Olympic Games - A Brief History

1)Olympic Symbols

The Olympic Movement uses symbols to represent the ideals embodied in the Olympic Charter.

The Olympic symbol, better known as the Olympic Rings, consists of five intertwined rings and represents the unity of the five inhabited continents (Africa,America,Asia,Ocea.

The colored version of the rings—blue, yellow, black, green, and red—over a white field forms the Olympic flag.

These colors were chosen because every nation had at least one of them on its national flag.

The flag was adopted in 1914 but flown for the first time only at the 1920 Summer Olympics in Antwerp, Belgium.

It has since been hoisted during each celebration of the Games

2)Olympic Motto

The Olympic motto is the hendiatris Citius, Altius, Fortius, which is Latin for "Faster, Higher, Stronger"

It was proposed by Pierre de Coubertin  upon the creation of the International Olympic Committee in 1894.

Coubertin borrowed it from his friend Henri Didon, a Dominican Priest who was an athletics enthusiast.

Coubertin said "These three words represent a programme of moral beauty. The aesthetics of sport are intangible."

The motto was introduced in 1924 at the Olympic Games in Paris

3)Olympic Flame and Torch Relay

The modern tradition of moving the Olympic Flame via a relay system from Greece to the Olympic venue began with the Berlin Games in 1936

4)Olympic Mascot

The first Olympic mascot was born at the Grenoble Olympic Games in 1968. It was named “Schuss” and it was a little man on skis, designed in an abstract form and painted in the colors of France: blue, red and white.

However, the first official Olympic mascot appeared in the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich,Germany.

It was Waldi, a Dachshund dog, a popular breed in Bavaria and it represented the attributes required for athletes - resistance, tenacity and agility

5)First Olympics Televised

The 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin were the first Games to be broadcast on television, though only to local audiences

The 1956 Winer Olympics in Cortina d'Ampezzo,Italy  were the first internationally televised Olympic Games

6)Hosting

The United States has hosted four Summer Olympic Games, more than any other nation. The United Kingdom hosted the 2012 Olympic games, its third Summer Olympic Games, in its capital London, making London the first city to host the Summer Olympic Games three times. Australia, France, Germany and Greece have all hosted the Summer Olympic Games twice.

Greece,Australia,France,,Grat Britain and Switzerland are the only countries to be represented at every Olympic Games since their inception in 1896.

Women were first allowed to compete at the 1900 Summer Olympics in Paris,France

7)Host cities of Olympic Games 1896 - 2012

Olympiad	Year	Host City,Country
I	1896	Athens, Greece
II	1900	Paris, France
III	1904	St Louis, USA
	1906	Athens, Greece
IV	1908	London, Great Britain
V	1912	Stockholm, Sweden
VI	1916	Berlin, Germany (not held)
VII	1920	Antwerp, Belgium
VIII	1924	Paris, France
IX	1928	Amsterdam, Holland
X	1932	Los Angeles, USA
XI	1936	Berlin, Germany
XII	1940	Tokyo, Japan / Helsinki, Finland (not held)
XIII	1944	London, Great Britain (not held)
XIV	1948	London, Great Britain
XV	1952	Helsinki, Finland
XVI	1956	Melbourne, Australia
XVII	1960	Rome, Italy
XVIII	1964	Tokyo, Japan
XIX	1968	Mexico City, Mexico
XX	1972	Munich, Germany
XXI	1976	Montreal, Canada
XXII	1980	Moscow, USSR
XXIII	1984	Los Angeles, USA
XXIV	1988	Seoul, South Korea
XXV	1992	Barcelona, Spain
XXVI	1996	Atlanta, USA
XXVII	2000	Sydney, Australia
XXVIII	2004	Athens, Greece
XXIX	2008	Beijing, China
XXX	2012	London, England

7)Boycott of the Olympic Games

1)In a protest against a New Zealand rugby tour of South Africa about 30 African nations boycotted the 1976 Summer Games in Montreal,Canada

2)To protest the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan more than 60 countries, led by the United States, withdrew from the 1980 Summer Games in Moscow

8)Olympic Games -   Major Controversies 

1)Native American athlete Jim Thorpe won pentathlon and decathlon gold at the 1912 Games, but was subsequently stripped of his medals and records after it was discovered he had played professional baseball. In 1983, 30 years after Thorpe's death, the International Olympic Committee finally announced that Thorpe's Olympic medals had been restored

2)American athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised their gloved fists on the podium for the 200 metres medal ceremony at the 1968 Mexico City Games in what was widely seen to be a 'Black Power' salute. Australian silver medallist Peter Norman wore a human rights badge to show his support. 

Deemed to have made a political gesture, the US athletes were expelled from the Games


3)With the Cold War at its height, the USSR ended American dominance of Olympic basketball in controversial fashion at the 1972 Munich Games. The buzzer went and the USA thought they had won by one point. But amid confusion over a Soviet time-out, the clock was re-set to three seconds. Alexander Belov duly sunk the winning basket. To this day, most of the USA team refuse to accept their silver medals. 

The Munich massacre took the headlines away from sport as 11 members of Israel's Olympic team were taken hostage and later killed by Palestinian terrorist group Black September, who demanded 234 jailed prisoners were released.   

4)Ben Johnson blazed to 100m gold at the 1988 Seoul Games in a new world record time of 9.79 seconds. His time was immediately questioned by silver medallist Carl Lewis, and three days later Ben Johnson was disqualified after testing positive for the steroid stanozolol. 
Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson was found to have cheated during his gold medal win at the 1988 Games

Carl Lewis was upgraded to the gold medal and Briton Linford Christie took silver. 

5)American Roy Jones Jr dominated the light-middleweight final at the 1988 Seoul Games, but gold was awarded to home favourite Park Si-hun. Even Park tried to apologise to Jones afterwards. Despite all three judges being suspended, and Jones being awarded the Val Barker Trophy for best boxer of the tournament, the IOC still stands by the original decision 

9)Olympians Who Sold the Medal won at the Olympic Games

1)Jesse Owens(USA)

Jesse Owens sold one of his four gold medals from the 1936 Berlin games for £1.11million
Jesse Owen won 4 Hold Medals in the 100 M,200M,Long Jump and 4x100 Relay

2)Wladimir Klitschko(Ukraine)

Another famous athlete to have sold an Olympic gold medal is boxer Wladimir Klitschko, who was the heavyweight boxing champion at the 1996 Atlanta games.

The Ukrainian, competing for his country in their first ever Olympics as an independent nation, sold the medal for around £666,000 ($1m) to put towards helping children in his country to get into sport.

3)Anthony Ervin(USA)

Anthony Ervin who won the Gold Medal in the 50m freestyle at the 2000 Sydney Games. Despite this success, he retired from the sport in 2003 at the age of 22, saying that he "needed to kind of figure out my own life … unhindered, unfettered from the discipline of being a competitive, professional swimmer.” He put his gold medal on eBay in 2004, donating the $17,101 it earned to victims of the Indian Ocean Tsunami

4) Otylia Jedrzejczak(Poland)

Before she even qualified for the 2004 Athens Olympics 10 years ago, Otylia Jedrzejczak declared that any gold medals she won would be donated to charity.
When she found herself at the top of the winner's stand not long after, she made good on the promise. Her medal from the 200m butterfly went for more than $80,000 and benefited a Polish charity that helps kids with leukemia. "I don't need the medal to remember," she said. "I know I'm the Olympic champion. That's in my heart."