The Olympics

By IsaRose Dooley, Molly Mullane and Ava Kearny

Why we chose the olympics
We chose the olympics not because of a personal connection but because the
event is so large it’s easy to cover lots of information.
Unfortunately this mean we didn’t have any funny anecdotes to tie with the
Olympics so we tried to just include as much direct information as we can.
Hopefully you’ll remember some interesting facts that might come in handy
for a random conversation or two!
What are the olympics about?
● The Olympic Games are a worldwide sports event, that are held
every four years.

● The goal of the event is to inspire people, through sport, and

contribute to world peace.

● Summer Games and Winter Games are held separately.

● In the event there is a total of 28 competitive sports in which athletes

spend 4 - 8 years training in order to partake in them.
How the Olympics came to be
While the modern day Olympics started in the 19th century in Athens, the games
date back to 776 B.C. and were held until 393 A.D. The Games were held every
four years, as they are now, in Olympia (link to location) located in the western
Peloponnese peninsula, in honor of the God Zeus.

The games were started when a cook named Coroebus (Koroibos) won an event. It
was a 192-meter running race called the stade (the origin of the modern
“stadium”) and was the only performance in the event, he then became the first
Olympic champion.

According to Greek mythology, Hercules founded the Games, which by the end of
the 6th century B.C had become the most famous of all Greek sporting festivals.
The Five Rings

The rings are five interlocking rings, coloured blue, yellow, black, green and red on a white
background, and are known as the Olympic rings.
The symbol was originally created in 1913 by Pierre de Coubertin (Pierre of Coubertin). He
intended the rings to represent the five continents: Europe, Asia, Africa, America, and
Oceania.
According to Coubertin, the colours of the rings, together with the white of the background,
encompassed every competing nation's flag at the time.
The blue and yellow of Sweden, the blue and white of Greece, the tricolour flags of France,
United Kingdom, the United States, Germany, Belgium, Italy and Hungary, and the yellow
and red of Spain are included. Also, the innovative flags of Brazil and Australia, and those of
ancient Japan and modern China.
The Paralympics
The paralympics are a separate division of the Olympics created for people with disabilities, it was
officially created in 1976, but originated many years before this date.

In 1948, Sir Ludwig Guttmann held a sports competition involving World War II veterans with a spinal
cord-related injury in Stoke Mandeville, England on the request of the British government. This sparked
the initial idea for the paralympics.

In 1952, competitors from Holland joined the Games and the International Stoke Mandeville Games were
founded. The international movement, now known as the Paralympic Movement, officially began in
Rome, Italy, 1960.

In Toronto, 1976, other disability groups were added and the first Paralympic Winter Games took place in
Sweden. The first winner of the paralympics was Joan Horan who was from Ireland and won 2 gold
medals. Since the Summer Games of 1988 in Korea and the Winter Games in France, 1992, the Games
have also taken part in the same cities and venues as the Olympics due to an agreement between the IPC
(International Paralympic Committee) and IOC (International Olympic Committee).
What are the most prominent sports in the Olympics?

Throughout the Winter and Summer Olympics there are currently a total of 63 sports included in
the games. Listed below are some of the most popular or well known sports in the event;
1. Gymnastics
2. Swimming
3. Football
4. Rugby
5. Weightlifting
6. Tennis

In the first ever modern day Olympics that were held on April 6th 1896 there were only 10 sports
and were only open for men to participate in. The Olympics held in 1900, were the first games ever
held to allow women to participate, with 997 athletes, 22 of those being women, they competed in
the following five sports;
 1. Tennis
2. Sailing
3. Croquet
4. Equestrianism
5. Golf

The first woman to win an olympic medal was Hélène de Pourtalès.

She was from Switzerland and on May 22nd 1900, as a member of the winning team
in the first 1 to 2 ton sailing event, she became the first woman to earn an Olympic
medal.

The organisers divided up the event into the Winter Games and the Summer Games,
in each year, each having sports unique to themselves.

The weather affects certain sports as they need to take place outside in warm or cold
weather specifically. Eg. Skiing and Ice Skating
Details on specific sports in
the Summer Games
Gymnastics
The ancient greeks believed gymnastics to be the perfect symmetry between mind and body.
modern gymnastics evolved at the end of the 19th century. In the 1800s gymnastics mainly
consisted of of choreography. It grew in popularity slowly until the first experimental
competitions appeared in eastern Europe in the 1930s, when its newfound complexity began
to draw a wider audience.

In the olympics there are two types of gymnastics; artistic and rhythmic. Artistic gymnastics
focuses on having a routine look perfect rather than what moves the competitor performs.
Rhythmic gymnastics aims to have a group of gymnasts perform a routine in sync spacing out
over different aspects of gymnastics like the balance board, trampoline and floorwork.

In the Olympic gymnastic men and women are in separate groups for the performances given
and have different aspects each, although some routines are the same. Gymnastics was
introduced to the Olympic games in 1896 and were introduced for men in 1903.
Swimming
Swimming was introduced to the Olympics in 1896 and included the swimming styles;
freestyle, crawl and breaststroke. In 1904 the backstroke was added to the list and in
1956 the butterfly stroke was also added.

Again in swimming there is a men’s division and a women’s division. They consist of the
same competitions but aren’t held together. Women’s swimming was first introduced in
1912 and since then it has been part of every edition of the games.

At the first swimming Olympics event held in 1896, Hungarian swimmer Alfréd Hajós
earned gold medals in the 100-meter and the 1200-meter freestyle events.

Fanny Durack, the Irish-Australian, won the first women's Olympic swimming medal on
12th of July 1912.
Football

Football is one of the world’s most popular sports originating from a rather gruesome medieval
origins involving a pigs bladder. The game eventually became so violent in England that the King
of the time banned it in the 16th century.

Football was first introduced to the Olympics in the Games of the II Olympiad, Paris 1900. It has
been on the programme of each edition of the Games ever since, with the exception of Los
Angeles 1932.

Europe dominated the competition until after 1992 in Barcelona, where Spain became the last
European team to win a gold medal. Since the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta, African and
South American teams have won all the gold medals.

In 1996, women’s football was introduced into the Olympic programme. It is held separately to
the men’s division but consists of the same game rules.
Rugby
The story of rugby is that in 1823, during a football match, a student at Rugby School in Great
Britain took the ball in his hands and ran over the goal line. That day, William Webb Ellis
officially invented rugby. This sport has, in reality, much older origins, as similar games had
already been practised in the Middle Ages in many European countries.
Rugby unlike other sports has not been on the Olympic programme continuously. It’s first
appearance at the Olympic Games in Paris in 1900, again in 1908, 1920 and 1924 and only
recently returned to the programme in the Rio games 2016 under the name “Rugby 7’s”.
However the game is now listed under the name of just “Rugby” on the official Olympic games
list on it’s website.
The first team to win the Rugby tournament in the Olympics was the French team on home
soil. The team was captained by Frantz Reichel, who happened to be one of de Coubertin's
(the creator of the Olympic rings symbol) friends.
There is both a men’s and women’s division in rugby as well.
Weightlifting

As a way to measure strength and power, weightlifting was practised both by ancient Egyptian
and Greek societies. It developed as an international sport primarily in the 19th century and is
one of the 10 sports to have featured at the first Olympics in the 1896 Athens Games.

Although men’s weightlifting has always been on the programme of the Olympic Games, bar
the 1900, 1908 and 1912 games, women started to participate at the 2000 Games in Sydney.

At the beginning of the 20th century, Austria, Germany and France were the most successful
nations in the weightlifting league of the Olympics.

However in the 1950s, the Soviet Union’s weightlifters rose to top of the leaderboards and
stayed there until the 1990s when China, Turkey, Greece and Iran were launched into the lead.
In the women’s field, China has been at the top of the charts since the female weightlifting
games were introduced.
Tennis

The earliest recognisable variable of tennis was "jeu de paume", played in 11th century
France. The game was played in a monastery courtyard, it used the walls and sloping roofs as
part of the court and the palm of the hand to hit the ball.

In the 19th century, the popularity of tennis had overtaken croquet in England. For this reason,
the All England Croquet Club took in the sport and repurposed croquet lawns to be used for
tennis. From the massive surge in popularity in England the sport grew to be another one of
the biggest sports in the world.

Tennis made its first appearance in the Olympics in 1896 - 1924 but did not return to the
programme until 1988 as a medal sport again.

Tennis has a men’s, women’s and a mixed league and was one of the original five sports that
women were allowed to play when women were allowed to participate in the Olympics.
Details on specific sports in
the Winter Games
Ski Jumping
The origin of ski jumping begins in Norway with Ole Rye who jumped 9.5m in 1808.
Although Sondre Norheim is widely considered the creator of modern ski jumping as in 1866
he won what has been described as the world’s first ski jumping competition with prizes, held
at Ofte, Høydalsmo, Norway.
After WWI, Thulin Thams and Sigmund Ruud developed a new jumping style known as the
Kongsberger Technique. This involved jumping with the upper body bent at the hips, a wide
forward lean, arms extended at the front and skis parallel to each other. Using this technique
Sepp Bradl of Austria became the first to jump more than 100 metres when he jumped 101
metres in 1936.
Ski jumping has been part of the Olympic Winter Games since the first Games in Chamonix
Mont-Blanc in 1924. The normal hill event was included on the Olympic programme for the
1964 Innsbruck Games. From 1988, the team event was added as a third competition.
Figure Skating

Figure skating originated from what you might guess to be ice skating, which at the time of
invention was just a practical way to get around on ice to the elegant mix or art and sport it is
today. The Dutch were arguably the first people to have discovered ice skating as far back as
the 13th century.

Two Americans called Edward Bushnell of Philadelphia created major developments in the
history of the sport. In 1850, they revolutionised skating when the steel-bladed skates were
introduced, allowing complex manoeuvres and turns. Jackson Haines, a ballet master living in
Vienna in the 1860s, added elements of ballet and dance to give the sport its grace.

Figure skating was introduced to the Olympic programme in 1908 with its next appearance
being in 1920 and onward. Women were allowed to compete in the Olympic figure skating
contest in 1924 and in 1976 the men’s and women’s division were conjoined.
Ice Hockey

Ice hockey originated in Canada in the early 19th century, based on several similar sports played
in Europe. The word “hockey” comes from the old French word “hocquet”, meaning “stick”.
Around 1860, a puck was substituted for a ball, and in 1879 two McGill University students,
Robertson and Smith, devised the first rules.

Ice hockey was first on the Olympic programme in the 1920 Antwerp Summer Games. Six-a-side
men’s ice hockey has been on the programme of every edition of the Winter Games since 1924
in Chamonix. Women’s ice hockey was accepted as an Olympic sport in 1992, and made its
official debut in 1998 in Nagano.

Unsurprisingly, Canada dominated the first tournaments. However, in 1956, and until its fall,
the Soviet Union took over and became the number one team. It was interrupted only by the
USA’s victories in 1960 in Squaw Valley and in 1980 in Lake Placid.
Bobsleigh

The sport of bobsleigh began in the late 19th century when the Swiss attached two skeleton
sleds (a kind of sled) together and added a steering mechanism to make a toboggan. A chassis
(a kind of wheel attachment) was added to give protection to wealthy tourists. The world's
first bobsleigh club was founded in St Moritz, Switzerland in 1897.
However, they were soon replaced by steel sleds that came to be known as bobsleighs
because of the way crews bobbed back and forth to increase their speed at the start of a race.
Today, the world's top teams train year-round and compete mostly on artificial ice tracks in
sleek high-tech sleds made of fibreglass and steel.

In 1924, the first four-man race took place at the first ever Olympic Winter Games in
Chamonix. A two-man event was added at the 1932 Lake Placid Games that has remained on
the official Olympic programme to the present day. The first women's bobsleigh event, the
two-woman bobsled, was held in 2002.
Thank you for listening to this
presentation on the Olympics.
Bibliography
1. Google
2. Olympics Website
3. Tokyo 2020
4. Women and the Winter Olympics
5. World Rugby