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| 1996 Summer Olympics |
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A total of twenty-nine sports venues were used for the 1996 Summer Olympics.
Several sports venues for the 1996 Olympics were built before the 1960s as college venues. The first professional teams in Atlanta came in 1966, when Major League Baseball's Atlanta Braves moved from Milwaukee and the NFL added the Atlanta Falcons as an expansion team. In 1968, the NBA came to the city when the Atlanta Hawks arrived from St. Louis, and the NHL arrived four years later with the expansion Atlanta Flames.
The Braves and Falcons shared Atlanta–Fulton County Stadium from 1966 through 1991, after which the Falcons moved into the Georgia Dome, playing at that stadium from 1992 through 2016. The Braves would remain at the former stadium through the 1996 season. The Hawks initially played at Alexander Memorial Coliseum, now McCamish Pavilion, on the campus of Georgia Institute of Technology before the Omni Coliseum was completed in 1972 for both the Hawks and Flames. After the 1979–80 season, the Flames left for their current home of Calgary.
Bidding for the 1996 Games was held in 1990. Seventy-five percent of the venues used for the 1996 Games were owned by the state of Georgia. One of the new venues, the Georgia International Horse Park, had organization problems for the modern pentathlon event that included the competitors being forced to sit under an oak tree during the riding part of the event. The Georgia World Congress Center hosted the dramatic weightlifting 64 kg event that involved national tensions between Greece and Turkey.
After the Olympics, the Olympic Stadium, as intended from its construction, was converted into the baseball park Turner Field, which opened in 1997. That same year, both Atlanta–Fulton County Stadium and the Omni Coliseum were imploded within one week of one another. Philips Arena (since renamed State Farm Arena) was built upon the former Omni's footprint and opened in 1999, while the area where Atlanta–Fulton County Stadium stood is now a parking lot near Turner Field. The Braves vacated Turner Field after their 2016 season to move to a new ballpark in Cobb County now known as Truist Park; Georgia State University acquired Turner Field and its surrounding parking lots in January 2017 and converted the former Olympic Stadium a second time into the venue now known as Center Parc Stadium to host their college football program.