Labh Lakshmi

History of Olympic

The five Olympic rings were designedin 1913, adopted in 1914 and debutedat the Games at Antwerp, 1920.

• The Olympic Games is an international multi-sport event subdivided into summer and winter sporting events.
• The summer and winter games are each held every four years.
• Until 1992, they were both held in the same year. Since then, the summer games are held during the first year of an Olympiad, the winter games during the third year.
• The original Olympic Games were first recorded in 776 BC in Olympia, Greece, and were 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

• The IOC was founded in 1894 on 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.

The 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics

• The 2008 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XXIX Olympiad, are an international multi-sport event, that will be held in Beijing, People’s Republic of China from August 8 to August 24, 2008, and followed by the 2008 Summer Paralympics from September 6 to September 17.
• 10,500 athletes are expected to compete in 302 events in 28 sports, just one event more than was on the schedule of the Athens games of 2004.
• The Olympic games were awarded to Beijing after an exhaustive ballot of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) on July 13, 2001.
• The official logo of the games, titled “Dancing Beijing,” features a stylized calligraphic character jīng (京, meaning capital), referencing the host city.
• The mascots of Beijing 2008 are the five Fuwa, each representing both a color of the Olympic rings and a symbol of Chinese culture.
• The Olympic slogan, One World, One Dream, calls upon the world to unite in the Olympic spirit. Several new National Olympic Committees (NOCs) have also been recognized by the IOC.
• The Chinese government has promoted the games to highlight China’s emergence on the world stage. A total of 37 venues will be used to host the events including 12 newly constructed venues. Earlier in 2007, former IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch had said that he believes that the Beijing games will be “the best in Olympic history“.
• The centerpiece of the 2008 Summer Olympics will be the Beijing National Stadium, nicknamed the “Bird nest” because of its nest-like skeletal structure.
• The opening ceremony of the Olympics in Beijing will be held in the Beijing National Stadium, and begin at 8:08:08pm CST (12:08:08 UTC) Indian Standard Time 5:38:08pm (on 8 August 2008. It has been announced that Canada’s Celine Dion and Taiwan’s Jay Chou would perform during the opening ceremony.
• About 205 National Olympic Committees (NOCs) will participate in 2008.
• United States Olympic Committee, expects that the United States will bring about 600 competitors to the games, their largest Olympic team.
• Other delegations will be much smaller; Afghanistan, for example, will be represented by just four competitors.

Top