| Tuesday, March 17, 2009 |
| 1968 |
The Mexico City Olympics are best known for the Black Power protests of the U.S. runners Tommie Smith and John Carlos. The year 1968 was a highly politicized one. China was in the throes of the Cultural Revolution, Czechoslovakia’s burst of freedom was crushed by Soviet troops, the government of France was almost overthrown by the student-led demonstrations, and civil rights and anti-war demonstrations were spreading across the United States. Mexico was by no means immune to such revolutionary activity. As the Olympics approached, 300,000 Mexican students and teachers were on strike.
Ten days before the Olympics were scheduled to begin, government troops opened fire on several thousand unarmed students holding a rally in the Plaza de las Tres Culturas. Hundreds of young people were killed. The I.O.C. refused to take a stand on this, declaring that the incident was "an internal affair" which was "under control." Yet exactly two weeks later, when two black men made a silent, nonviolent protest, the I.O.C. was up in arms, condemning Smith and Carlos for their shocking, disrespectful behavior. Two other controversies of 1968, the introduction of sex tests for women athletes (first used at the Winter Games in Grenoble) and the altitude of Mexico City (7347 feet). The rarefied air led to numerous world records in races of short distances, but was disastrous to competitors engaged in endurance events, except those who had trained at high altitudes. |
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| Wednesday, March 4, 2009 |
| Lightning Bolt the star of Olympic Athletics show |
| Usain Bolt of Jamaica was the shining star of 10 days of Athletics competition at the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games that produced five world records and 16 Olympic records. Bolt arrived at the Games having lowered the 100m world record to 9.72 in May. He did not disappoint, winning both the 100m and 200m in astonishing world record runs of 9.69 and 19.30. Shelly-Ann Fraser led home a Jamaican clean sweep in the Women's 100m with her compatriots Kerron Stewart and Sherone Simpson sharing silver. Then Veronica Campbell-Brown of Jamaica retained the 200m gold she had won at the Athens 2004 Olympic Games. Jamaica's near-total domination of the sprints was underlined in the Men's 4 x 100m Relay. The team, featuring Bolt on the third leg and former world-record holder Asafa Powell on the anchor, raced home with a new world record of 37.10. The Jamaican Women's 4 x 100m Relay team, however, failed to complete the final after a mix-up between Simpson and Stewart on the second handover led to Stewart running beyond the changeover zone. |
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| Tuesday, February 17, 2009 |
| 1992 |
Independent teams from Estonia and Latvia made their first appearance since 1936, and Lithuania fielded its first team since 1928. The remaining ex-Soviet republics competed in the Barcelona Games as the Unified Team, although individual winners were honored by the raising of the flag of their own republic. Even Albania, freed from Stalinist dictatorship, participated for the first time since 1972. Cuba, North Korea, and Ethiopia also ended their boycott streaks at two. In all the 1992 Opening Ceremony was a festive occasion.
The only controversy was what to do about Yugoslavia, which was the subject of United Nations sanctions because of its military aggression against Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. At the last minute, it was decided that Yugoslavia would be banned on team sports, but that individual Yugoslav athletes could compete as "independent Olympic participants." The star of the Games was the city of Barcelona itself, with its beautiful architecture and its cosmopolitan populace. The collective mood of the 1992 Olympics was one of guarded optimism that the Olympic movement had successfully survived a difficult two decades of political turmoil. |
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| Wednesday, January 21, 2009 |
| Modern Games |
From the 241 participants representing 14 nations in 1896, the Games have grown to 10,500 competitors from 204 countries at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. The scope and scale of the Winter Olympics is much smaller. For example, Turin, Italy hosted 2,508 athletes from 80 countries competing in 84 events during the 2006 Winter Olympics.As participation in the Olympics has grown, so has its profile in the international media. At the Sydney Games in 2000, an estimated 3.7 billion viewers watched the games on television, and the official website of the Sydney Olympics generated over 11.3 billion hits. The number of participating countries is noticeably higher than the 193 countries that currently belong to the United Nations. The International Olympic Committee allows nations to compete that do not meet the strict requirements for political sovereignty that other international organizations demand. As a result, colonies and dependencies are permitted to host their own Olympic teams and athletes even if such competitors also hold citizenship in another member nation. Examples of this include territories such as Puerto Rico, Bermuda, and Hong Kong; all of which compete as separate nations despite being legally a part of another country. |
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| Friday, January 9, 2009 |
| Winter Games |
While figure skating had been an Olympic event at both the London Games and the Antwerp Games, and ice hockey had also been held at the Antwerp Games, the IOC wanted equity between the winter and summer sports. At the 1921 Congress in Lausanne, the IOC decided to hold a winter version of the Olympic games.
The first Winter Olympics were held in 1924 in Chamonix, France.
The IOC made the Winter Games a permanent fixture in the Olympic Movement in 1925 and mandated that they be celebrated every 4 years on the same year as their Summer counterpart. This tradition held until the 1992 Games in Albertville, France. Beginning with the 1994 Games the Olympic games have alternated on different 4–year cycles. Hence the most recent Winter Games were held in 2006, while 2008 marked the latest celebration of the Summer Games. |
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| Monday, December 22, 2008 |
| Changes and Adaptations |
After the initial success of the 1896 Games, the Olympics struggled. The celebrations in Paris (in 1900) and St. Louis (in 1904) were overshadowed by the World's Fair exhibitions, which were held at the same times and locations. The St. Louis Games, for example, hosted 650 athletes, but 580 of these athletes were from the United States. The homogenous nature of these Games was a low point for the Olympic Movement.
The Games rebounded when the 1906 Intercalated Games (so–called because they were the second Games held within the third Olympiad) were held in Athens. The Intercalated Games are not officially recognized as an Olympic Games, and no later Intercalated Games have been held. These Games attracted a broad international field of participants, and generated great public interest. This marked the beginning of a rise in both the popularity and the size of the Games. |
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| Wednesday, December 10, 2008 |
| Forerunners |
Many years after Zappas revived the Olympic Games in Greece. The French historian Baron Pierre de Coubertin, was searching for a reason for the French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871). He theorized that the French soldiers had not received proper physical education. In 1890 he attended the Olympian Games of the Wenlock Olympian Society, and decided that a large-scale revival of the Olympic Games was achievable. To date attempts to revive a modern version of the Olympic games had met with various amounts of success at the local (one or at most two participating nations) level. Coubertin built on the ideas of Brookes and the foundations of Zappas. His aim was to internationalize the Olympic Games (one of Brookes' ideas). He presented these ideas at the Olympic Congress at the Sorbonne University in Paris, France, held from June 16 to June 23, 1894. On the last day of the congress, it was decided that the first multinational Olympic Games would take place in 1896 in Athens. To organize the Games, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) was established, with the Greek writer Demetrius Vikelas as its first president. The IOC's modern Olympic Movement was established, and a Games were planned for 1896, to be hosted in the country of their origin; Greece. |
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