Tuesday Talk: Blue, Black and Gold
Tuesday Talk rounds up the latest Georgia World Congress Center Authority (GWCCA) news you might have missed and also points forward to upcoming events on our campus.
ICYMI (In Case You Missed It): Lighting up the downtown evening landscape last Thursday (April 9), the collection of facilities on the Georgia World Congress Center Authority (GWCCA) campus joined other landmarks across the country in support of medical professionals and frontline workers battling the COVID-19 pandemic.
Georgia World Congress Center, International Plaza, Centennial Olympic Park’s Southern Company Amphitheater, Mercedes-Benz Stadium and the Chick-fil-A College Football Hall of Fame were all bathed in azure as part of the #MakeItBlue campaign, a volunteer effort organized by entertainment and event industry leaders.
GWCCA team members were also encouraged to share the hashtag #MakeItBlue.
Overall, #MakeItBlue posts on the Authority’s official social media channels reached an audience of more than 9,000 and made more than 68,000 impressions on Twitter and Instagram
BACK IN BLACK
Have you seen the Atlanta Falcons’ new threads?
Last week, the Falcons, who play their home games at state-of-the-art MBS on the GWCCA campus, revealed new home and road gear – a total of four new uniforms, including the reintroduction of black jerseys, a nod to the team’s inaugural 1966 season that was revived with the Dirty Birds of the 1990s, and again in the Michael Vick era. According to the team, “the new official Falcons home look will feature black jerseys and black pants with the away look going white on white.”
The most prominent change is the placement of “ATL” on the chest of the jersey design (except for the black throwback option), incorporating the city’s popular nickname, derived from the code for Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.
And starting today, you can get your hands on the new Falcons jerseys online here.
The new jerseys, made by Nike, will also be available at the MBS team store after the stadium reopens.
GOING FOR GOLD
While the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo is postponed until 2021, NBC Sports posted a blog recently reliving one of the more dramatic athletic episodes during Atlanta’s 1996 Summer Olympics, and it’s one of many that took place on the GWCCA campus.
The OlympicTalk blog on nbcsports.com caught up with wrestler Kurt Angle who recounted his hard-fought match to win the gold medal at the ’96 Games in freestyle wrestling, which took place inside the GWCC. The accompanying video with that blog not only shows Angle grappling tooth-and-nail with Iranian Abbis Jadidi in the overtime period of the championship match, but it offers multiple glimpses of the convention center set up as a 7,000-seat wrestling arena.
As the video shows, neither wrestler knew who had won the match at its conclusion because the referee did not award a tie-breaking point.
“After deliberation, the referee stood between each wrestler in the middle of the mat,” writes OlympicTalk editor Nick Zaccardi. “He held each’s
Angle, who was suffering through an assortment of injuries including neck trauma, of course, won the gold, and went on to forge a notable career in the professional wrestling world and has dabbled in acting. But nothing will match the drama that unfolded inside the Congress Center in July 1996.
