Athletics at the 1996 Atlanta Summer Games:

In 1993, the World Championships were changed to a biennial meet from its original quadrennial format. Thus there were two editions between the 1992 and 1996 Olympics, with 1992 Olympic gold medalist Linford Christie winning the 1993 World title and Canada’s Donovan Bailey prevailing in 1995 in Göteborg. Christie had also won the Commonwealth Games and European Championships in 1994, defending both titles, although Bailey had not run at the Commonwealth Games. Also back in Atlanta was the 1992 silver medalist from Namibia, Frank Fredericks. As always, the Americans were very deep in the sprints, but they had no single outstanding sprinter in 1996, and in fact, at the 1995 World Championships, no American won a medal. The final began with three false starts, two of them by Linford Christie, who was then disqualified. The start was slow because of the concern over false starts, and Donovan Bailey had the slowest reaction time of the finalists (0.174). But once away, he ran away from the field, winning in a world record time of 9.84, with Fredericks repeating his silver medal, and Trinidad’s Ato Boldon winning the bronze medal.