Barcelona Olympic Games 6.3.1992

While the Actual Games were held in July/August 1992, these two first day covers and the three stamps on them were issued on 6.3.1992 as the Pre Olympic Games series of stamps. The three stamps depict the sports of Archery, Sailing and Volleyball. The two covers dict archery and sailing respectively.

The 1992 Summer Olympic Games, officially known as the Games of the XXV Olympiad, were an international multi-sport event celebrated in Barcelona, Spain, in 1992. The International Olympic Committee voted in 1986 to separate the Summer and Winter Games, which had been held in the same year since 1924, and place them in alternating even-numbered years, beginning in 1994. The 1992 Summer Games were the last to be staged in the same year as the Winter Games. Due to the end of the Cold War, these games were the first without boycotts since 1972. In fact the Olympics was the final success of the former Soviet Union (despite only part of it taking part), and biggest of the "Olympic flag" (Nations from the former USSR competed as the Unified Team, coming 1st in the overall rankings).

Barcelona, the birthplace of then-IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch and the second largest city of Spain, was selected over Amsterdam, Belgrade, Birmingham, Brisbane and Paris in Lausanne, Switzerland, on October 17, 1986, during the 91st IOC Session. It had bid for the 1936 Summer Olympics, losing out to Berlin.

Thank you Maria.