Olympic Games 1984

Los Angeles was host to the Summer Olympics 25 years ago. This third part of a 16-day series looks back at Day 3, Monday, July 30, 1984: The big news The U.S. boxing team was out to match the 1952 and 1976 U.S. teams that had each won five Olympic gold medals. Paul Gonzales, a light-flyweight from East L.A., got it off to an impressive start by routing his toughest competition, Korea's Kwang Sun Kim, at the Sports Arena. Though Kim was ranked No. 2 in the world and Gonzales No.

Los Angeles was host to the Summer Olympics 25 years ago. This 10th part of a 16-day series looks back at Monday, Aug. 6, 1984. -- The big news It was over after only one jump, and it didn't matter that his second attempt was a foul. Carl Lewis won the gold medal in the long jump with a mark of 28 feet 1/4 inch. Some in the Coliseum crowd of 85,870 who had come only to see Lewis were disappointed that they couldn't see more of him, and actually booed.

The big news The Games of the XXIII Olympiad began in the Coliseum in front of 92,665 spectators. When each raised a colored card, the stands offered a display of the flags of every country participating in the Games. Absent from the display were 14 flags from the countries that followed the Soviet Union's boycott. The David L. Wolper-produced opening ceremony mesmerized those inside the Coliseum as well as those at home, with ABC's Jim McKay and Peter Jennings handling the commentary.

NEW WAVERLY, Texas -- Mary Lou Retton wore white jeans. Size zero maybe, and if she had put on a leotard and hopped up on the balance beam it would have seemed not at all strange. Yet it would have been. Retton turned 40 last January and if Nancy Lieberman can play basketball in the WNBA at age 50, Retton giggles at the idea of herself doing gymnastics at 40. "Not even in my dreams," she said.

Danny Harris ran with such power and certainty that it seemed he could sprint past any obstacle, the wind at his back. We saw this first in 1984, when an 18-year-old Harris took to the hot Los Angeles Coliseum track and grabbed an Olympic silver medal in the 400-meter hurdles. "I'm just a kid," he recalls, "there on the track, 90,000 people in the stands, knowing it is all going to be over in a 47-second race. [During the race] you don't hear anything.

Perhaps the most dramatic image from the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles did not involve a gold medalist -- or a medalist of any type. It featured an athlete in distress, Gabriele Andersen-Scheiss, whose tortured push to the finish line in the inaugural Olympic women's marathon drew anguished gasps from a crowd of more than 70,000 in the Coliseum but transformed the Swiss runner into an international symbol of courage and determination. Anyone who has seen it probably has never forgotten it.

It's one thing to parade naked in front of your bathroom mirror, quite another to face the world in the altogether. Terry Schroeder knows. A four-time U.S. Olympic water polo player from Santa Barbara, Schroeder is immortalized in bronze outside the Coliseum, his nude torso standing tall for the idealized, universal Olympic athlete.

Los Angeles was host to the Summer Olympics 25 years ago. This second part of a 16-day series looks back at Day 2, Sunday, July 29, 1984: The big news The U.S. swim team cruised to four gold medals on the first day of competition. Carrie Steinseifer, 16, and Nancy Hogshead -- good friends and roommates in the Olympic village -- tied for first in the 100-meter freestyle and shared the gold medal. They touched the wall simultaneously in 55.92 seconds.

The big news Track sensation Carl Lewis gave spectators in the Coliseum the show they had come to see. Establishing himself as the "World's Fastest Human," Lewis won gold in the 100-meter final. Not only did he win, but he ran the distance in 9.99 seconds, beating silver medalist Sam Graddy of the U.S. by eight feet, translating to 0.2 of a second. The margin of victory was an Olympic record, pushing aside Bob Hayes' 1964 victory in which he ran the distance in 10.

Twenty-five years later, it is hard to recall a time before the rumors and accusations. A time before athletes competed without suspicion hovering around each record-setting performance. A time before sprinters and swimmers had to share the sports page with the likes of nandrolone and stanozolol. The 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, it seems, were the last innocent Summer Games before the dawn of the steroid era.