War-scarred Sarajevo celebrates 40th anniversary of 1984 Winter Olympics and looks to the future

By SABINA NIKSIC
Associated Press

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) — War-scarred Sarajevo is looking back to happier times from February 1984 as it celebrates the 40th anniversary of staging a successful Winter Olympics. It was a time of opportunity for Yugoslavia, of which Bosnia was then a part, but less than a decade later everything had changed. Bosnian Serb forces laid siege to Sarajevo in the early 1990s during the bloody breakup of Yugoslavia. Bosnian and international athletes and officials gathered Thursday in Sarajevo to mark the 40th anniversary of the opening ceremony. IOC president Thomas Bach thanked Sarajevo by video for rebuilding its Olympic heritage after “the guns fell silent.”