Olympic Games

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For the 776 BC to AD 393 Games see Ancient Olympic Games. For the most recent Summer Games in Beijing, see 2008 Summer Olympics. For the most recent Winter Games in Vancouver, see 2010 Winter Olympics. For the next Summer Games in London, see 2012 Summer Olympics. For other uses, see Olympic.

The Olympic Games is a major international event featuring summer and winter sports, in which thousands of athletes participate in a variety of competitions. The Olympic Games have come to be regarded as the world’s foremost sports competition where more than 200 nations participate.^[1] The Games are currently held every two years, with Summer and Winter Olympic Games alternating, although they occur every four years within their respective seasonal games. Originally, the ancient Olympic Games were held in Olympia, Greece, from the 8th century BC to the 4th century AD. Baron Pierre de Coubertin founded the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in 1894. The IOC has since become the governing body of the Olympic Movement, whose structure and actions are defined by the Olympic Charter.
The evolution of the Olympic Movement during the 20th and 21st centuries has resulted in several changes to the Olympic Games. Some of these adjustments include the creation of the Winter Games for ice and winter sports, the Paralympic Games for athletes with a physical disability, and the Youth Olympic Games for teenage athletes. The IOC has had to adapt to the varying economic, political, and technological realities of the 20th century. As a result, the Olympics shifted away from pure amateurism, as envisioned by Coubertin, to allow participation of professional athletes. The growing importance of the mass media created the issue of corporate sponsorship and commercialization of the Games. World Wars led to the cancellation of the 1916, 1940, and 1944 Games. Large boycotts during the Cold War limited participation in the 1980 and 1984 Games.

The Olympic Movement consists of international sports federations (IFs), National Olympic Committees (NOCs), and organizing committees for each specific Olympic Games. As the decision-making body, the IOC is responsible for choosing the host city for each Olympic Games. The host city is responsible for organizing and funding a celebration of the Games consistent with the Olympic Charter. The Olympic program, consisting of the sports to be contested at the Games, is also determined by the IOC. The celebration of the Games encompasses many rituals and symbols, such as the Olympic flag and torch, as well as the opening and closing ceremonies. There are over 13,000 athletes who compete at the Summer and Winter Olympics in 33 different sports and nearly 400 events. The first, second, and third place finishers in each event receive Olympic medals; gold, silver, and bronze, respectively.
The Games have grown in scale to the point that nearly every nation is represented. Such growth has created numerous challenges, including boycotts, doping, bribery of officials, and terrorism. Every two years, the Olympics and its media exposure provide unknown athletes with the chance to attain national, and in particular cases, international fame. The Games also constitute a major opportunity for the host city and country to showcase itself to the world.

[edit] Ancient Olympics

Main article: Ancient Olympic Games

Stadium in Olympia, Greece

The Ancient Olympic Games were a series of competitions held between representatives of several city-states and kingdoms from Ancient Greece, which featured mainly athletic but also combat and chariot racing events. During the Olympic games all struggles against the participating city-states were postponed until the games were finished.^[2] The origin of these Olympics is shrouded in mystery and legend.^[3] One of the most popular myths identifies Heracles and his father Zeus as the progenitors of the Games.^[4][5][6] According to legend, it was Heracles who first called the Games "Olympic" and established the custom of holding them every four years.^[7] A legend persists that after Heracles completed his twelve labors, he built the Olympic stadium as an honor to Zeus. Following its completion, he walked in a straight line for 200 steps and called this distance a "stadion" (Greek: στάδιον, Latin: stadium, "stage"), which later became a unit of distance. Another myth associates the first Games with the ancient Greek concept of Olympic truce (ἐκεχειρία, ekecheiria).^[8] The most widely accepted date for the inception of the Ancient Olympics is 776 BC; this is based on inscriptions, found at Olympia, of the winners of a footrace held every four years starting in 776 BC.^[9] The Ancient Games featured running events, a pentathlon (consisting of a jumping event, discus and javelin throws, a foot race and wrestling), boxing, wrestling, and equestrian events.^[10][11] Tradition has it that Coroebus, a cook from the city of Elis, was the first Olympic champion.^[12]
The Olympics were of fundamental religious importance, featuring sporting events alongside ritual sacrifices honoring both Zeus (whose famous statue by Phidias stood in his temple at Olympia) and Pelops, divine hero and mythical king of Olympia. Pelops was famous for his chariot race with King Oenomaus of Pisatis.^[13] The winners of the events were admired and immortalized in poems and statues.^[14] The Games were held every four years, and this period, known as an Olympiad, was used by Greeks as one of their units of time measurement. The Games were part of a cycle known as the Panhellenic Games, which included the Pythian Games, the Nemean Games, and the Isthmian Games.^[15]
The Olympic Games reached their zenith in the 6th and 5th centuries BC, but then gradually declined in importance as the Romans gained power and influence in Greece. There is no consensus on when the Games officially ended, the most common-held date is 393 AD, when the emperor Theodosius I declared that all pagan cults and practices be eliminated.^[16] Another date cited is 426 AD, when his successor Theodosius II ordered the destruction of all Greek temples.^[17] After the demise of the Olympics, they were not held again until the late 19th century.

Modern Games
Forerunners

Further information: Wenlock Olympian Society Annual Games and Zappas Olympics

Baron Pierre de Coubertin

The first significant attempt to emulate the ancient Olympic Games was the L'Olympiade de la République, a national Olympic festival held annually from 1796 to 1798 in Revolutionary France.^[18] The competition included several disciplines from the ancient Greek Olympics. The 1796 Games also marked the introduction of the metric system into sport.^[18]
In 1850 an Olympian Class was started by Dr William Penny Brookes at Much Wenlock, in Shropshire, England. In 1859, Dr Brookes changed the name to Wenlock Olympian Games. This annual sports festival continues to this day.^[19] The Wenlock Olympian Society was founded by Dr. Brookes on November 15, 1860.^[20]:28
Between 1862 and 1867, Liverpool held an annual Grand Olympic Festival. Devised by John Hulley and Charles Melly, in cooperation with Dr Brookes, these games were elitist in nature since only Gentlemen could compete.^[21][22][23] Some of the Gentlemen brought their coaches with them.^[23] The programme for Athens 1896 had similarities to that of the Liverpool Olympics, but that was to be expected since Dr. Brookes had incorporated events from the 1859 Athens Olympics programme at Much Wenlock and had contributed to the programme at Liverpool.^[24] In 1865 Hulley, Dr. Brookes and E.G. Ravenstein founded the National Olympian Association in Liverpool, a forerunner of the British Olympic Association. Its articles of foundation provided the framework for the International Olympic Charter.^[25] In 1866, a national Olympic Games in Great Britain was organized at London's Crystal Palace.^[26]

Revival

Stamp from first Olympic stamp set

Greek interest in reviving the Olympic Games began with the Greek War of Independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1821. It was first proposed by poet and newspaper editor Panagiotis Soutsos in his poem "Dialogue of the Dead", published in 1833.^[20]:1 Evangelis Zappas, a wealthy Greek-Romanian philanthropist, first wrote to King Otto of Greece, in 1856, offering to fund a permanent revival of the Olympic Games.^[20]:14 Zappas sponsored the first Olympic Games in 1859, which was held in an Athens city square. Athletes participated from Greece and the Ottoman Empire. Zappas funded the restoration of the ancient Panathenaic stadium so that it could host all future Olympic Games.^[20]:14
The Panathinaiko Stadium hosted Olympics in 1870 and 1875.^{[20]:2, 13–23, 81} Thirty thousand spectators attended that Games in 1870 though no official attendance records are available for the 1875 Games.^[20]:44 In 1890, after attending the Olympian Games of the Wenlock Olympian Society, Baron Pierre de Coubertin was inspired to found the International Olympic Committee (IOC).^[27] Coubertin built on the ideas and work of Brookes and Zappas with the aim of establishing internationally rotating Olympic Games that would occur every four years.^[27] He presented these ideas during the first Olympic Congress of the newly created International Olympic Committee. This meeting was held from June 16 to June 23, 1894, at the Sorbonne University in Paris. On the last day of the Congress, it was decided that the first Olympic Games, to come under the auspices of the IOC, would take place in Athens in 1896.^[28] The IOC elected the Greek writer Demetrius Vikelas as its first president.^{[20]:100–105}

1896 Games

Main article: 1896 Summer Olympics

The opening ceremony in the Panathinaiko Stadium

The first Games held under the auspices of the IOC was hosted in the Panathenaic stadium in Athens in 1896. These Games brought together 14 nations and 241 athletes who competed in 43 events.^[29] Zappas and his cousin Konstantinos Zappas had left the Greek government a trust to fund future Olympic Games. This trust was used to help finance the 1896 Games.^{[20]:117[30][31]} George Averoff contributed generously for the refurbishment of the stadium in preparation for the Games.^[20]:128 The Greek government also provided funding, which was expected to be recouped through the sale of tickets to the Games and from the sale of the first Olympic commemorative stamp set.^[20]:128
The Greek officials and public were enthusiastic about the experience of hosting these Games. This feeling was shared by many of the athletes, who even demanded that Athens be the host of the Olympic Games on a permanent basis. The IOC did not approve this request. The committee planned that the modern Olympics would rotate internationally. As such they decided to hold the second Games in Paris.^[32]

Changes and adaptations

Main article: Summer Olympic Games

After the success of the 1896 Games, the Olympics entered a period of stagnation that threatened their survival. The Olympic Games held at the Paris Exposition in 1900 and the World's Fair at St. Louis in 1904 were side-shows. The Games at Paris did not have a stadium; however, this was the first time women took part in the games. The St. Louis Games hosted 650 athletes, but 580 were from the United States. The homogeneous nature of these celebrations was a low point for the Olympic Movement.^[33] The Games rebounded when the 1906 Intercalated Games (so-called because they were the second Games held within the third Olympiad) were held in Athens. These Games are not officially recognized by the IOC and no Intercalated Games have been held since. These Games, which were hosted at the Panathenaic stadium in Athens, attracted a broad international field of participants, and generated great public interest. This marked the beginning of a rise in both the popularity and the size of the Olympics.^[34]

[edit] Winter Games

Main article: Winter Olympic Games

Ice hockey game during the 1928 Winter Olympics in St. Moritz

The Winter Olympics were created to feature snow and ice sports that were logistically impossible to hold during the Summer Games. Figure skating (in 1908 and 1920) and ice hockey (in 1920) were featured as Olympic events at the Summer Olympics. The IOC desired to expand this list of sports to encompass other winter activities. At the 1921 Olympic Congress, in Lausanne, it was decided to hold a winter version of the Olympic Games. A winter sports week (it was actually 11 days) was held in 1924 in Chamonix, France; this event became the first Winter Olympic Games.^[35] The IOC mandated that the Winter Games be celebrated every four years on the same year as their summer counterpart.^[36] This tradition was upheld until the 1992 Games in Albertville, France; after that, beginning with the 1994 Games, the Winter Olympics were held on the third year of each Olympiad.

Paralympics

Main article: Paralympic Games

In 1948, Sir Ludwig Guttmann, determined to promote the rehabilitation of soldiers after World War II, organized a multi-sport event between several hospitals to coincide with the 1948 London Olympics. Guttmann's event, known then as the Stoke Mandeville Games, became an annual sports festival. Over the next twelve years, Guttmann and others continued their efforts to use sports as an avenue to healing. For the 1960 Olympic Games, in Rome, Guttmann brought 400 athletes to compete in the "Parallel Olympics", which became known as the first Paralympics. Since then, the Paralympics have been held in every Olympic year. As of the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, South Korea, the host city for the Olympics has also played host to the Paralympics.^[37] In 2001 the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) signed an agreement which guaranteed that host cities would be contracted to manage both the Olympic and Paralympic Games.^[38][39] The agreement came into effect at the Summer Games in Beijing 2008, and the Winter Games in Vancouver 2010. Chairman of the London organising committee, Lord Coe, said about the 2012 Summer Paralympics and Olympics in London, England that,

“

We want to change public attitudes towards disability, celebrate the excellence of Paralympic sport and to enshrine from the very outset that the two Games are an integrated whole.

”

^[40]

Youth Games

Main article: Youth Olympic Games

In 2010, the Olympic Games were complemented by the Youth Games, which gives athletes between the ages of 14 and 18 the chance to compete. The Youth Olympic Games were conceived by IOC president Jacques Rogge in 2001 and approved during the 119th Congress of the IOC.^[41][42] The first Summer Youth Games were held in Singapore from 14–26 August 2010, while the inaugural Winter Games will be hosted in Innsbruck, Austria, two years later.^[43] These Games will be shorter than the senior Games; the summer version will last twelve days, while the winter version will last nine days.^[44] The IOC allows 3,500 athletes and 875 officials to participate at the Summer Youth Games, and 970 athletes and 580 officials at the Winter Youth Games.^[45][46] The sports to be contested will coincide with those scheduled for the senior Games, however there will be variations on the sports including mixed NOC and mixed gender teams as well as a reduced number of disciplines and events.^[47]

Recent games

From 241 participants representing 14 nations in 1896, the Games have grown to about 10,500 competitors from 204 countries at the 2008 Summer Olympics.^[48] The scope and scale of the Winter Olympics is smaller. For example, Turin hosted 2,508 athletes from 80 countries competing in 84 events, during the 2006 Winter Olympics.^[49] During the Games most athletes and officials are housed in the Olympic village. This village is intended to be a self-contained home for all the Olympic participants. It is furnished with cafeterias, health clinics, and locations for religious expression.^[50]
The IOC allowed the formation of National Olympic Committees representing countries that did not meet the strict requirements for political sovereignty that other international organizations demand. As a result, colonies and dependencies are permitted to compete at Olympic Games. Examples of this include territories such as Puerto Rico, Bermuda and Hong Kong, all of which compete as separate nations despite being legally a part of another country.^[51] The current version of the Charter does only allow new National Olympic Committees representing "independent State recognised by the international community". It therefore did not allow the formation of National Olympic Committees for Sint Maarten and Curaçao when they gained the same constitutional status as Aruba in 2010, although it recognized the Aruban Olympic Committee in 1986.^[52][53]

International Olympic Committee

Main article: International Olympic Committee

IOC headquarters in Lausanne

The Olympic Movement encompasses a large number of national and international sporting organizations and federations, recognized media partners, as well as athletes, officials, judges, and every other person and institution that agrees to abide by the rules of the Olympic Charter.^[54] As the umbrella organization of the Olympic Movement, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) is responsible for selecting the host city, overseeing the planning of the Olympic Games, updating and approving the sports program, and negotiating sponsorship and broadcasting rights.^[55] The Olympic Movement is made of three major elements:

• International Federations (IFs) are the governing bodies that supervise a sport at an international level. For example, the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA) is the IF for football (soccer), and the Fédération Internationale de Volleyball (FIVB) is the international governing body for volleyball. There are currently 35 IFs in the Olympic Movement, representing each of the Olympic sports.^[56]
• National Olympic Committees (NOCs) represent and regulate the Olympic Movement within each country. For example, the United States Olympic Committee (USOC) is the NOC of the United States. There are currently 205 NOCs recognized by the IOC.^[48]
• Organizing Committees for the Olympic Games (OCOGs) constitute the temporary committees responsible for the organization of a specific celebration of the Olympics. OCOGs are dissolved after each Games, once the final report is delivered to the IOC.

French and English are the official languages of the Olympic Movement. The other language used at each Olympic Games is the language of the host country. Every proclamation (such as the announcement of each country during the parade of nations in the opening ceremony) is spoken in these three languages, or the main two depending on whether the host country is an English or French speaking country.^[57]

Olympic Games host cities^[168]

Year	Summer Olympic Games		Winter Olympic Games		Youth Olympic Games
	Olympiad	Host city	No.	Host city	No.	Host City
1896	I	Athens, Greece
1900	II	Paris, France
1904	III	St. Louis, United States[nb 1]
1906	Intercalated[nb 2]	Athens, Greece
1908	IV	London, Great Britain
1912	V	Stockholm, Sweden
1916	VI	Berlin, Germany → Cancelled because of World War I
1920	VII	Antwerp, Belgium
1924	VIII	Paris, France	I	Chamonix, France
1928	IX	Amsterdam, Netherlands	II	St. Moritz, Switzerland
1932	X	Los Angeles, United States	III	Lake Placid, United States
1936	XI	Berlin, Germany	IV	Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany
1940	XII	Tokyo, Japan → Helsinki, Finland → Cancelled because of World War II	V	Sapporo, Japan → St. Moritz, Switzerland → Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany → Cancelled because of World War II
1944	XIII	London, Great Britain → Cancelled because of World War II	V	Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy → Cancelled because of World War II
1948	XIV	London, Great Britain	V	St. Moritz, Switzerland
1952	XV	Helsinki, Finland	VI	Oslo, Norway
1956	XVI	Melbourne, Australia + Stockholm, Sweden[nb 3][169]	VII	Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy
1960	XVII	Rome, Italy	VIII	Squaw Valley, United States
1964	XVIII	Tokyo, Japan	IX	Innsbruck, Austria
1968	XIX	Mexico City, Mexico	X	Grenoble, France
1972	XX	Munich, West Germany	XI	Sapporo, Japan
1976	XXI	Montreal, Canada	XII	Denver, United States → Innsbruck, Austria
1980	XXII	Moscow, Soviet Union	XIII	Lake Placid, United States
1984	XXIII	Los Angeles, United States	XIV	Sarajevo, Yugoslavia
1988	XXIV	Seoul, South Korea	XV	Calgary, Canada
1992	XXV	Barcelona, Spain	XVI	Albertville, France
1994			XVII	Lillehammer, Norway
1996	XXVI	Atlanta, United States
1998			XVIII	Nagano, Japan
2000	XXVII	Sydney, Australia
2002			XIX	Salt Lake City, United States
2004	XXVIII	Athens, Greece
2006			XX	Turin, Italy
2008	XXIX	Beijing, China[nb 4][170]
2010			XXI	Vancouver, Canada	I (Summer)	Singapore
2012	XXX	London, Great Britain			I (Winter)	Innsbruck, Austria
2014			XXII	Sochi, Russia	II (Summer)	Nanjing, China
2016	XXXI	Rio de Janeiro, Brazil			II (Winter)	Lillehammer, Norway
2018			XXIII	Pyeongchang, South Korea	III (Summer)	To be determined
2020	XXXII	To be determined			III (Winter)	To be determined
2022			XXIV	To be determined	IV (Summer)	To be determined

Notes

1. ^ Originally awarded to Chicago, but moved to St. Louis to coincide with the World's Fair
2. ^ Not recognized by the IOC
3. ^ Equestrian events were held in Stockholm, Sweden. Stockholm had to bid for the equestrian competition separately; it received its own Olympic flame and had its own formal invitations and opening and closing ceremonies, as with all its previous Games.
4. ^ Equestrian events were held in China's Hong Kong. Although Hong Kong has an independent National Olympic Committee from China, the equestrian competition was an integral part of the Beijing Games; it was not conducted under a separate bid, flame, etc., as was the 1956 Stockholm equestrian competition. The IOC website lists only Beijing as the host city.