The Olympic games are the international sports level competition festival, which is held every years. The main intension goal of this festival are Cultivate Human Beings, through sport games, and contribution to world peace. Summer Games and Winter Games are held separately. The Commonwealth Olympic Games were held in London at 2012, with athletes from 204 countries and regions participating in 26 sports games with a total no. of 302 separate events.
History of The Olympics
The Olympics, athletic festival that originated in ancient Greece and was revived in the late 19th Century. The history of the Olympics began from 2,300 years ago. Their original lays in the Olympian Games, which were held in the Olympia area of ancient Greece. Baron Pierre de Coubertin founded the International Olympic Commettee(IOC) in 1894, leading to first modern Games in Athens in 1896. The IOC is the governing body of the Olympic Movement, with the Olympic Charter defining its structure and authority. There is some initial purposes, the Games have been said to started as a part of festival and sport activity, to worship gods. The ancient Olympic Games, which was ended in 393 because of the outbreaks of wars in the region in which they held.
Before the 1970s the Games were officially limited to competitors with amateur status, but in the 1980s many events were opened to professional athletes. The Games are open to all, even top of the professionals athletes play with basketball and football (soccer). The ancient Olympic Games included several of the sports that are now part of the Summer Games Program, which was included with 32 different sports. Since 1924, the Winter Games were sanctioned for winter sports. The Olympic Games have come to be regarded as the world’s topmost sports competition.
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 Olympic Games for snow and ice sports, the Paralympic Games for athletes with a disability, the Young Olympic Games for athletes aged 14 to 18. The five Continental games (Pan American, African, European and Pacific), the World Games for sports that are not contested in the Olympic Games. The Deaflympics and Special Olympics are also endorsed by the IOC. The IOC had adopt to a verity of economic, political and technological advancements. During the 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. Later on, however, attracted 140 National Olympic Committees, which was a record at the time.
The Olympic Games in Japan
The “Father of the Olympic Movement” in Japan is Jigoro Kano – a man who also contributed to the propagation of Judo – who was the President of the Tokyo Higher Normal School. Since 1909, he was appointed a member of the International Olympic Committee for the first time as an Asian and established the Japan Amateur Athletic Association to realize the participation of Japanese athletes in the Olympics. The selection of athletes for the Olympics was carried out in 1911, when Yahiko Mishima, a track athlete, and Shiso Kanaguri, a marathon runner, were chosen to represent Japan, Japanese athletes participates in the Olympic Games for the first time in Stockholm, Sweden in 1912.
Competition and Status of the Olympics
At the meeting in 776 BCE there was apparently only one event, a footrace that covered one length of the track at Olympia. The race known as the stade was about 192 metres (210 yards) long. The word stade also came to refer to the track on which the race was held and is the origin of the modern English word stadium. In 724 BCE a two-length race, the diaulos, roughly similar to the 400-metre race, which was included and four years later the dolichos, a long-distance race possibly comparable to the modern 1500 or 5000 metre events, was added.
Wrestling and Pentathlon were introduced in 708 BCE. The latter was an all-round competition consisting of five events such as the long jump, the javelin throw, a footrace and wrestling.
Boxing was introduced in 688 BCE and chariot racing eight years later. In 648 BCE the pancratium, a kind of no-holds-barred combat, was included. This brutal contest combined wrestling, boxing and street fighting. Kicking and hitting a downed opponent were allowed, only biting and gouging were forbidden. Between 632 and 616 BCE events for boys were introduced. Chariot races and horse racing, which became part of the ancient Games, were held in the hippodrome south of the stadium.
The Olympic Games were technically restricted to freedom Greeks. Many of the Greeks competitors came from the Greek colonies on the Italian peninsula and in Asia Minor and Africa. Most of the participants were professionals who trained full-time for the events. The Athletes earned substantial prizes for winning at many other preliminary festivals and although the only prize at Olympia was a wreath or garland, an Olympic champion also received widespread adulation and often lavish benefits from his home city.
Women and The Olympic Games
At that time, there were no women’s events in the ancient Olympics, several womens appear in the official lists of Olympic victors as the owners of the stables of some victorius chariot entries. In Sparta, girls and young women did practice and compete locally. But, apart from Sparta, contests for young Greek women were very rare and probably limited to an annual local footrace. At Olympia, the Herean festival held every four years in honour of the goddess Hera, included a race for young women, who were divided into three age groups. Now, the Herean race was not part of the Olympics and probably was not institutes before the advent of the Roman Empire. Then for a brief period girls competed at a few another athletic venues.
The 2nd Centuary-CE traveler Pausanias wrote that womens were banned from Olympia during the actual Games under penalty of death. So, womens were not take participate in these kinds of sports activity. But, now scenario is different, Olympic community also remarked that the law and penalty had never been invoked. His account later incongruously stated that unmarried women were allowed as Olympic spectators. Many of historians believe that a later scribe simply made an error copying this passage of Pausania’s text here. Nonetheless, the notion that all or only married women were banned from the Games endured in popular writing on the topic, from the evidene regarding women as spectators remains unclear.
The Modern Olympic Movement
Recovery of the Olympics
The ideas and work of several people led to the creation of the modern Olympics. The best-known architect of the modern Games was Pierre, baron de Coubertin, born in Paris on New Year’s Day, 1863. In the tradition of the Family pointed to an army career or possibly politics, but at age 24 Coubertin decided that his future lay in education, especially physical education.
When Coubertin sought to confer with Brookes about physical education, Brookes talked more about Olympic revivals and showed him documents relating to both the Greek and the British Olympiads.
Organization of the International Olympic Committee
At the Congress of Paris in 1894, the control and development of the modern Olympic Games were entrusted to the International Olympic Committee(IOC). During the World War Coubertin moved its headquarters to Lausanne, Switzerland, where they have remained. The IOC is responsible for maintaining the regular celebration of the Olympic Games, seeing that the Games are carried out in the spirit that inspired their revival and promoting the development of sports throughout the world. The original committee in 1894 considered of 14 members and Coubertin.
*The Winter Games were not held until 1924.
**Games were not held during World War I and World War II.
***From 1992 the Summer and Winter Games were held on a staggered two-year schedule.
| International Olympic Committee Presidents | ||
| Name | Country | Years |
| Dimítrios Vikélas | Greece | 1894–96 |
| Pierre, baron de Coubertin | France | 1896–1925 |
| Henri, comte de Baillet-Latour | Belgium | 1925–42 |
| J. Sigfrid Edström | Sweden | 1946–52 |
| Avery Brundage | United States | 1952–72 |
| Michael Morris, Lord Killanin | Ireland | 1972–80 |
| Juan António Samaranch | Spain | 1980–2001 |
| Jacques Rogge | Belgium | 2001–13 |
| Thomas Bach | Germany | 2013–present |
The awarding of the Olympic Games
| Sites of the modern Olympic Games | ||
| Year | Summer Games | Winter Games |
| 1896 | Athens | * |
| 1900 | Paris | * |
| 1904 | St. Louis, Mo., U.S. | * |
| 1908 | London | * |
| 1912 | Stockholm | * |
| 1916 | ** | * |
| 1920 | Antwerp, Belg. | * |
| 1924 | Paris | Chamonix, France |
| 1928 | Amsterdam | |
| St. Moritz, Switz. | ||
| 1932 | Los Angeles | Lake Placid, N.Y., U.S. |
| 1936 | Berlin | Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Ger. |
| 1940 | ** | ** |
| 1944 | ** | ** |
| 1948 | London | St. Moritz, Switz. |
| 1952 | Helsinki, Fin. | Oslo, Nor. |
| 1956 | Melbourne, Austl. | Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy |
| 1960 | Rome | Squaw Valley, Calif., U.S. |
| 1964 | Tokyo | Innsbruck, Austria |
| 1968 | Mexico City | Grenoble, France |
| 1972 | Munich, W.Ger. | Sapporo, Japan |
| 1976 | Montreal | Innsbruck, Austria |
| 1980 | Moscow | Lake Placid, N.Y., U.S. |
| 1984 | Los Angeles | Sarajevo, Yugos. |
| 1988 | Seoul, S.Kor. | Calgary, Alta., Can. |
| 1992 | Barcelona, Spain | Albertville, France |
| 1994 | *** | Lillehammer, Nor. |
| 1996 | Atlanta, Ga., U.S. | *** |
| 1998 | *** | Nagano, Japan |
| 2000 | Sydney, Austl. | *** |
| 2002 | *** | Salt Lake City, Utah, U.S. |
| 2004 | Athens | *** |
| 2006 | *** | Turin, Italy |
| 2008 | Beijing | *** |
| 2010 | *** | Vancouver, B.C., Can. |
| 2012 | London | *** |
| 2014 | *** | Sochi, Russia |
| 2016 | Rio de Janeiro | *** |
| 2018 | *** | P’yŏngch’ang, S.Kor. |
| 2020 | Tokyo | *** |
| 2022 | *** | Beijing |
| 2024 | Paris | *** |
| 2028 | Los Angeles | *** |
Programs and Participation
The Olympic Games celebrate an Olympiad or period of four years. The first Olympiad of modern times was celebrated in 1896 and subsequent Olympiads are numbered consecutively even when no Games take place(The case was in 1916, 1940 and 1944).
Olympic winter Games have been held separately from the Games of the Olympiad since 1924 and were initially held in the same year. In 1986 the IOC voted to alternate the Winter and Summer Games every two years in the beginning of 1994. The Winter Games were held in 1992 and again in 1994, thereafter every four years, the Summer Games maintained their original four-year cycle.
The Summer Olympic Program includes the following sports Games which are given below:
Aquatics(Swimming, Synchronized Swimming, diving, and water polo), archery,athletics(track and field),badminton, basketball, boxing, canoeing and kayaking, cycling,equestrian sports, fencing, field hockey, football(soccer), golf, gymnastics(including artistic, rhythmic and trampoline), team handball, judo, modern pentathlonm , rowing, rugby,sailing(formerly yachting), shooting, table tennis, tae kwon do, tennis, triathlon,volleyball(indoor and beach), weightlifting and wrestling.
The Winter Olympic Program includes sports played on snow or ice: biathlon, bobsledding, curling, ice hockey, ice skating(Figure Skating and speed skating), luge, skeleton sleeding, skiing , ski jumping and snowboarding. An Olympic Program must include national exhibitions and demonstrations of fine arts like as architecture, literature, music, painting, sculpture, photography and sports philately.
Ceremony of the Olympics
The form of the opening ceremony is laid down by the IOC in great detail, from the moment when the Chief of State of the host country is received by the president of the IOC and the organizing committee at the entrance to the stadium to the end of the proceeding, when the last team files out.
The Medal Ceremonies
In the individual Olympic events, the award for first place is a gold(silver-gilt, with six grams of fine gold) medal, for second place a silver medal and for third place bronze medal. Solid Gold medal were last given in 1912. The obverse side of the medal awarded in 2004 at Athens. At the 2004 Athens games, athletes received authentic olive-leaf crowns as well as medals. Diplomas are awarded for fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth places. All competitors and officials receive a commemorative medal.
Medals are presented during the Games at the various venues, most of the event soon after the conclusion time.
The Closing Ceremony
The closing ceremony takes place after the final event, which at the Summer Games is usually the equestrian Prix des Nations. The President of the IOC calls the youth of the world to assemble again in four years to celebrate the Games of the next Olympiad. A fanfare is sounded, the Olympic fire is smother and the strains of the Olympic anthem. The Olympic flag is lowered and the Games are over.
Olympic Symbols
The Flag
In the stadium and its immediate surroundings, the Olympic Flag is flown freely together with the flags of the participating countries. The Olympic Flag presented by Coubertin in 1914 is the prototype: it has white background, and in the center there are five interlaced rings – blue, yellow, black , green and red. The blue ring is farthest left, nearest the pole. These rings represent the “Five Parts Of the World” joined together in the Olympic movement.
The Flame and torch relay
Contrary to popular belief, the torch relay from the temple of Hera in Olympia to the host city has no predecessor or parallel in antiquity. No relay was needed to run the torch from Olympia to Olympia. The Olympia flame first appeared at the 1928 Olympics in Amsterdam. In the 2004 relay reached all seven continents on its way from Olympia to Athens.