August 5, 1996
It was a games tinged with sweetness and sorrow. The games were rocked by terror when an improvised pipe bomb exploded in the Olympic Park early one morning. Alice Hawthorne, a 44-year-old spectator, was killed, and 111 others were injured in the blast. An evacuation had already been called when the blast occurred in the often-populated party area of the park. But it couldn’t rattle the Olympians’ spirits. Bill Clinton said after the terrorist act: “It is an act of cowardice that stands in sharp contrast to the courage of the Olympic athletes.”
And no one showed more courage than Kerri Strug, the American gymnast, who powered through her ailing ankle to keep the gold medal on American soil. TIME wrote:
“She played through pain, convinced that she had to for the team, risking a worse injury and jeopardizing her own chances for more medals. … America got another electrifying moment to put into its collective sports memory bank.”