet Range. Once upon a time, this was the Wolf Creek Gun Club, the site of the 1996 Games shooting competition. The range is open to the public and is a perfect place for beginners in the sport.
Finish off your Olympic redux with a visit to Centennial Olympic Park. Epicenter of the city, it’s still a gathering place for locals and visitors alike – a place that pulses with the passion that brought the Games to town back in the day. Arrayed around the park are Atlanta’s premier attractions: Georgia Aquarium, the World of Coca-Cola and CNN Center. Take a day and see them all. Between venues listen to the sound of the planet’s largest fountain that employs the Olympics’ iconic interconnecting rings.
If you’re going to be on this side of The Pond for London’s Games, there’s no better place to prepare for tele-immersion in the coming contest than in the last place the Olympics graced the United States – Atlanta.
(Image: Jon Curnow)
