Twenty years before golf returned to the Olympic program in Rio, my professional career was already defined by the Games—just under very different circumstances.
Atlanta, 1996. My fourth Olympics, spanning three continents. A different kind of pressure and a night I’ve never forgotten.
Centennial Olympic Park was the epicenter of it all thirty years ago this week. Music carried across the grounds, crowds moved in waves, and for a few hours each night, the world gathered in one place that felt like equal parts celebration and escape. It had a rhythm—alive, communal, unmistakably Olympic.
On that night, just after 1:20 a.m., that all changed.
A pipe bomb—packed with nails and screws—detonated in the heart of the park. A woman, someone’s mother, lost her life. More than a hundred were injured, and another man, a news videographer, died of a heart attack while running toward the scene. Those are the facts history records. What it doesn’t capture is the disorientation, the suddenness, or how close some of us came without realizing it.
I had walked through that exact area about ten minutes before the explosion.
That’s what makes this deeply personal.
I was working alongside Jim Bohannon, the legendary late-night radio host who had taken over Larry King’s Westwood One slot following his departure to CNN.
Jim had set up in the park, doing what he did best by translating the Olympics’ scale and spectacle into something intimate and immediate for a national audience of devoted listeners in an era before social media.
That evening, Jim’s show featured a great lineup — Atlanta-based CNN Sports Anchors Nick Charles and Fred Hickman, followed by Olympic historian and author David Wallechinsky, with me live from the park, from midnight to 1 a.m. It was the kind of controlled chaos broadcasters thrive on, with music outside, monitors glowing inside, and Jim’s steady voice tying it all together as he asked us all great questions.
I had been calling swimming for NBC and Westwood One’s exclusive network radio coverage that week, running on adrenaline, black coffee, and very little sleep.
When the show wrapped, I headed up a couple of flights to the athletes’ lounge. The bartender poured me two beers and said I had just caught his last call. It felt like a natural stopping point.
Jimbo, as he was known to friends, and I decided to grab something to eat off-site—to step away, reset, and try to recharge.
With Budweiser cups in hand, we left the park and headed toward a late-night restaurant called Mick’s on Peachtree Street. As we approached, a deep, distant sound cut through the night. It resembled thunder—but the sky was completely clear. No clouds, no storm. Just a sound we couldn’t quite place.
We didn’t dwell on it. We were very tired and even hungrier, so we went inside.
Dinner was simple—chicken tenders and fries for Jim, pasta and a side salad for me. The details we remember feel like they happened yesterday. We talked about the opening week, work, and life beyond the broadcast. For a brief stretch, the Olympics faded into the background as we rarely had this opportunity back home in our Washington, DC offices. I worked evenings, and he was holding down the fort all night.
We’d barely been served our food, and everything shifted again.
A uniformed officer and a plainclothes detective entered the restaurant with urgency, immediately commanding our attention.
“You need to leave,” she said.
I asked why.
“There’s been an incident at Centennial Olympic Park, and that’s all I can say.”
That was all we needed to hear.
We exited quickly—so quickly, in fact, that Jim’s credit card never made it back to the table. I retrieved it the next day, a small, almost absurd detail attached to a night defined by anything but normalcy.
Outside, information came in fragments. An explosion, injuries, and something serious and terrible had happened. This was 1996, three years before my oldest child, who now lives in Atlanta, was born—no smartphones, no instant alerts. News traveled by pagers and two-way radios, but mostly by word of mouth and instinct.
Jim pivoted immediately. He told me he was heading straight to the International Broadcast Center to anchor overnight news coverage. That was what the best in our business did in moments like this—move toward the story.
I was a national sportscaster, and with the games most certainly on hiatus, I returned to my hotel room, correctly assuming the team would need fresh reporters the next day and for the foreseeable future. A very wise decision, as it turned out.
Like anyone in our business, I did the first thing I always do: turn on the TV. The images were already coming in—sirens, debris, first responders, a park transformed from celebration to crisis in a matter of minutes.
I quickly muted the volume and called my wife, Lisa.
I needed her to hear my voice, know I was safe, and relay that message to my parents, our extended family, and friends. They would all wake up in a few hours to see what I was experiencing. Almost all of them knew I was working in the Olympic Park late at night. She became the communication hub—steady, reassuring, and essential, though understandably a bit drowsy.
After we hung up, very little sleep came to me that night.
As you might expect, the mind rewinds. That walk through the park. The unexplained sound. The timing. That narrow ten-minute window—separating our presence from being impacted.
In the years since, I’ve worked at and attended countless major events, hearing and witnessing more stories than I can reasonably count. But that night remains branded in my mind, not just because of how close it was, but because of what it revealed.
Even at the height of worldwide celebration, unpredictable horror can cut through without warning. When it does, the role of those of us in the media becomes clear: document it, contextualize it, and handle it with the weight it deserves in providing a rough draft of history.
That’s what we try to do. It’s never perfect. But it matters.
Some stories remain with us forever.
Photo Credit: 1996 Olympics Global Village featuring Carlos Santana by Don Ramey Logan
