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Article: Resistance, persistence, providence: the 1932 Los Angeles Olympic Games in perspective.
- Article from:
- Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport
- Article date:
- June 1, 1996
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1996 American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance (AAHPERD). This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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On the afternoon of 30 July 1932, the City of Los Angeles opened the Games of the Tenth Olympiad. This festival, in the eyes of many historians, came the closest to reflecting Baron Pierre de Coubertin's vision of peace, joy, and unity through sport. Some 105,000 spectators, the largest opening ceremony crowd in Olympic history, sat in the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum to watch the ceremonial events unfold.(1) Legions of athletes - almost 2,000 of them from 40 nations - marched into the stadium that day. Sixteen days later, another capacity crowd witnessed the closing ceremonies that ended the grand athletic spectacle. The impression of one spectator, the wife of a future ...