Posts Tagged Olympic Games

Random thoughts as the 2012 London Olympic Games draws to a close:

• I am still disappointed that there was no observation for the slain 1972 Munich Olympic athletes and coaches in the opening ceremony. The Olympics have had moments of silence during the opening ceremony before for deceased athletes in the past. While the International Olympic Committee (IOC) equates this slaying to “politics” and that is something the IOC does not mix itself up in. However, by not including the 11 killed Olympians in the ceremony, did they not already show a political side and therefore contradicting themselves?! Shameful. I am hardly the only one who feels the IOC is wrong on this subject. [Here is a very personal viewpoint from a son of one of the victims.] The opening ceremony costed approximately $42 million. Who knows they could have saved a couple of thousand by having one minute of long overdue silence for the innocent men…
• A big chest bump to the women representing the U.S.A Team. It was the first time in history that women athletes outnumbered men, 269 women to 261 men.
• How do athletes not tip over in Rowing races?! The narrow boats coupled with the rowers’ quick movement seem to be the perfect combination for capsizing. There is probably a scientific explanation for it but it just reiterates the fact that I never much liked science or small and narrow boats. The boats themselves also remind me of an old exercise machine my parents had in the basement, the sport and the exercise machine look somewhat like a medieval torture device.
• Cycling in the rain?! I don’t even bike in the sun so major props to those who managed not to wipe out during the women’s cycling event.
• Water polo gives me a great deal of water anxiety. As I was watching the first match between the US and Montenegro, I experienced flashbacks of sitting in a packed movie theater watching Titanic and feeling like the walls were closing in. I reigned myself in before I could start screaming “Watch out for the iceberg you idiots!”
• The downfall of having basic cable right now is the fact that I missed all the Ping-Pong action and, subsequently, the opportunity to insert Forrest Gump quotes.  “For some reason, ping-pong came very natural to me. . . . so I started playing it all the time. I played ping-pong even when I didn’t have anyone to play ping-pong with. . . . Even Lieutenant Dan would come and watch me play. I played ping-pong so much, I even played it in my sleep.”
• River kayaking is called “Canoeing.” Ummm being from the “Land of 10,000 Lakes,” that is NOT canoeing…
• The sport of Racewalking reminds me of mall walkers, except for the lack of fanny-pack action.

Overall, I thought the London Games were pretty good. What did you guys think? Any memorable/disappointing moments for you?

Onto the 2014 Sochi Winter Games!

1. Figure skating was initially part of the Summer Olympics. Before the advent of the Winter Olympics in 1924, men’s, women’s and pairs figure skating events were part of the programs for the 1908 and 1920 Summer Olympics. Ice hockey also made its Olympic debut at the 1920 Summer Games.

Anna Hubler and Heinrich Burger, who captured the pairs figure skating competition at the 1908 Summer Olympics. (The Fourth Olympiad London 1908 Official Report)

2. Olympic champions last received solid gold medals in 1912. Olympic runners-up can take some consolation in the fact that there isn’t much difference between their silver medals and the gold medals awarded to winners. Medals made with pure gold were last awarded in 1912, and winners today receive medals that are 93 percent silver and 6 percent copper, with just 6 grams of gold. (Champions in the first modern Olympics in 1896 received silver, not gold, medals. The traditional awarding of gold, silver and bronze medals to the top three finishers began in 1904.)

3. The Summer Games used to span months, starting in the spring and ending in the fall. Think the 17 days scheduled for the 2012 Summer Games is too long? It’s nothing compared to the first Summer Olympics staged in London in 1908, which spanned 188 days, or more than half of the year. Although the formal opening ceremonies were not until July 13, the 1908 Games opened on April 27 with the racquets competition and ended October 31 with the field hockey final. The 1900 Paris Games spanned more than five months, and the 1904 St. Louis Games and the 1920 Antwerp Games also lasted nearly as long.

4. The first Olympian to fail a drug test was busted for drinking beer. Olympic drug testing debuted in 1968, and Swedish pentathlete Hans-Gunnar Liljenwall was first to test positive for a banned substance. His drug? Two beers he said he downed to “calm his nerves” before the pistol shoot. The disqualified Liljenwall and his teammates were forced to return their bronze medals. (Fellow pentathlete Hans-Jurgen Todt could have used something to calm down as well. The West German attacked his horse after it balked three times at jumping obstacles.)

The Philippines and Mexico compete in an outdoor basketball game during the 1936 Berlin Olympics. A deluge would muddy the gold medal game between the United States and Canada. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

5. The 1936 basketball final was a literal quagmire. When basketball officially debuted at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, games were played on outdoor tennis courts made of clay and sand. During the gold medal game between the United States and Canada, a second-half deluge turned the court into a muddy mess that would have stymied even the Dream Team. With dribbling in the mire an impossible task, the waterlogged Americans spent most of the half simply playing catch with the slippery ball to protect their lead. Final score: United States 19, Canada 8.

6. For nearly 40 years, artists also competed for gold medals. French Baron Pierre de Coubertin, founding father of the modern Olympic Games, sought to incorporate art and culture into the Olympic movement. So beginning with the 1912 Stockholm Games, gold, silver and bronze medals were awarded in painting, sculpture, architecture, literature and music. Works entered in the juried competitions were required to be original pieces inspired by sports. In perhaps a not-so-strange coincidence, Coubertin himself won the first gold medal for literature. Following the 1948 London Games, artists were deemed to be professionals who violated the amateur ideals of the Olympics, and the present-day Cultural Olympiad replaced the medal competitions.

7. A gymnast with a wooden leg won six medals, including three gold, in the 1904 Olympics. If South African runner Oscar Pistorius, a double amputee nicknamed the “Blade Runner,” wins the 400 meters this year, he won’t be the first man with prosthetic legs to capture Olympic gold. In the 1904 St. Louis Games, hometown boy George Eyser, who lost his left leg as a youth after it was run over by a train, won gold in the parallel bar, long horse and rope climbing events. He also won silver in the side horse and all-around competitions and bronze on the horizontal bar.

George Eyser (center), the gymnast with a wooden leg who won six gold medals in 1904.

8. America’s first female Olympic champion had no idea she was even competing in the Summer Games. While studying art under Edgar Degas and Auguste Rodin in Paris in 1900, 22-year-old American Margaret Abbott saw an advertisement for a golf tournament and decided to enter. After shooting a 47 on the nine-hole course, she won the tourney and took home a porcelain bowl. Unbeknownst to Abbott, the tournament she had entered was part of the poorly organized Paris Games, and she had just become the first American woman to win an Olympic event.

9. The equestrian events at the 1956 Melbourne Games were held on the other side of the world. While most of the athletes traveled down under for the 1956 Summer Games, the horses and riders in the equestrian events did not. Due to Australia’s strict quarantine rules, the equestrian competitions were moved to Stockholm, Sweden—nearly 9,700 miles away—and held five months before the rest of the XVI Olympiad.

10. When the Americans refused to dip their flag to King Edward VII in 1908, it started a tradition. Upset that the U.S. flag was missing from those fluttering above the Olympic stadium during the opening ceremonies of the 1908 London Games, American flag bearer Ralph Rose refused to follow protocol and dip the Stars and Stripes as he passed the royal box. Although the story that Rose or fellow shot putter Martin Sheridan said, “This flag dips for no earthly king” is likely apocryphal, the snub set off a royal row. “From the very first day,” Coubertin wrote in his memoirs, “King Edward had taken exception to the American athletes because of their behavior and their barbaric shouts that resounded through the stadium.” American flag bearers dipped their banners to national leaders on several occasions after 1908, but it hasn’t happened since 1932—not even for U.S. President Ronald Reagan during the 1984 Los Angeles Games.

By Christopher Klein, July 27, 1912 via History.com

Dr. Samuel "Sammy" Lee with his Olympic medals at age 91.

At the 1948 London Olympic Games, Samuel Lee became the first Asian-American to win an Olypmpic gold medal for the United States. Additionally, he was the first male diver to win back-to-back gold medals in platform diving. When asked about his winning dive he stated:

Walking up the 10-m platform, I thought to myself, I’ve waited 16 years for this moment. Am I going to blow it? So I prayed to God that I was most deserving of winning the Games. And in case he was busy, I also prayed to Buddha and Confucius.

Source

Here is a timeline for some of the major events in modern Olympic years:

1896

• Athens hosts the first modern Olympics, with 14 countries participating. James Brendan Connolly, a triple jumper from Boston, becomes the first Olympic champion in more than 1,500 years.

1900

• Women make their first appearance in Olympic competition, when a handful of female athletes compete in lawn tennis and golf at the Paris Games.

Women competed for the first time at the 1900 Olympics in Paris, although the International Olympic Committee did not officially approve of their inclusion. Women's events included sailing, tennis, and golf.

1904

• The gold medal is introduced. Previous top winners in the modern Games took home a silver medal and an olive wreath, because Greece’s Crown Prince Constantine didn’t want it to seem as if the athletes were being paid.

1908

• The Games are moved from Rome to London after the 1906 eruption of Mt. Vesuvius. The London Olympics are credited with restoring much-needed credibility to the Games.

1911

• The Winter Games are established, but because of World War I they do not take place until 1924, in Chamonix, France.

1913

• American Jim Thorpe, who dominated the 1912 games and took the gold in decathlon and pentathlon, is stripped of his medals when officials learn he had played professional baseball, going against the IOC rules that athletes should not be paid. His medals are restored posthumously in 1982.

1916

• The Summer Games in Berlin are cancelled due to World War I.

1928

• The Olympic flame returns at the Amsterdam Summer Games. The flame was lit during ancient Games to represent the story of when Prometheus stole Zeus’ fire.

1936

• In a blow to Adolf Hitler’s plan to have the Berlin Olympics prove Aryan superiority, black U.S. track and field star Jesse Owens becomes the first Olympian to win four gold medals.

Although the Olympic flame was first instituted at the 1928 Olympics in Amsterdam, the 1936 games in Nazi Germany marked the debut of the torch relay. Here, the final relay runner approaches the Olympic flame at the swastika-festooned Lustgarten in Berlin.

1940

• Summer and Winter Games scheduled to take place in Japan are switched to Germany and Finland after Japan invades China, then cancelled altogether due to the start of World War II.

1944

• Summer Games in England and Winter Games in Italy are cancelled due to World War II.

1948

• The IOC bans both Germany and Japan from competing as punishment for their actions during the war. They return to the Games in 1952.

1964

• South Africa is banned from the Olympics because of apartheid, and is not welcomed back until the segregationist system is abolished in 1992. Similarly, Rhodesia was banned due to its racist practices in 1972; it returns in 1980 as the new nation of Zimbabwe.

1968

• Drug testing and gender verification testing make their debut at the Mexico City Olympics. A Swedish pentathelete is disqualified for having consumed too much alcohol.

1972

• Palestinian terrorists attack Israelis at the Munich Games. Following a 21-hour standoff, 11 Israel athletes and coaches, five terrorists and one police officer are dead. Meanwhile, U.S. swimmer Mark Spitz wins a record seven gold medals. Spitz, a Jew, leaves before the closing ceremony.

The Olympic flag hangs at half-mast at a memorial ceremony during the 1972 games in Munich, Germany.

1976

• Nadia Comaneci, a 14-year-old Romanian, scores the first perfect 10 in Olympic gymnastics, at the Games in Montreal. She receives the top score seven times, earning three gold medals.

1980

• The United States boycotts the Moscow Olympics, in protest of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Several other nations join in. It’s the second major boycott of the Olympics; in 1976, 22 African nations stayed home because New Zealand’s national rugby team had competed in South Africa.

1984

• The Soviet Union boycotts the Los Angeles Olympics in retaliation for America’s 1980 boycott.

1992

• In the first year professionals are allowed to compete in men’s basketball, the U.S. “Dream Team,” including Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan and Larry Bird, wins the gold in Barcelona.

1996

• A bomb left in a backpack at Centennial Olympic Park explodes during the Atlanta Games, killing one woman and injuring 111 people. Accused serial bomber Eric Rudolph, who is also a suspect in bombings at abortion clinics and a gay nightclub, is charged in the case.

The centennial 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia, are remembered for, among other things, their extravagance (they cost nearly $1.7 billion to stage) and for the bombing in Centennial Olympic Park that killed one person and injured dozens. Here, Native Americans gather at a memorial in the park for the victims.

2004

• The Games return to their birthplace, Athens, after 108 years. The Panathenian stadium is reused for events including archery and the finish of the Marathon. The Zappeion, the first indoor Olympic arena, was utilized as the Olympic Press Centre. Participation records were broken, with 201 nations and 10,625 athletes taking part in 301 different events. The U.S., Russia and China lead the medal count.

Timeline via CBS

Photos via National Geographic

“I declare open the Games of London, celebrating the 30^th Olympiad of the modern era.” If you watched the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympic London Games you probably heard Queen Elizabeth utter those words.  If you, like me, are unsure what exactly an “Olympiad” is, look no farther.

After a quick Google search and a timely distraction by “Bored Queen” internet memes, I found the answer. Apparently an Olympiad is a set of four consecutive years in which the Olympic Games are counted by. So the 2008 Beijing Olympics would have been the 29^th Olympiad. The starting date in order to calculate the dates is 1896, when the first modern Olympiad took place.

Even the 6^th (1919), 12^th (1940) and 13^th (1944) Olympiads are counted even though the Olympic Games were cancelled due to World War I and World War II.

Also of note, the Olympiad is only used as a counter for the Summer Olympics, not the Winter Olympics. The Winter Olympics, on the other hand, counts only the Games. For example, the 1940 and 1944 Winter Games were cancelled, like the Summer Games, because of the war. However, unlike the Summer Games, the 1940 and 1944 Winter Games are not counted. The 1936 Games were the 4^th Olympic Winter Games and the 1948 Games were the 5^th Olympic Winter Games.

[Zim’s Note: Since I already mentioned it, you might have heard about Queen Elizabeth receiving some flack because she appeared bored during the opening ceremony. There are now “Bored Queen” memes floating around the internet. Below are two of my favorites…]

*If the meme creator did a quick Google search they would have seen that they spelled Philip wrong...but it's still funny!

Internet Meme Source

After serving in the U.S. Marines during World War I, Charley Paddock competed in the 1920 Olympics as part of the track and field team. While there, the Gainesville, Texas, native turned heads with his unusual finishing style, leaping toward the finish line ahead of his competition. The style worked. Paddock took home gold in the 100 meters and the 4×100 relay and silver in the 200 meters.

Source: Collective History 

The modern Olympic Games have only been cancelled three times. They were cancelled in 1916, 1940 and 1944 due to World War I and World War II.

[Zim's Note: With the 2012 Summer Olympic Games beginning tomorrow in London, I decided to do a quick search of Olympic sports that are no more. Luck would have it that I was not the only one thinking about these by-gone activities. Today, National Geographic published a slide show of "6 Lost Olympic Sports." In my opinion, there are a few of these that should still be in the Olympic Games...]

[Zim's Second Note: ...but not the pigeon one...]

Solo Synchronized Swimming

Photograph by Richard Mackson, Sports Illustrated/Getty Images

The seemingly oxymoronic sport of solo synchronized swimming is just one of a gaggle of lost, generally unlamented activities you won’t see at the 2012 Olympics in London. Practiced  above by U.S. Olympian Kristen Babb Sprague in Barcelona in 1992—solo  synchronized swimming’s third and last Olympic year—the discipline isn’t as odd as it sounds. Technically speaking, it’s the music, not other athletes, that the swimmers are supposed to be in sync with.

While the sport—still practiced competitively in other venues—does require tremendous flexibility and stamina, many viewed it as something of a joke.

“It’s just sort of making pretty figures in the water,” said Bill Mallon, a past president of the International Society of Olympic Historians. “Like floor exercises while you’re floating—jumping, toes pointed, spins, smiling, waving your arms.”

Tug-of-War

Photograph from Topical Press Agency/Getty Images

Unlike many discontinued Olympic events, tug-of-war was a crowd favorite. “It’s actually a great sport to watch,” said Mallon, the historian.

A staple of the Summer Olympics from 1900 to 1920, the sport was forced into retirement when the International Olympic Committee decreed that each Olympic sport needed to have a global governing body, which tug-of-war lacked.

Despite the sport’s current connotations of school yards and playgrounds, turn-of-the-century tug-of-war could be surprisingly high-stakes.

At  the 1908 Olympic Games in London, for example, the U.S. team protested an upset by the home team, crying foul over the Brits’ heavy, spiked, and apparently illegal boots. The U.K. team (pictured against Ireland), though—most of them police  officers—explained that they simply hadn’t changed out of their work boots.

Jeu de Paume

Photograph from Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis

Jeu de paume (pictured in an undated illustration) ricocheted into the 1908 London Olympics and hasn’t bounced back since, perhaps for lack of audience. ”It’s a very elitist sport,” Mallon said. “There are only about 20 courts left in the world right now,” most of them in France.

Dating back to the Middle Ages, the “palm game” is the original form of tennis, though it more closely resembles racquetball, in that walls are very much in play.

Jeu de paume parts ways with modern tennis too in its emphasis on finesse over force.

“The game is not so much [about] power as it is about placement and spins,” Mallon said.

Rope Climbing

Images from Popperfoto/Getty Images

Rope climbing hung on as part of the Summer Olympics’ gymnastics program from 1896 and 1932, with Greece’s Georgios Aliprantis (pictured) taking the gold in 1906 in Athens.

In that time, though, the sport made only four Olympic appearances, mainly because it was popular only in the U.S. Perhaps not surprisingly, rope climbing was more likely to make the cut when the games were held in the states.

“It’s important that the sports included be popular around the world, but when [the Olympics] are in America … well, Americans have a little more say,” Mallon said.

At its introduction at the first modern Olympic Games in 1896, rope climbers were judged on form, speed, and—in cases where competitors failed to reach the top of the 42-foot (13-mater) rope—height. In 1904  and 1932, medals were awarded based solely on speed. Judges in 1924 again factored in style, which backfired slightly when 22 competitors achieved perfect scores.

Hot-Air Ballooning

Image from Popperfoto/Getty Images

The  1900 Paris games were folded into a massive world’s fair, resulting in a flood of demonstration sports that wouldn’t have been included otherwise (and never would be again). Case in point: hot-air ballooning (pictured). In fact, there were so many activities, Mallon said, that it was difficult to tell which sports were Olympic.

Balloon pilots at the Paris Olympics were judged on distance traveled, time in the air, and ability to land at predetermined coordinates. France swept the event.

The sport was removed from the Olympic roster, not due to ridiculousness but because of a ban on motorized sports. And though the ban’s recently been removed from the Olympic Charter, Mallon said he doesn’t expect that ballooning will make a comeback.

Live Pigeon Shooting

Photograph from Popperfoto/Getty Images

The  inclusion of live pigeon shooting in the 1900 Paris games—like ballooning, a world’s fair one-off—marks the only time in the Olympic history that animals have been killed on purpose.

The rules of the game were straightforward: Shoot down as many birds as possible in the allotted time, with two misses resulting in elimination. The event—in which Australia’s Donald MacIntosh (pictured) took the  bronze—was predictably messy, which may have contributed to pigeon shooting’s brief Olympic life span.

[Personally, I would watch the tug-of-war if it were in the Olympics again. Here is a video of the tug-of-war meet between Sweden and Great Britain during the 1912 Stockholm Games.]

National Geographic