Atlanta Potpourri

If the United States continues to win all these gold medals, a future requirement for all our athletes may be to learn the words to “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

MICHAEL A. GLUECK

Newport Beach

*

Why does everyone refer to the Atlanta Games as the XXVI Olympiad? Since there were no Olympics in MCMXVI, MCMXL or MCMXLIV, these are in fact only the XXIII.

ALLEN E. KAHN

Playa del Rey

Editor’s note: An Olympiad is the four-year period preceding the Games, not the Games themselves. These, then, are the Games of the XXVI Olympiad in modern times, not the XXVI Games, and the XXVII Olympiad will begin when these Games end. Although there were no Games in the war years reader Kahn writes of, there were, indeed, Olympiads.