Friday night, the Olympic flame will be lit in Rio de Janeiro, opening the first Summer Games in South America. At the same time, local residents will gather at Lake Lanier Olympic Park for food, entertainment and memories of the rowing and canoe-kayak events from the 1996 Atlanta Games that churned Lanier’s waters and transformed this community 20 years ago. It is a fitting reason for a party, as only a tiny fraction of towns on this vast globe can boast of serving as an Olympic city, be they megacities like London and Tokyo or smaller burgs like Lillehammer and Sochi.