With the Summer Olympic Games scheduled for 2024, the entire world is keeping abreast of the performances of the athletes who endeavor to attain eligibility to be part of the Games. This article takes you through the Olympic Games from Athens 1896 to Sydney 2000. The tradition of holding the games every four years has continued from the inception. Then came the COVID-19 pandemic that delayed the 2020 Games in Tokyo.
The world had to wait five years for the Tokyo Olympics, an unusual break from the tradition of holding the Summer Olympics every four years. Prior to that war canceled three Olympics. The tradition has its roots in the Ancient Games that began in Greece. Researchers and historians believe the very first Olympic Games took place in 776 B.C. They were part of a series of athletic competitions called the Panhellenic Games held to honor different Greek gods.
The Ancient Olympic Games ended during the 4th century. In the late 1800s, a French historian named Pierre de Coubertin helped kick start the modern Olympic Games. Sticking with a tradition started centuries before, the modern games were scheduled once an Olympiad, or once every four years.
So that tradition has maintained. However, the timing of those Olympiads are staggered between winter and summer. The Winter and Summer Games were once held during the same year. The International Olympic Committee decided to stagger them after the 1992 games, leading to the one time the Winter Games were held two years apart. They’re back to being held every four years.
Early Olympic Games
The 1896 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the Olympiad, was an international multi-sport event which was celebrated in Athens, Greece, from April6 to 15, 1896. It was the first Olympic Games held in the modern era. About 100,000 people attended for the opening of the games. The athletes came from 14 nations, with most coming from Greece. Although Greece had the most athletes, the U.S. finished with the most champions. 11 Americans placed first in their events vs. the 10 from Greece.
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 organized by Pierre de Coubertin in Paris, on June 23, 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.
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.
Tensions caused by the Russo–Japanese War and the difficulty of getting to St. Louis may have contributed to the fact that very few top-ranked athletes from outside the US and Canada took part in the 1904 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 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 40 km for the first games in 1896, but was subsequently varied by up to 2 km due to local conditions such as street and stadium layout.
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 cancelled following the onset of World War I.
Inter War Era Olympics
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 meter runs, the latter two on the same day.
The 1928 Amsterdam Games was notable for being the first games which allowed females to compete at track and field athletics. The 1928 games saw the introduction of a standard medal design with the IOC choosing Giuseppe Cassioli’s depiction of Greek goddess Nike and a winner being carried by a crowd of people. This design was used up until 1972.
The 1932 Los Angeles Games were affected by the Great Depression, which contributed to the low number of competitors.
The 1936 Berlin Games were seen by the German government as a golden opportunity to promote their ideology. The African-American sprinter and long jumper Jesse Owens won four gold medals. The 1936 Berlin Games also saw the introduction of the Torch Relay.
Due to World War II, the 1940 Games were cancelled. The 1944 Games were due to be held in London but were also cancelled.
Post War Olympic Games
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. 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 Zatopek, who was intent on improving on his single gold and silver medals from 1948. Having first won both the 10,000- and 5,000-meter races, he also entered the marathon, despite having never previously raced at that distance. Pacing himself by chatting with the other race leaders, Zatopek 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 were largely successful. The equestrian events were held in Stockholm due to 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 meters, 200 meters, and 4×100 meters relay events.
The 1964 Tokyo Games were the first 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.
Performances at the 1968 Games in Mexico City were affected by the altitude of the host city. These Games introduced the now-universal Fosbury flop, a technique which won American high jumper Dick Fosbury the gold medal.
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.
Some memorable athletic achievements did occur during these Games, notably the winning of a then-record seven gold medals by United States swimmer Mark Spitz, Finland’s Lasse Viren taking back-to-back gold medals in the 5,000 meters and 10,000 meters, and the winning of three gold medals by Soviet gymnastic star Olga Korbut, who achieved a historic backflip off the high bar.
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. 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 Comaneci 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 Viren repeated his double gold in the 5,000 and 10,000 meters, 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 publicized and less competitive affair, which was dominated by the host country.
In 1984, the Soviet Union and 13 Soviet allies retaliated by boycotting the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. Romania and Yugoslavia, notably are the only two countries from the Eastern Bloc that did attend the 1984 Olympics. These games were perhaps the first games of a new era to make a profit. Although a boycott led by the Soviet Union depleted the field in certain sports, 140 National Olympic Committees took part, which was a record at the time. The Games were also the first time mainland China participated.
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.
The 1988 Games, in Seoul, was very well planned but the games were 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.
The 1992 Barcelona Games featured the admittance of players from one of the North American top leagues, the NBA, exemplified by but not limited to US basketball’s “Dream Team.” The 1992 games also saw the reintroduction to the Games of several smaller European states which had been annexed into the Soviet Union during World War II.
At these games, gymnast Vitaly Scherbo set an inaugural medal record of five individual gold medals at a Summer Olympics, and equaled the inaugural record set by Eric Heiden at the 1980 Winter Olympics. By then the process of choosing a location for the Games had become a commercial concern; there were widespread allegations of corruption potentially affecting the IOC’s decision process.
At the Atlanta 1996 Summer Olympics, the highlight was 200 meters runner Michael Johnson annihilating the world record in front of a home crowd. Canadians savoured Donovan Bailey’s recording gold medal run in the 100-meter 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 in the basketball arena. The atmosphere at the Games was marred, however, when a bomb exploded during the celebration in Centennial Olympic Park. In June 2003, the principal suspect in this bombing, Eric Robert Rudolph, was arrested.
The 2000 Summer Olympics, held in Sydney, Australia, showcased individual performances by locals favorites Ian Thorpe in the pool and Cathy Freeman, an Indigenous Australian whose triumph in the 400 meters united a packed stadium. Briton Steve Redgrave who won a rowing gold medal in an unprecedented fifth consecutive Olympics.
The Sydney Games also saw the first appearance of a joint North and South Korean contingent at the opening ceremonies, though they competed in all events as different teams. Controversy occurred in the Women’s Artistic Gymnastics when the vaulting horse was set to the wrong height during the All-Around Competition.
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