Olympics Sports

Other Olympics Sports

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Demonstration Sports:

* Bandy (1952)
* Disabled alpine skiing (1984 and 1988)
* Disabled cross-country skiing (1988)
* Ice stock sport (1936, 1964)
* Military patrol (1928, 1936 and 1948) - official skiing event in 1924 but currently considered
an event of biathlon in those Games
* Ski ballet (acroski) - demonstration event of freestyle skiing (1988 and 1992)
* Skijoring (1928)
* Sled-dog racing (1932)
* Speed skiing (1992)
* Winter pentathlon (1948)

The following sports or disciplines have been demonstrated at the Summer Olympic Games for the years shown, but have never been included on the official Olympic program:

* American football (1904 and 1932)
* Australian rules football (1956)
* Ballooning (1900)
* Bowling (1988)
* Boules (1900)
* Budo (1964)
* Field handball (1952)
* Finnish baseball (1952)
* Glima (1912)
* Gliding (1936)
* Kaatsen (1928)
* Korfball (1920 and 1928)
* La canne (1924)
* Lifesaving (1900)
* Longue paume (1900)
* Motorsport (1900)
* Roller hockey (1992)
* Sambo (1980)
* Savate (1924)
* Swedish (Ling) gymnastics (1948)
* Weight training with dumbbells (1904)
* Water skiing (1972)

The Beijing Olympic Committee has received permission to organize a wushu competition, but it will not be considered a demonstration or exhibition sport at the 2008 Summer Olympics.

Recognized Sports:

* Air sports
* Bandy
* Billiard sports
* Boules
* Bowling
* Bridge
* Chess
* DanceSport
* Golf
* Karate
* Korfball
* Lifesaving
* Motorcycle sport
* Mountaineering/Climbing
* Netball
* Orienteering
* Pelote Basque
* Polo
* Powerboating
* Racquetball
* Roller sports
* Rugby
* Squash
* Sumo
* Surfing
* Tug of war
* Underwater sports
* Water skiing
* Wushu

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Discontinued olympic sports

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The following sports were previously part of the Summer Olympic Games program as official sports, but are no longer on the current program. The numbers in each cell indicate the number of events for each sport that were contested at the respective Games; a bullet denotes that the sport was contested as a demonstration sport.

»	Basque Pelota	»	Cricket
»	Croquet	»	Figure Skating
»	Golf	»	Ice Hockey
»	Jeu De Paume	»	Lacrosse
»	Polo	»	Roque
»	Rugby Union	»	Tug Of War
»	Water Motorsports	»	Rackets

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Winter Olympics

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The Winter Olympic Games are a winter multi-sport event held every four years. They feature winter sports held on ice or snow, such as ice skating and skiing.

Each National Olympic Committee (NOC), as with the Summer Olympics, enters athletes to compete against other NOC's athletes for gold, silver, and bronze medals. Fewer nations participate in the Winter Olympics than the Summer Olympics; the most obvious reason for this is sheer geography, as most of the countries near the equator have no access to winter sport training facilities.

The most recent games were held in Turin, Italy in 2006, and the next games will be held in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada in 2010. On July 4, 2007, the Russian resort of Sochi was chosen to host the 2014 Winter Olympic Games.

The Early Years:

When the International Olympic Committee (IOC) was established in 1894, one of the sports proposed for the programme was ice skating. However, no skating was conducted at the Olympics until the 1908 Summer Olympics in London, which featured four figure skating events. Ulrich Salchow (10 time World champion) and Madge Syers (first competitive woman figure skater) won the individual titles with ease.

Three years later, Italian count Eugenio Brunetta d'Usseaux proposed that the IOC stage a week with winter sports as part of the 1912 Summer Olympics in Stockholm. The organisers opposed this idea, wanting to promote the Nordic Games, a winter sports competition held every four years. However, this same idea was again proposed for the 1916 Games, which were to be held in Berlin. A winter sports week with speed skating, figure skating, ice hockey and Nordic skiing was planned, but the 1916 Olympics were cancelled after the outbreak of World War I.

The first Olympics after the war, the 1920 Games in Antwerp, again, featured figure skating, while ice hockey made its Olympic debut. At the IOC Congress held the following year, it was decided that the organisers of the next Olympics (France) would also host a separate "International Winter Sports Week", under patronage of the IOC. This "week" (it actually lasted 11 days) proved to be a great success and in 1925 the IOC decided to create separate Olympic Winter Games, not connected to the Summer Olympics.

It wasn't until 1926 at the 24th IOC Session in Lisbon, that the 1924 events in Chamonix were retroactively designated as the first Winter Olympics. The French town in the Haute-Savoie hosted the Games from January 25 to February 5. These first Olympics attracted more than 200 athletes from 16 nations, competing in 16 events. The first event on the programme was 500 m speed skating won by U.S. athlete Charlie Jewtraw, who thereby became the first Olympic Winter Games champion, though not the first winter Olympic champion, since figure skating and ice hockey were held in 1908 and 1920. Overall, in 1924, Finnish and Norwegian athletes dominated events.

Recent Years:

The 19th Olympic Winter Games were held in Salt Lake City, Utah, United States. Prior to the opening of the Games, it was found that Salt Lake organisers had bribed several IOC members in order to be elected. This resulted in a change of the host city election procedures and several IOC members resigned or were punished. Again, the programme was expanded. Skeleton made its return on the Olympic podium after 54 years, while new events were added in biathlon, bobsleigh, cross-country skiing, Nordic combined and short track speed skating.

The Olympic Games in Salt Lake City were also the first Olympics since September 11, 2001, which meant Olympic games since then required a higher level of security to avoid any terrorist attack. During the opening ceremonies, Dr. Jacques Rogge, presiding over his first Olympics as IOC president, told the athletes of the host country that their nation was overcoming the "horrific tragedy" of that day and the IOC stands united with them in promoting the committee's ideals.

The Salt Lake City Olympics had many stars. Ole Einar Bjørndalen won all four biathlon events, while Samppa Lajunen took all three Nordic combined medals. Croatia's Janica Kostelić won four medals in alpine skiing, of which three were gold. Simon Ammann won both individual ski jumping events, while Georg Hackl won his fifth consecutive medal in the same event (luge singles), a feat never before achieved by any Olympian. In speed skating, the high altitude of the skating rink assured several new world records. Jochem Uytdehaage broke three world records, winning two golds and a silver; Claudia Pechstein won the 5000 m for the third time in a row, while also winning the 3000 m. The women's short track speed skating events saw China win its first two Winter Olympic golds, both by Yang Yang (A). Canadians jubilated as both their men's and their women's hockey teams defeated the United States to win the gold; the men's team thus ended a gold medal drought that had lasted 50 years to the day.

The United Kingdom won their first Winter Olympic gold medal since 1984; the ladies Curling team springing a surprise result by beating the highly favoured Swiss in the gold medal match.

The men's 1000 m short track event saw one of the unlikeliest results in sports history. Australian Steven Bradbury, who would have been eliminated in the quarterfinals but for the disqualification of Marc Gagnon, advanced to the final when three of the four other competitors in his semifinal crashed out on the final lap. In the final, Bradbury was fifth going into the final lap, when another collision left him the last man standing. Bradbury was able to avoid the pileup, becoming the first Winter Olympic gold medallist from the Southern Hemisphere. Many Australians saw this as a painfully humorous example of the country's struggle for competitiveness in winter sports, being that it took for all other competitors to crash for an Aussie to win. The phrase "to do a Bradbury" has since entered the Australian lexicon meaning to succeed through the failure of others. Alisa Camplin won Australia's second gold medal in freestyle skiing without the need for such incredible luck.

A major scandal evolved around the pair figure skating contest. Canadians Jamie Salé and David Pelletier initially placed second. However, it was decided that a French jury member had favoured the winning Russian pair, and the IOC and the International Skating Union decided to award both pairs the gold medal, after much discussion. Combined with several other referee decisions that came out negatively for Russian athletes, there was a brief threat by the Russians of withdrawing from the Games.

The scandal also resulted in a change to the scoring system used for figure skating events. Previously each judge posted their mark and an average score was taken. The new regulations keep individual judges decisions secret. Also the highest and lowest scores for each competitor is dropped, in the hopes that this will eliminate any sort of bias by judges.

The Future:

In a 2003 IOC vote, the 2010 Winter Olympics were awarded to Vancouver, thus allowing Canada to host its second Winter Olympics as well as being the first for the province of British Columbia. Vancouver will be the largest city to host a Winter Olympics, with a population of more than 2.4 million people in the greater Vancouver metropolitan area.

The host city for 2014 was narrowed down to three cities, on June 22, 2006, and the final decision for the 2014 Winter Olympics was made on July 4, 2007 in Guatemala City when Sochi, Russia was elected as the host city over the other two finalists: Salzburg, Austria and PyeongChang, Republic of Korea. PyeongChang lost by four votes.

As evidenced by the growing audience worldwide and increasing rights fees, the Winter Olympic games are gaining in popularity within countries that do not have a strong winter sports tradition (such as Brazil or Mexico). As a result of its global appeal, it seems likely that international participation in the Winter Olympics will also increase.

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Summer Olympic Games

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The Summer Olympic Games or the Games of the Olympiad are an international multi-sport event held every four years, organised by the International Olympic Committee.

The Olympics are the most prestigious such event in the world, though they are not the world's most-watched sporting event - the television audience for the single-sport FIFA World Cup is larger. Medals are awarded in each event, with gold medals for first place, silver for second and bronze for third, a tradition which started in 1904.

The Games have expanded from a 42-event competition with fewer than 250 men competing to including over 10,000 competitors of both genders from 202 nations.

Organisers for the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing expect approximately 10,500 athletes to take part in the 302 events on the programme for the Games. The 2004 Summer Olympics, for which organisers had also expected 10,500 competitors, drew a total of 11,099 in the 301 events offered.

Competitors are entered by a National Olympic Committee (NOC) to represent their country of citizenship.

National anthems and flags accompany the medal ceremonies, and tables showing the number of medals won by each country are widely used. In general only recognised nations are represented, but a few sovereign-disputed countries are allowed to take part.

Four countries - Australia, Great Britain, Greece and Switzerland - have sent teams to every single Summer Olympic Games.

The only country to have won at least one gold medal at every Summer Olympic Games is Great Britain, ranging from one gold in 1904, 1952 and 1996 to fifty-six golds in 1908.

Qualification:

Qualification rules for each of the Olympic sports are set by the International Federation (IF) that governs that sport's international competition.

For individual sports, competitors typically qualify through attaining a certain place in a major international event or on the IF's ranking list.

National Olympic Committees may enter a limited number of qualified competitors in each event (3 is a common number), and the NOC decides which qualified competitors to select as representatives in each event if more have attained the benchmark than can be entered. Many events provide for a certain number of wildcard entries, given to athletes from developing nations.

Nations qualify teams for team sports through continental qualifying tournaments, in which each continental association is given a certain number of spots in the Olympic tournament. The host nation is generally given an automatic qualification.

The Early Years:

The modern Olympic Games were founded in 1894 when Pierre Fredi, Baron de Coubertin sought to promote international understanding through sporting competition. He based his Olympics on the Wenlock Olympian Society Annual Games, which had been contested in Much Wenlock since 1850. The first edition of de Coubertin's games, held in Athens in 1896, 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 "[i]f the committee doesn’t let me compete I will go after them regardless".

Four years later the 1900 Summer Olympics in Paris attracted more than four times as many athletes, including 11 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 5 months. It is still disputed which events exactly were Olympic, since few or maybe even none of the events were advertised as such at the time.

Numbers declined again for the 1904 Games in St. Louis, Missouri, USA, due in part to the lengthy transatlantic boat trip required of the European competitors, and the integration with the Louisiana Purchase Exposition World's Fair, which again spread the event out over an extended period. In contrast with Paris 1900, the word Olympic was used for practically every contest, including those exclusively for school boys or for Irish-Americans.

A series of smaller games were held in Athens in 1906. These were to be the first of an alternating series of games to be held in Athens, but the series failed to materialise. The games were held in 1906 to celebrate the "tenth birthday" of the games. The IOC does not currently recognise these games as being official Olympic Games, although many historians do. The 1906 Athens games, which had over 900 athletes competing, were more successful than the 1900 and 1904 games and contributed positively to the success of future games.

End of the 20th century:

Following the Soviet Union's participation to the Afghan Civil War, 66 nations, including the United States, Canada, West Germany and Japan, boycotted the 1980 games held in Moscow. Notably, Greece, Great Britain and Australia did not withdraw, and remain the only nations to have competed in all summer games. The boycott contributed to the 1980 Games being a less publicised and less competitive affair, which was dominated by the host country.

In 1984 the Soviet Union, and 14 Eastern Bloc countries, reciprocated by boycotting the Los Angeles games. These games were perhaps the first games of a new era to make a profit. The games were again viable, but had become more commercial.

The 1988 Seoul games were very well planned but the games were sadly tainted when many of the athletes, most notably men's 100 metres winner Ben Johnson, failed mandatory drug tests. Despite splendid drug-free performances by many individuals, the number of people who failed screenings for performance-enhancing chemicals overshadowed the games.

On the bright side, drug testing and regulation authorities were catching up with the cheating that had been endemic in athletics for some years. The 1992 Barcelona Games were cleaner, although not without incident. In evidence there was increased professionalism amongst Olympic athletes, exemplified by US basketball's "Dream Team". 1992 also saw the reintroduction to the Games of several smaller European states which had been incorporated into the Soviet Union since World War II.

By then the process of choosing a location for the Games had itself become a commercial concern; allegations of corruption rocked the International Olympic Committee, in particular with reference to Salt Lake City's bid to host the 2002 Winter Olympics. It was also widely rumoured that The Coca-Cola Company, a key IOC sponsor, was highly influential in the 1996 Summer Olympics being hosted by its home city of Atlanta. In the stadium in 1996, the highlight was 200 metres runner Michael Johnson annihilating the world record in front of a home crowd. Canadians savoured Donovan Bailey's record-breaking gold medal run in the 100-metre dash. This was popularly felt to be an appropriate recompense for the previous national disgrace involving Ben Johnson. There were also emotional scenes, such as when Muhammad Ali, clearly affected by Parkinson's disease, lit the Olympic torch and received a replacement medal for the one he had discarded in 1960. The latter event took place not at the boxing ring but in the basketball arena, at the demand of US television. The atmosphere at the Games was marred however when a bomb exploded during the celebration in Centennial Park. In June 2003, the principal suspect in this bombing, Eric Robert Rudolph, was captured.

A new millennium:

The 2000 Games were held in Sydney, Australia, and showcased individual performances by local favourite Ian Thorpe in the pool, Briton Steve Redgrave who won a rowing gold medal in an unprecedented fifth consecutive Olympics, and Cathy Freeman, an Indigenous Australian whose triumph in the 400 metres united a packed stadium and provided a bridge between white and Indigenous Australians. Eric "the Eel" Moussambani, a swimmer from Equatorial Guinea, had a memorably slow 100 metre freestyle swim that showed that, even in the commercial world of the twentieth century, some of de Coubertin's original vision still remained.[citation needed]

2004 saw the Games return to their birthplace in Athens, Greece. Many doubted the city would be ready to host the games in time. Greece spent at least $7.2 billion on the Games, including $1.5 billion on security alone—an enormous sum that will take many years, if not decades, to pay off. Yet, none of those fears became a reality. The games were praised and appreciated for their excellent quality in terms of organization, hospitality, symbolism, the level of the competition and athleticism, and the overall image transmitted worldwide. Although unfounded and wildly sensationalized reports of terrorism drove crowds away from the preliminary competitions of first weekend of the games (August 14-15), attendance picked up soon thereafter as the games progressed, the competitions got underway, and the terrorist attacks and security glitches failed to materialize. The Athens Games witnessed all NOCs participate for the first time since 1996, and the largest ever — with 202 NOCs and over 11,000 participants.

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History of Olympic

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The Olympic Games is an international multi-sport event subdivided into summer and winter sporting events. The original Olympic Games (Greek: Ολυμπιακοί Αγώνες; Olympiakoi Agones) began in 776 BC in Olympia, Greece, and was celebrated until AD 393.

Interest in reviving the Olympic Games proper was first shown by the Greek poet and newspaper editor Panagiotis Soutsos in his poem "Dialogue of the Dead" in 1833. Evangelos Zappas sponsored the first modern international Olympic Games in 1859.

He paid for the refurbishment of the Panathinaiko Stadium for Games held there in 1870 and 1875. This was noted in newspapers and publications around the world including the London Review, which stated that "the Olympian Games, discontinued for centuries, have recently been revived! Here is strange news indeed ... the classical games of antiquity were revived near Athens".

The International Olympic Committee was founded in 1894 with the initiative of a French nobleman, Pierre Frédy, Baron de Coubertin. The first of the IOC's Olympic Games were the 1896 Summer Olympics, held in Athens, Greece. Participation in the Olympic Games has increased to include athletes from nearly all nations worldwide.

With the improvement of satellite communications and global telecasts of the events, the Olympics are consistently gaining supporters. The most recent Summer Olympics were the 2004 Games in Athens and the most recent Winter Olympics were the 2006 Games in Turin. The upcoming games in Beijing are planned to comprise 302 events in 28 sports. As of 2006, the Winter Olympics were competed in 84 events in 7 sports.