Centennial Olympic Park

LESSONS FROM Atlanta?If Baltimore can learn anything from the way Georgia's state capital performed as host for the XXVI Olympiad this summer, it probably doesn't involve sporting facilities.Oriole Park at Camden Yards is every bit as good as Olympic Stadium, which will become the home of the Atlanta Braves.But Baltimore could take a lesson from the way Atlanta used the Olympics to build a "legacy" of improvements that will benefit the city long after the event.Chief among them is Centennial Olympic Park, the 21-acre public space created as a new town square for the city.

ATLANTA - With a slight tremor in his voice, convicted bomber Eric Rudolph apologized yesterday for people maimed or killed by a pipe bomb packed with nails that he planted amid a crowd during the 1996 Olympics. "Responsibility for what took place in the park that night belongs to me and me alone," said Rudolph, 38. "I would do anything to take that night back. To those victims, I do apologize." In a chilly, nondescript courtroom, Rudolph's victims stood before him: A college instructor in a tweed jacket suddenly thrust his hand into the air to show Rudolph the stump where his index finger had been blown off. A retired federal agent called Rudolph an "isolated cancer of mankind."

Days until opening ceremonies: 33.Update: With a month to go, most of the venues need only relatively minor finishing touches. But the Centennial Olympic Park, designed as the main downtown gathering spot for visitors, is still a collection of unfinished -- and unrecognizable -- steel and fabric structures.Torch: It passed from New Hampshire to Massachusetts, carried along the course of the Boston Marathon before heading south to Rhode Island.Footnote: "No. 1, the last Olympics on U.S. soil, I ended up in the soil."

ATLANTA -- Federal law enforcement officials say they have connected Eric Robert Rudolph to smokeless powder purchased Tennessee about four years ago and used in the 1996 bombing in Centennial Olympic Park that killed an Albany woman and injured 111 people.FBI and U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents have said for months that they want to question Rudolph, a fugitive believed to be in the western North Carolina mountains, about three bombings in Atlanta, but the powder evidence appears to connect Rudolph directly to the Atlanta bombings.

ATLANTA - With a slight tremor in his voice, convicted bomber Eric Rudolph apologized yesterday for people maimed or killed by a pipe bomb packed with nails that he planted amid a crowd during the 1996 Olympics. "Responsibility for what took place in the park that night belongs to me and me alone," said Rudolph, 38. "I would do anything to take that night back. To those victims, I do apologize." In a chilly, nondescript courtroom, Rudolph's victims stood before him: A college instructor in a tweed jacket suddenly thrust his hand into the air to show Rudolph the stump where his index finger had been blown off. A retired federal agent called Rudolph an "isolated cancer of mankind."

ATLANTA -- Billy Payne's dream turned into a nightmare.The chairman of the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games pushed hardest to transform 21 acres of derelict downtown land into a temporary corporate playground and a glorious permanent midtown green space, Centennial Olympic Park.But early yesterday morning, the park became the site of the first terrorist incident at a U.S.-based Olympics, when a pipe bomb explosion ripped through the city's heart and damaged the Summer Olympics.What was supposed to be a gathering place for fans, an area where corporate America could roll out the red carpet for the world, became a park strewn with shrapnel.

ATLANTA -- Some went, as Southerners traditionally have gone in times of crisis, to church. Others sought out their neighbors where they've always found them, on their front porches, at the weekend breakfast spot or in the local watering hole. Even the out-of-towners were compelled to gather, at the sporting events that had drawn them here in the first place.No one wanted to face yesterday alone, not after the early morning bombing at Centennial Olympic Park that ripped a hole through the midpoint of the Summer Olympics.

ATLANTA -- Federal law enforcement officials say they have connected Eric Robert Rudolph to smokeless powder purchased Tennessee about four years ago and used in the 1996 bombing in Centennial Olympic Park that killed an Albany woman and injured 111 people.FBI and U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents have said for months that they want to question Rudolph, a fugitive believed to be in the western North Carolina mountains, about three bombings in Atlanta, but the powder evidence appears to connect Rudolph directly to the Atlanta bombings.

ATLANTA -- They refused to give into terrorism.With the whole world watching, the Centennial Summer Olympics went back into action yesterday, only hours after an early-morning pipe bomb blast killed one, injured 111, and rattled a city and a nation.Even as federal investigators examined the wreckage caused by shrapnel from a homemade bomb that reverberated through Centennial Olympic Park, the world's greatest athletes continued to go for gold medals as hundreds of thousands of fans made their way to sporting venues past yellow police tape, security barricades and soldiers.

ATLANTA -- A brief walk through Centennial Olympic Park was enough for Columbus, Ga., resident Beverly Davis to want to make a return trip."We had just driven up on Friday and attended two basketball games. We had come through the park before the games. I wanted to see more of the park," Davis, 46, said yesterday during a telephone interview from her hospital bed in Georgia Baptist Hospital in Atlanta.Davis suffered shrapnel wounds to her right leg after a homemade pipe bomb exploded early Saturday morning in the park.

ATLANTA -- With its investigative leads starting to dry up, the FBI has taken several steps, including the posting of a half-million-dollar reward, intended to generate tips that might solve the bombing at Centennial Olympic Park in July.At a news conference yesterday afternoon, the first held by investigators since two days after the bombing, an FBI official also said a park visitor had slightly moved the backpack containing the bomb before it exploded, unknowingly changing its position in a way that sent much of its shrapnel skyward rather than horizontally toward the crowd.

LESSONS FROM Atlanta?If Baltimore can learn anything from the way Georgia's state capital performed as host for the XXVI Olympiad this summer, it probably doesn't involve sporting facilities.Oriole Park at Camden Yards is every bit as good as Olympic Stadium, which will become the home of the Atlanta Braves.But Baltimore could take a lesson from the way Atlanta used the Olympics to build a "legacy" of improvements that will benefit the city long after the event.Chief among them is Centennial Olympic Park, the 21-acre public space created as a new town square for the city.

ATLANTA -- Kerri Strug.Michael Johnson.Alice Hawthorne.Gymnast turned hero, track star turned legend and bystander turned victim, these were the people who defined a spectacular yet ultimately troubled Centennial Summer Olympics that ended last night.The Games looked great on television. America was uplifted when Strug vaulted from obscurity to stardom and when Johnson peeled away layers of pressure and expectation to unveil sprint performances for the ages, winning the 400 meters, setting a world record in the 200.But in the end, the Centennial Games will be remembered because of the pipe bomb that exploded in Centennial Olympic Park, killing Hawthorne and injuring 111 others.

ATLANTA -- It was supposed to be a somber occasion. Instead, it bordered on a circus, if not a downright celebration.Celebrity worshipers, religious zealots, corporate acolytes -- they were all on hand for the reopening of Centennial Olympic Park yesterday, along with that other staple of life in late 20th-century America, the news media.A young woman grabbed Katie Couric's attention, then shouted, "Katie, I love the Jesus in your eyes!"Later, the "Today Show" co-host posed for photographs and signed autographs beside the tower where a bomb went off early Saturday morning.

ATLANTA -- The people came. The blood was gone. And as music played once again yesterday at Centennial Olympic Park, a lost piece of Olympic spirit was reborn.Moving through a legion of armed security, about 3,000 spectators flooded the park for a morning ceremony to honor victims of the Olympic bombing and to reopen the popular park.With some on edge, some laughing, some still angry, the crowd seemed bent on sending a message to the person who did this: You can attack us. You can bloody our sidewalks and send terror through our hearts.

ATLANTA -- A brief walk through Centennial Olympic Park was enough for Columbus, Ga., resident Beverly Davis to want to make a return trip."We had just driven up on Friday and attended two basketball games. We had come through the park before the games. I wanted to see more of the park," Davis, 46, said yesterday during a telephone interview from her hospital bed in Georgia Baptist Hospital in Atlanta.Davis suffered shrapnel wounds to her right leg after a homemade pipe bomb exploded early Saturday morning in the park.

It was a defiant if jittery bunch that gathered yesterday at gate D14 of the Baltimore-Washington International Airport. They waited for hours -- passengers on the early USAir flight to Atlanta.Rigorous security brought them to the airport long before the plane's departure. Faith in that security brought them out at all.Victoria Coombs was among them. For Christmas, the Johns Hopkins Hospital nurse gave her niece and nephew in Altoona, Pa., tickets to the Olympics. Equestrian. Baseball. Track and field.

It is an unprecedented peacetime security effort -- 30,000 law enforcement officers descended on Atlanta to protect the public and athletes from terrorists. The cost is estimated at $303 million.But it was not enough to block a bomber from spoiling the Atlanta Olympic Games.Officials have been wary of possible violence at Olympic games since 1972, when Palestinian terrorists attacked and killed 11 Israeli athletes and coaches in Munich, Germany.Even before the downing of TWA Flight 800 on July 17, the fear of terrorism has been higher than ever this year.

ATLANTA -- Although Alice S. Hawthorne did not run a single lap or win a single competition, her name is likely to be forever associated with the 1996 Summer Olympics as a casualty of the Games' spirit of harmony and openness.Hawthorne, who was 44, died in the Saturday morning bomb blast that sprayed shrapnel over a swath of Centennial Olympic Park, the 21-acre grass and brick-paved area that stands at the physical heart of the Olympic Games. The park had been reclaimed from slums and old warehouses to become a place for visitors and locals to meet, greet and celebrate -- no high-priced tickets or special passes needed.

ATLANTA -- Krista Reese stood behind a metal barricade and peered across the 6-foot-high fence. She glimpsed two tiny American flags tucked behind a sound and light tower. She examined the Olympic bomb site."I'm just so angry," the 42-year-old Atlanta native said yesterday. "I can't really put this into words. But somebody died there. And now we've got to go back in."Today, the Centennial Summer Games will return to Centennial Olympic Park. The gates will open at 8 a.m. Two hours later, former Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young, an ordained minister, will lead a service to remember the two people who died and the 111 who were injured in Saturday morning's pipe bomb explosion.