South Africa's Olympic team has arrived.
In Atlanta. In the 1996 Olympics. In the international sporting arena.Once banned from competition for its racist policies, South Africa's first unified Olympic squad in three decades arrived in Atlanta on Monday, dressed in the colors of the nation's new flag and promising solidarity.
The 86 athletes stomped and sang an old African mining chant translated, "We've got to get to work," as they stepped into the international terminal at Hartsfield Atlanta International Airport.
"We sang songs all the way here," said Soon Bodes, a white 19-year-old boxer. "We are so excited to compete as one nation, under one flag."
The team will compete under the green, gold, red, black and yellow flag.
Edwin Moses, a 1976 U.S. gold medalist, welcomed the team Monday and told the athletes they would be role models for those who follow.
"Not only are they celebrating the fact that they are here, but also the long road that led them to arrive," Moses said.
Until 1992, South Africa was ostracized internationally because of its racist policies and had not competed in the Olympics since the 1960 Rome Games. The collapse of the nation's apartheid system then brought South Africa an invitation to the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, ending the 32-year ban from Olympic competition.
The 1992 team was hastily put together, but still won two silver medals. Only about 10 percent of the athletes were black, even though blacks make up about 75 percent of the population. This year, about 20 percent of the squad is black, said Sam Ramsamy, president of the National Olympic Committee.
"May I take this opportunity and thank our friends in the United States, especially in Atlanta, for all the support they have given South African sports to bring us out of the dark days of apartheid and into the bright and inspiring light of the Olympic Games," South African President Nelson Mandela said in a statement read at the airport.
The celebrating began a few months ago in South Africa when the multicolored South African Airways plane circled the countryside for days.
It touched down Monday to the shouts and cheers of flag-waving South Africans. As the team arrived, the athletes yelled "Vry staat," meaning "free state."
"We just want them to know that they have support here," said Marie Nowosielski, an Atlanta resident hosting the family of a South African athlete. "It's so exciting to see South Africa back in the Olympics again."
The team headed 62 miles southwest to LaGrange to train and acclimate to Georgia's steamy summer. July is winter in South Africa, with low temperatures around freezing.