Summer Olympics facts
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| Olympic rings |
- The Olympic Games were a series of athletic competitions held for representatives of various city-states of Ancient Greece held in honor of Zeus.
- The exact origins of the Games are shrouded in myth and legend but records indicate that they began in 776 BC in Olympia in Greece.
- During a celebration of the Games, an Olympic Truce was enacted so that athletes could travel from their countries to the Games in safety.
- In 1894, a French educator Baron Pierre de Coubertin, proposed a revival of the ancient tradition, and thus the modern-day Olympic Summer Games were born.
- The first Winter Olympic Games were held in Chamonix, France in 1924.
- The ancient Olympics were rather different from the modern Games. There were fewer events, and only free men who spoke Greek could compete (although a woman, Bilistiche is also mentioned as a winner).
- The five interlocking rings of the Olympic flag symbolize the five continents of the world (Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, and the Americas) "linked together in friendship."
- Host Greece won the most medals (47) at the first Olympic Summer Games in 1896.
- In 1928, reportedly six of the eight entrants in the women's 800-meter race collapsed at the finish line in an "exhausted state."
- The 1912 Greco-Roman wrestling match in Stockholm between Finn Alfred Asikainen and Russian Martin Klein lasted more than 11 hours. Klein eventually won but was too exhausted to participate in the championship match so he settled for the silver.
- Stella the Fella—Poland's Stella Walsh (Stanislawa Walasiewicz)—won the women's 100-meter race at the 1932 Olympics in Los Angeles, becoming the first woman to break the 12-second barrier. When she was killed in 1980 as an innocent victim in a robbery attempt, an autopsy declared her to be a male.
- Did you know that traditionally the Olympic flame in Olympia, Greece is rekindled every two years using the sun's rays and a concave reflective mirror?
- Danish rider Lis Hartel won the silver medal in the 1952 equestrian dressage event in Helsinki. Hartel suffered from an inflammation of the spinal cord known as poliomyelitis, which required her to be lifted on and off her horse each time.
- The Summer Olympic sports are archery, badminton, basketball, beach volleyball, boxing, canoe / kayak, cycling, diving, equestrian, fencing, field hockey, gymnastics, handball, judo, modern pentathlon (shooting, fencing, swimming, show jumping, and running), mountain biking, rowing, sailing, shooting, soccer, swimming, synchronized swimming, table tennis, taekwondo, tennis, track and field, triathlon (swimming, biking, running), volleyball, water polo, weightlifting, and wrestling.
- Up until 1994 the Olympics were held every four years. Since then, the Winter and Summer games have alternated every two years.
- The first Olympics covered by U.S. television was the 1960 Summer Games in Rome by CBS.
- Only four athletes have ever won medals at both the Winter and Summer Olympic Games: Eddie Eagan (United States), Jacob Tullin Thams (Norway), Christa Luding-Rothenburger (East Germany), and Clara Hughes (Canada).
- Larrisa Latynina, a gymnast from the former Soviet Union, finished her Summer Olympic Games career with 18 total medals—the most in history.
