Early years , Athens The
International Olympic Committee (IOC) was founded in 1894 when
Pierre de Coubertin, a French
pedagogue and historian, sought to promote international understanding through sporting competition. The first edition of The Olympic Games was held in
Athens in 1896 and attracted just 245 competitors, of whom more than 200 were Greek, and only 14 countries were represented. Nevertheless, no international events of this magnitude had been organised before. Female athletes were not allowed to compete, though one woman,
Stamata Revithi, ran the marathon course on her own, saying, "If the committee doesn't let me compete, I will go after them regardless". Women first participated officially in the 1900 Paris Games, with 22 women competing in five sports. Female participation has increased dramatically since then, with nearly half of the athletes in recent Games being women.
Ancient Greece was the birthplace of the Olympic Games, consequently Athens was perceived to be an appropriate choice to stage the inaugural modern Games. It was unanimously chosen as the host city during a congress organised by Pierre de Coubertin in Paris, on 23 June 1894. The IOC was also established during this congress. Despite many obstacles and setbacks, the 1896 Olympics were regarded as a great success. The Games had the largest international participation of any sporting event to that date.
Panathinaiko Stadium, the first big stadium in the modern world, overflowed with the largest crowd ever to watch a sporting event. The highlight for the Greeks was the
Marathon victory by their compatriot
Spiridon Louis, a water carrier. He won in 2 hours, 58 minutes and 50 seconds, setting off wild celebrations at the stadium. The most successful competitor was German
wrestler and
gymnast Carl Schuhmann, who won four gold medals. Greek officials and the public were enthusiastic about the experience of hosting an Olympic Games. This feeling was shared by many of the athletes, who even demanded that Athens be the permanent Olympic host city. The IOC intended for subsequent Games to be rotated to various host cities around the world. The
second Olympics was held in Paris. Four years later the
1900 Summer Olympics in Paris attracted more than four times as many athletes, including 20 women, who were allowed to officially compete for the first time, in
croquet,
golf,
sailing, and
tennis. The Games were integrated with the
Paris World's Fair and lasted over five months. It has been disputed which exact events were
Olympic, as some events were for professionals, some had restricted eligibility, and others lacked international competitors. of
Washington University in St. Louis during the
1904 Summer Olympics finishes the modern marathon in
1908 at the current distance. Tensions caused by the
Russo–Japanese War and the difficulty of travelling to St. Louis may have contributed to the fact that very few top-ranked athletes from outside the U.S. and Canada took part in the
1904 Games, the first Games held outside Europe. The current three-medal format of gold, silver and bronze for first, second and third place was introduced at the 1904 Olympics. The "
Second International Olympic Games in Athens", as they were called at the time, were held in 1906. The IOC does not currently recognise these games as being official Olympic Games, although many historians do and credit the 1906 games with preventing the demise of the Olympics. The 1906 Athens games were the first of an alternating series of games to be held in Athens in even non-Olympic years, but the series failed to materialise. The games were more successful than the 1900 and 1904 games, with over 850 athletes competing, and contributed positively to the success of future games. The
1908 London Games saw numbers rise again, as well as the first running of the marathon over its now-standard distance of 42.195 km (26 miles 385 yards). The first Olympic Marathon in 1896 (a male-only race) was raced at a distance of 40 km (24 miles 85 yards). The new marathon distance was chosen to ensure that the race finished in front of the box occupied by the British royal family. Thus the marathon had been for the first games in 1896, but was subsequently varied by up to depending on local conditions such as street and stadium layout. At the six Olympic games between 1900 and 1920, the marathon was raced over six distances. The Games saw
Great Britain winning 146 medals, 99 more than second-placed
Americans, its best result to this day. At the end of the 1908 marathon, the Italian runner
Dorando Pietri was first to enter the stadium, but he was clearly in distress and collapsed of exhaustion before he could complete the event. He was helped over the finish line by concerned race officials and later disqualified for that. As compensation for the missing medal,
Queen Alexandra gave Pietri a gilded silver cup.
Arthur Conan Doyle wrote a special report about the race in the
Daily Mail. The Games continued to grow, attracting 2,504 competitors, to
Stockholm in 1912, including the great all-rounder
Jim Thorpe, who won both the
decathlon and pentathlon. Thorpe had previously played a few games of baseball for a fee, and saw his medals stripped for this 'breach' of
amateurism after complaints from
Avery Brundage. They were reinstated in 1983, 30 years after his death. The Games at Stockholm were the first to fulfil Pierre de Coubertin's original idea. For the first time since the Games started in 1896, all five inhabited continents were represented with athletes competing in the same stadium. The scheduled
1916 Summer Olympics were to be held in
Berlin, cancelled following the onset of
World War I.
Interwar era The
1920 Antwerp Games in war-ravaged
Belgium were a subdued affair, but again drew a record number of competitors. This record only stood until 1924, when the
Paris Games involved 3,000 competitors, the greatest of whom was Finnish runner
Paavo Nurmi. The "
Flying Finn" won three team gold medals and the individual 1,500- and 5,000-metre runs, the latter two on the same day. Paris hosted the
1924 Games, becoming the first two-time host city. The Games were the last held under the IOC presidency of
Pierre de Coubertin, father of the modern Olympics, and saw the introduction of the Olympic motto
Citius, Altius, Fortius, the
Olympic Village, and the
Winter Olympics as an “International Winter Sports Week.” The
1928 Amsterdam Games was notable for being the first games which allowed females to compete at track & field athletics, and benefited greatly from the general prosperity of the times alongside the first appearance of
sponsorship of the games, from the
Coca-Cola Company. The 1928 games saw the introduction of a standard medal design with the IOC, choosing
Giuseppe Cassioli's depiction of Greek goddess
Nike with a winner being carried by a crowd of people. This design was used up until 1972. The
1932 Los Angeles Games featured an
Olympic Village and victory podium for the first time. in Berlin, during the
1936 Games The
1936 Berlin Games were seen by the German government as a golden opportunity to promote their ideology. The ruling
Nazi Party commissioned film-maker
Leni Riefenstahl to film the games. The result,
Olympia, was widely considered to be a masterpiece, despite the infusion of
Adolf Hitler's theories of
Aryan racial superiority. Individually, African-American sprinter and long jumper
Jesse Owens won four gold medals, while the host nation won the most gold and overall medals. The 1936 Berlin Games also saw the introduction of the Torch Relay. Due to World War II, the
1940 Games (scheduled to be held in Tokyo and temporarily relocated to
Helsinki upon the outbreak of
the war) were cancelled. The
1944 Games were set to be held in London but were also cancelled; instead, London hosted the first games after the end of the war, in
1948.
After World War II The first post-war Games were held in
1948 in London, with both Germany and Japan excluded. Dutch sprinter
Fanny Blankers-Koen won four gold medals on the track, emulating Owens' achievement in Berlin. At the
1952 Helsinki Games, the
USSR team competed for the first time and quickly emerged as one of the dominant teams, finishing second in the number of gold and overall medals won. Their immediate success might be explained by the advent of the state-sponsored "full-time amateur athlete". The USSR entered teams of athletes who were all nominally students, soldiers, or working in a profession, but many of whom were in reality paid by the state to train on a full-time basis, hence violating amateur rules. Finland made a legend of an amiable
Czechoslovak Army lieutenant named
Emil Zátopek, who was intent on improving on his single gold and silver medals from 1948. Having first won both the 10,000- and 5,000-metre races, he also entered the marathon, despite having never previously raced at that distance. Pacing himself by chatting with the other race leaders, Zátopek led from about halfway, slowly dropping the remaining contenders to win by two and a half minutes, and completed a trio of wins. The
1956 Melbourne Games, the first in the
Southern Hemisphere, were largely successful, with the exception of a
water polo match between
Hungary and the Soviet Union, which ended in a pitched battle between the teams on account of the
Soviet invasion of Hungary. The equestrian events were held in Stockholm because of a
foot-and-mouth disease outbreak in Britain at the time and the strict
quarantine laws of Australia. At the
1960 Rome Games, a young light-heavyweight boxer named Cassius Clay, later known as
Muhammad Ali, arrived on the scene. Ali would later throw his gold medal away in disgust after being refused service in a
whites-only restaurant in his home town of
Louisville, Kentucky. He was awarded a new medal 36 years later at the
1996 Olympics in Atlanta. Other notable performers in 1960 included
Wilma Rudolph, a gold medallist in the 100 metres, 200 metres, and 4 × 100 metres relay events. The
1964 Tokyo Games were the first to be held in Asia and to be broadcast worldwide on television, enabled by the recent advent of communication satellites. These Games marked a turning point in the global visibility and popularity of the Olympics and are credited for heralding the modern age of telecommunications.
Judo debuted as an official sport, and Dutch judoka
Anton Geesink caused a stir when he won the final of the open weight division, defeating
Akio Kaminaga in front of his home crowd. in Mexico City, the first held in Latin America Performances at the
1968 Games in Mexico City were affected by the altitude of the host city. In the medal award ceremony for the men's 200-metre race,
black American athletes
Tommie Smith (gold medal winner) and
John Carlos (bronze medal winner) took a stand for
civil rights by raising their
black-gloved fists and wearing black socks in lieu of shoes. The two athletes were subsequently expelled from the Games by the IOC.
Věra Čáslavská, in protest against the
1968 Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia, and the controversial decision by the judges on the
balance beam and
floor, turned her head down and away from the
Soviet flag while the
national anthem was played during the medal ceremony. She returned home as a heroine of the Czechoslovak people but was made an outcast by the Soviet-dominated government. at halfmast in Kiel (host city of the sailing events), after the
Munich massacre at 1972 Games Politics again intervened at the
1972 Games in Munich, but this time with
lethal consequences. A Palestinian terrorist group named
Black September invaded the Olympic village and broke into the apartment of the
Israeli delegation. They killed two Israelis and held nine others as hostages, demanding that Israel release numerous prisoners. When the Israeli government refused the terrorists' demands, the situation developed into a tense stand-off while negotiations continued. Eventually, the captors, still holding their hostages, were offered safe passage and taken to an airport, where they were ambushed by German security forces. In the ensuing firefight, 15 people were killed, including the nine captive Israeli athletes and five of the terrorists. After much debate, the decision was taken to continue the Games, but the proceedings were understandably dominated by these events. In a close-fought match, the U.S. team appeared to have won by a score of 50–49. However, the final three seconds of the game were replayed three times by judges until the Soviet team came out on top and claimed a 51–50 victory. Ultimately the U.S. team refused to accept their silver medals. There was no such tragedy at the
1976 Montreal Games, but bad planning and fraud led to the cost of these Games far exceeding the budget. Costing $1.5 billion (equivalent to $ billion in ), the 1976 Summer Games were the most expensive in Olympic history (until the
2014 Winter Olympics) and it seemed, for a time, that the Olympics might no longer be a viable financial proposition. In retrospect, it is believed that contractors (suspected of being members of the Montreal Mafia) skimmed large sums of money from all levels of contracts while also profiting from the substitution of cheaper building materials of lesser quality, which may have contributed to the delays, poor construction, and excessive costs. In 1988, one such contractor, Giuseppe Zappia "was cleared of fraud charges that resulted from his work on Olympic facilities after two key witnesses died before testifying at his trial". The 1976 Games were boycotted by many African nations as a protest against
a recent tour of
apartheid-run South Africa by the
New Zealand national rugby union team. Romanian gymnast
Nadia Comăneci made history when she won the women's individual all-around gold medal with two of four possible perfect scores. She won two other individual events, with two perfect scores in the balance beam and all perfect scores in the uneven bars. Lasse Virén repeated his double gold in the 5,000 and 10,000 metres, making him the first athlete to ever win the distance double twice.
End of the 20th century Following the Soviet Union's 1979 invasion of
Afghanistan, 66 nations, including the United States, Canada, West Germany, and Japan,
boycotted the
1980 Games held in Moscow. Eighty nations were represented at the Moscow Games – the smallest number since 1956. The boycott contributed to the 1980 Games being a less publicised and less competitive affair, which was dominated by the host country. According to British journalist
Andrew Jennings, a
KGB colonel stated that the agency's officers had posed as anti-doping authorities from the IOC to undermine
doping tests and that Soviet athletes were "rescued with [these] tremendous efforts". On the topic of the
1980 Summer Olympics, an Australian study in 1989 said "There is hardly a medal winner at the Moscow Games, certainly not a gold medal winner, who is not on one sort of drug or another: usually several kinds. The Moscow Games might as well have been called the Chemists' Games." Documents obtained in 2016 revealed the Soviet Union's plans for a statewide doping system in track and field in preparation for the
1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. Dated prior to the country's decision to boycott the Games, the document detailed the existing steroids operations of the programme, along with suggestions for further enhancements. The communication, directed to the Soviet Union's head of track and field, was prepared by Dr. Sergei Portugalov of the Institute for Physical Culture. Portugalov was also one of the main figures involved in the implementation of the Russian doping programme prior to the 2016 Summer Olympics. but ticket sales still topped figures from the Seoul and Barcelona Olympics (
1988 and
1992). IOC President
Jacques Rogge characterised Greece's organisation as outstanding and its security precautions as flawless. All 202 NOCs participated at the Athens Games with over 11,000 participants. The
2008 Summer Olympics was held in Beijing, People's Republic of China. Several new events were held, including the new discipline of
BMX for both men and women. Women competed in the
steeplechase for the first time. The fencing programme was expanded to include all six events for both men and women; previously, women had not been able to compete in team foil or sabre events, although women's team épée and men's team foil were dropped for these Games. Marathon swimming events were added, over the distance of . Also, the doubles events in table tennis were replaced by team events. American swimmer Michael Phelps set a record for gold medals at a single Games with eight, and tied the record of most gold medals by a single competitor previously held by both Eric Heiden and Vitaly Scherbo. Another notable star of the Games was Jamaican sprinter
Usain Bolt, who became the first male athlete ever to set world records in the finals of both the 100 and 200 metres in the same Games. Equestrian events were held in Hong Kong. London held the
2012 Summer Olympics, becoming the first city to host the Olympic Games three times. In his closing address, Jacques Rogge described the Games as "Happy and glorious". The host nation won 29 gold medals, the best haul for Great Britain since the
1908 Games in London. The United States returned to the top of the medal table after China dominated in 2008. The IOC had removed
baseball and
softball from the 2012 programme. The London Games were successful on a commercial level because they were the first in history to completely sell out every ticket, with as many as one million applications for 40,000 tickets for both the Opening Ceremony and the 100m Men's Sprint Final. Such was the demand for tickets to all levels of each event that there was controversy over seats being set aside for sponsors and National Delegations which went unused in the early days. A system of reallocation was put in place so the empty seats were filled throughout the Games.
Recent Games in Tokyo, Japan, had few attendees as a result of excluding public spectators amid the
COVID-19 pandemic.
Rio de Janeiro in Brazil hosted the
2016 Summer Olympics, becoming the first South American city to host the Olympics, the second Olympic host city in Latin America, after
Mexico City in
1968, as well as the third city in the Southern Hemisphere to host the Olympics after Melbourne, Australia, in
1956 and
Sydney, Australia, in
2000. The preparation for these Games was overshadowed by
controversies, including political instability and an economic crisis in the host country, health and safety concerns surrounding the
Zika virus, and significant pollution in the
Guanabara Bay. However, these concerns were superseded by a
state-sponsored doping scandal involving
Russian athletes at the Winter Olympics held two years earlier, which affected the participation of its athletes in these Games. The
2020 Summer Olympics were originally scheduled to take place from 24 July to 9 August 2020 in Tokyo, Japan. The city was the fifth in history to host the Games twice and the first Asian city to have this title. Due to the
COVID-19 pandemic, the then-Japanese Prime Minister
Shinzo Abe, the IOC and the Tokyo Organising Committee announced that the 2020 Games were to be delayed until 2021, marking the first time that the Olympic Games have been postponed. This was the first time since 1900 that the games were not held in a
leap year, and were instead hosted in a
non-leap year. Unlike previous Olympics, these Games took place
without spectators because of concerns over COVID-19 and a state of emergency imposed in the host city. Nevertheless, the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games featured many memorable moments and feats of technical excellence. One star of the Games, U.S. gymnast
Simone Biles, gracefully bowed out to focus on her mental health, but later returned to claim an individual bronze medal. Norway's
Karsten Warholm smashed his own world record in the 400m hurdles. The
2024 Summer Olympics were held in Paris, France, making it the second city after London to host the Summer Olympics three times (the other times being
1900 and
1924, marking a centenary since the latter). This is the first of any Olympic Games after the pandemic to allow spectators to attend. In a first, the opening ceremonies were staged outside the main stadium with the athletes parading on boats along the
River Seine. Following this, the open water swimming competitions also occurred in the Seine.
Future Games The
2028 Summer Olympics will be held in Los Angeles, California, United States, making it the third city (after Paris (
1900,
1924,
2024) and London (
1908,
1948,
2012)) to host the Games three times (the other times being
1932 and
1984), with the U.S. hosting the Summer Olympics for the fifth time. The
2032 Summer Olympics will be held in Brisbane, Australia, which is the third city to host the Games in Australia and the fourth south of the
equator. ==Sports==