COLORADO SPRINGS — Bernard Sandoval, a Colorado Springs artist, painted his sixth U.S Oympian at the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Museum on Friday.
A dream he's had since 2008.
Sandoval said he helped craft the Olympic City USA brand more than a decade ago.
"[The movement] has been a really neat journey for me and it's surreal today to not only come up with the brand idea but to then paint an Olympic-themed painting here in the museum that we dreamed about."
Sandoval painted Mohammad Ali, who won gold in boxing in the 1960 Olympics.
"We just wanted another way for people to connect to the Olympic brand, so through sport, through music, through art," said Sandoval.
And visitors love it.
"It was actually really cool, what attracted me to it was he was doing Mohammad Ali, which is really neat and he talked to us about how he was making the composite picture from a number of different pictures," said a visitor from Virginia, Peter McHugh.
Through the Olympic City USA task force, Sandoval and museum leaders made this dream a reality.
"For him to reach out and say hey let's do some live paintings in the museum and really bring the Olympic and Paralympic spirit to life, in real-time, how do you say no to that," said the museum's spokesperson, Tommy Schield.
Sandoval will be back painting another Olympian at the museum during the Paralympic games on Sept 6th.
Click here for more local Olympic events.
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