I just watched part of the opening ceremony of the Toyko Olympics. The opening ceremony is always a spectacle and an absolute joy to watch. There is nothing to compare it to except the last opening ceremony four — and now five — years ago. I love seeing the host country’s creativity and artistry. All the opening ceremonies have been very different, but always entertaining. This year it looks so different in an almost-empty stadium. I enjoy seeing the parade of athletes in their country’s uniforms. The design of the uniforms varies widely and always depicts national pride. This is the summer Olympics, so there will be swimming, gymnastics, track & field, basketball, skateboarding, baseball, equestrians, rowing, etc. I find the personal stories of those who have physically trained for years to compete in these sports compelling and fascinating. What is it that drives a person to commit SO much of their time to one particular sport? Or sometimes two — one of the U.S. flag bearers, Eddy Alvarez, won a silver medal in speed skating in the 2014 Olympics and is now on the U.S. baseball team. For me, it is simply invigorating to watch so many people in pursuit of excellence. Let’s learn more about the Olympic games.
According to Wikipedia, The modern Olympic Games or Olympics are leading international sporting events featuring summer and winter sports competitions in which thousands of athletes from around the world participate in a variety of competitions. The Olympic Games are considered the world's foremost sports competition with more than 200 nations participating. The Olympic Games are normally held every four years, alternating between the Summer and Winter Olympics every two years in the four-year period.
Their creation was inspired by the ancient Olympic Games held in Olympia, Greece from the 8th century BC to the 4th century AD. Baron Pierre de Coubertin founded the International Olympic Committee in 1894, leading to the first modern games in Athens in 1896. The IOC is the governing body of the Olympic Movement, with the Olympic Charter defining its structure and authority.
The evolution of the Olympic Movement during the 20th and 21st centuries has resulted in several changes to the Olympic Games. Some of these adjustments include the creation of the Winter Olympic Games for snow and ice sports, the Paralympic Games for athletes with disabilities, the Youth Olympic Games for athletes aged 14 to 18, the five Continental games (Pan American, African, Asian, European and Pacific) and the World Games for sports that are not contested in the Olympic Games. The IOC also endorses the Deaflympics and the Special Olympics. The IOC has needed to adapt to a variety of economic, political and technological advancements. The abuse of amateur rules by the Eastern Bloc nations prompted the IOC to shift away from pure amateurism — as envisioned by Coubertin — to the acceptance of professional athletes participating at the Games. The growing importance of mass media has created the issue of corporate sponsorship and general commercialization of the Games. World wars led to the cancellation of the 1916, 1940 and 1944 Olympics; large-scale boycotts during the Cold War limited participation in the 1980 and 1984 Olympics; and the 2020 Olympics were postponed until 2021 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Olympic Movement consists of international sports federations, National Olympic Committees and organizing committees for each specific Olympic Games. As the decision-making body, the IOC is responsible for choosing the host city for each Games and organizes and funds the Games according to the Olympic Charter. The IOC also determines the Olympic program, consisting of the sports to be contested at the Games. There are several Olympic rituals and symbols, such as the Olympic flag and torch, as well as the opening and closing ceremonies. Over 14,000 athletes competed at the 2016 Summer Olympics and 2018 Winter Olympics combined, in 35 different sports and over 400 events. The first, second and third-place finishers in each event receive Olympic medals: gold, silver, and bronze, respectively.
The Games have grown so much that nearly every nation is now represented. This growth has created numerous challenges and controversies, including boycotts, doping, bribery and a terrorist attack in 1972. Every two years the Olympics and its media exposure provide athletes with the chance to attain national and sometimes international fame. The Games also provide an opportunity for the host city and country to showcase themselves to the world.
Ancient Olympics
The Ancient Olympic Games were religious and athletic festivals held every four years at the sanctuary of Zeus in Olympia, Greece. Competition was among male representatives of several city-states and kingdoms of Ancient Greece. These Games featured mainly athletic but also combat sports such as wrestling and the pankration (an empty-hand submission sport with few rules where the athletes used boxing and wrestling techniques, but also others, such as kicking, holds, joint-locks and chokes on the ground, making it similar to modern mixed martial arts), along with horse and chariot racing events. It has been widely written that during the Games, all conflicts among the participating city-states were postponed until the Games were finished. This cessation of hostilities was known as the Olympic peace or truce. This idea is a modern myth because the Greeks never suspended their wars. The truce did allow those religious pilgrims who were traveling to Olympia to pass through warring territories unmolested because they were protected by Zeus.
The origin of the Olympics is shrouded in mystery and legend; one of the most popular myths identifies Heracles and his father Zeus as the progenitors of the Games. According to legend, it was Heracles who first called the Games "Olympic" and established the custom of holding them every four years. The myth continues that after Heracles completed his twelve labors, he built the Olympic Stadium as an honor to Zeus. Following its completion, he walked in a straight line for 200 steps and called this distance a "stadion" which later became a unit of distance of 600 feet. The most widely accepted inception date for the Ancient Olympics is 776 BC; this is based on inscriptions, found at Olympia, listing the winners of a foot race held every four years starting in 776 BC. The Ancient Games featured running events, a pentathlon (consisting of a jumping event, discus and javelin throws, a foot race and wrestling), boxing, wrestling, pankration and equestrian events. Tradition has it that Coroebus — also known as Koroibos — a cook from the city of Elis, was the first Olympic champion.
The Olympics were of fundamental religious importance, featuring sporting events alongside ritual sacrifices honoring both Zeus — whose famous statue by Phidias stood in his temple at Olympia — and Pelops, divine hero and mythical king of Olympia. Pelops was famous for his chariot race with King Oenomaus of Pisatis. The winners of the events were admired and immortalized in poems and statues. The Games were held every four years, and this period, known as an Olympiad, was used by Greeks as one of their units of time measurement. The Games were part of a cycle known as the Panhellenic Games, which included the Pythian Games, the Nemean Games and the Isthmian Games.
The Olympic Games reached the height of their success in the 6th and 5th centuries BC, but then gradually declined in importance as the Romans gained power and influence in Greece. While there is no scholarly consensus as to when the Games officially ended, the most commonly held date is 393 AD when the emperor Theodosius I decreed that all pagan cults and practices be eliminated. Another date commonly cited is 426 AD, when his successor, Theodosius II, ordered the destruction of all Greek temples.
According to the article “The Real Story of the Ancient Olympic Games” at penn.museum, there are two stories relating to the question of nudity at the ancient Olympic Games. One story states that it was a runner from Megara, Orsippos or Orrhippos who in 720 BC was the first to run naked in the stadion race when he lost his shorts in the race. Another tradition is that it was the Spartans who introduced nudity to the Olympic Games in the 8th century BC, as it was a Spartan tradition. It is not clear if the very first recorded victor at Olympia — Koroibos, who won the stadion race in 776 BC — wore shorts or not. It seems fairly clear that by the late 8th century, nudity was common for the male contestants.
Forerunners
Various uses of the term "Olympic" to describe athletic events in the modern era have been documented since the 17th century. The first such event was the Cotswold Games or "Cotswold Olimpick Games," an annual meeting near Chipping Campden, England, involving various sports. It was first organized by the lawyer Robert Dover between 1612 and 1642 with several later celebrations leading up to the present day. The British Olympic Association — in its bid for the 2012 Olympic Games in London — mentioned these games as "the first stirrings of Britain's Olympic beginnings."
L'Olympiade de la République — a national Olympic festival held annually from 1796 to 1798 in Revolutionary France — also attempted to emulate the ancient Olympic Games. The competition included several disciplines from the ancient Greek Olympics. The 1796 Games also marked the introduction of the metric system into sport.
In 1834 and 1836, Olympic games were held in Ramlösa, Sweden with additional Olympics in Stockholm, Sweden in 1843. All were organized by Gustaf Johan Schartau and others. At most, 25,000 spectators saw the games.
In 1850, an Olympian Class was started by William Penny Brookes at Much Wenlock, in Shropshire, England. In 1859, Brookes changed the name to the Wenlock Olympian Games. This annual sports festival continues to this day. The Wenlock Olympian Society was founded by Brookes on November 15, 1860.
Between 1862 and 1867, Liverpool held an annual Grand Olympic Festival. Devised by John Hulley and Charles Melly, these games were the first to be wholly amateur in nature and international in outlook, although only “gentlemen amateurs” could compete. The program of the first modern Olympiad in Athens in 1896 was almost identical to that of the Liverpool Olympics. In 1865 Hulley, Brookes and E.G. Ravenstein founded the National Olympian Association in Liverpool, a forerunner of the British Olympic Association. Its articles of foundation provided the framework for the International Olympic Charter. In 1866, a national Olympic Games in Great Britain was organized at London's Crystal Palace.
Revival
Greek interest in reviving the Olympic Games began with the Greek War of Independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1821. It was first proposed by poet and newspaper editor Panagiotis Soutsos in his poem "Dialogue of the Dead," published in 1833. Evangelos Zappas, a wealthy Greek-Romanian philanthropist, first wrote to King Otto of Greece in 1856, offering to fund a permanent revival of the Olympic Games. Zappas sponsored the first Olympic Games in 1859, which was held in an Athens city square. Athletes participated from Greece and the Ottoman Empire. Zappas funded the restoration of the ancient Panathenaic Stadium so that it could host all future Olympic Games.
The stadium hosted Olympics in 1870 and 1875. Thirty thousand spectators attended that Games in 1870, though no official attendance records are available for the 1875 Games. In 1890, after attending the Olympian Games of the Wenlock Olympian Society, Baron Pierre de Coubertin was inspired to found the International Olympic Committee. Coubertin built on the ideas and work of Brookes and Zappas with the aim of establishing internationally rotating Olympic Games that would occur every four years. He presented these ideas during the first Olympic Congress of the newly created International Olympic Committee. This meeting was held June 16-23, 1894, at the University of Paris. On the last day of the Congress, it was decided that the first Olympic Games to come under the auspices of the IOC would take place in Athens in 1896. The IOC elected the Greek writer Demetrius Vikelas as its first president.
1896 Games
The first Games held under the auspices of the IOC was hosted in the Panathenaic Stadium in Athens in 1896. The Games brought together 14 nations and 241 athletes who competed in 43 events. Zappas and his cousin Konstantinos Zappas had left the Greek government a trust to fund future Olympic Games. This trust was used to help finance the 1896 Games. George Averoff contributed generously for the refurbishment of the stadium in preparation for the Games. The Greek government also provided funding, which was expected to be recouped through the sale of tickets and from the sale of the first Olympic commemorative stamp set.
Greek officials and the public were enthusiastic about the experience of hosting an Olympic Games. This feeling was shared by many of the athletes, who even demanded that Athens be the permanent Olympic host city. The IOC intended for subsequent Games to be rotated to various host cities around the world. The second Olympics was held in Paris.
Changes and adaptations
After the success of the 1896 Games, the Olympics entered a period of stagnation which threatened its survival. The Olympic Games held at the Paris Exposition in 1900 and the Louisiana Purchase Exposition at St. Louis in 1904 failed to attract much participation or notice. Of the 650 athletes in the 1904 Olympics, 580 were American; the winner of the marathon was later disqualified upon discovery of a photograph of him riding in a car during the race. The Games rebounded with the 1906 Intercalated Games — so-called because they were the second Olympics to take place within the third Olympiad — which were held in Athens. These Games attracted a broad international field of participants and generated a great deal of public interest, marking the beginning of a rise in both the popularity and the size of the Olympics. The 1906 Games were officially recognized by the IOC at the time — although not any longer, and no Intercalated Games have been held since.
Winter Games
The Winter Olympics was created to feature snow and ice sports that were logistically impossible to hold during the Summer Games. Figure skating in 1908 and 1920 and ice hockey in 1920 were featured as Olympic events at the Summer Olympics. The IOC desired to expand this list of sports to encompass other winter activities. At the 1921 Olympic Congress in Lausanne, it was decided to hold a winter version of the Olympic Games. A winter sports week — it was actually 11 days — was held in 1924 in Chamonix, France, in connection with the Paris Games held three months later; this event became the first Winter Olympic Games. Although it was intended that the same country host both the Winter and Summer Games in a given year, this idea was quickly abandoned. The IOC mandated that the Winter Games be celebrated every four years in the same year as their summer counterpart. This tradition was upheld through the 1992 Games in Albertville, France; after that, beginning with the 1994 Games, the Winter Olympics were held every four years, two years after each Summer Olympics.
Paralympics
In 1948, Sir Ludwig Guttmann — determined to promote the rehabilitation of soldiers after World War II — organized a multisport event between several hospitals to coincide with the 1948 London Olympics. Originally known as the Stoke Mandeville Games, Guttmann's event became an annual sports festival. Over the next 12 years, Guttmann and others continued their efforts to use sports as an avenue to healing.
In 1960, Guttmann brought 400 athletes to Rome to compete in the "Parallel Olympics," which ran in parallel with the Summer Olympics and came to be known as the first Paralympics. Since then, the Paralympics have been held in every Olympic year and, starting with the 1988 Summer Games in Seoul, the host city for the Olympics has also played host to the Paralympics. The International Olympic Committee and the International Paralympic Committee signed an agreement in 2001 which guaranteed that host cities would be contracted to manage both the Olympic and Paralympic Games. The agreement came into effect at the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing and at the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver.
Two years before the 2012 Games, London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games Chairman Lord Coe made the following statement about the Paralympics and Olympics in London:
We want to change public attitudes towards disability, celebrate the excellence of Paralympic sport and to enshrine from the very outset that the two Games are an integrated whole.
Youth Olympic Games
In 2010, the Olympic Games were complemented by the Youth Games, which give athletes between the ages of 14 and 18 the chance to compete. The Youth Olympic Games were conceived by IOC president Jacques Rogge in 2001 and approved during the 119th Congress of the IOC. The first Summer Youth Games were held in Singapore from August 14-26, 2010, while the inaugural Winter Games were hosted in Innsbruck, Austria, two years later. These Games will be shorter than the senior Games; the summer version will last twelve days, while the winter version will last nine days. The IOC allows 3,500 athletes and 875 officials to participate at the Summer Youth Games, and 970 athletes and 580 officials at the Winter Youth Games. The sports to be contested will coincide with those scheduled for the senior Games, however there will be variations on the sports including mixed National Olympic Committees and mixed gender teams as well as a reduced number of disciplines and events.
21st Century Games
The Summer Olympics have grown from 241 participants representing 14 nations in 1896 to more than 11,200 competitors representing 207 nations in 2016. The scope and scale of the Winter Olympics is smaller; for example, Pyeongchang hosted 2,922 athletes from 92 nations in 2018. Most of the athletes and officials are housed in the Olympic Village for the duration of the Games. This accommodation center is designed to be a self-contained home for all Olympic participants and is furnished with cafeterias, health clinics and locations for religious expression.
The IOC has allowed the formation of National Olympic Committees to represent individual nations. These do not meet the strict requirements for political sovereignty that other international organizations demand. As a result, colonies and dependencies are permitted to compete at Olympic Games, examples being territories such as Puerto Rico, Bermuda and Hong Kong, all of which compete as separate nations despite being legally a part of another country. The current version of the Olympic Charter allows for the establishment of new NOCs to represent nations that qualify as "an independent State recognised by the international community." Consequently, the IOC did not allow the formation of NOCs for Sint Maarten and Curaçao when they gained the same constitutional status as Aruba in 2010, although the IOC had recognized the Aruban Olympic Committee in 1986. Since 2012, athletes from the former Netherlands Antilles have had the option to represent either the Netherlands or Aruba.
Opening ceremony
As mandated by the Olympic Charter, various elements frame the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games. This ceremony takes place on a Friday and is held prior to the commencement of the sporting events — apart from some group-stage football matches, softball games and rowing heats. Most of the rituals for the opening ceremony were established at the 1920 Summer Olympics in Antwerp. The ceremony typically starts with the entrance of the president of the host country followed by the hoisting of the host country's flag and a performance of its national anthem. The host nation then presents artistic displays of music, singing, dance and theatre representative of its culture. The artistic presentations have grown in scale and complexity as successive hosts attempt to provide a ceremony that outlasts its predecessor's in terms of memorability. The opening ceremony of the Beijing Games reportedly cost $100 million, with much of the cost incurred in the artistic segment.
After the artistic portion of the ceremony, the athletes parade into the stadium grouped by nation. Greece is traditionally the first nation to enter in order to honor the origins of the Olympics. Nations then enter the stadium alphabetically according to the host country's chosen language, with the host country's athletes being the last to enter. During the 2004 Summer Olympics, which was hosted in Athens, Greece, the Greek flag entered the stadium first, while the Greek delegation entered last. Speeches are given, formally opening the Games. Finally, the Olympic torch is brought into the stadium and passed on until it reaches the final torch carrier, often a successful Olympic athlete from the host nation, who lights the Olympic flame in the stadium's cauldron.
Closing ceremony
The closing ceremony of the Olympic Games takes place on a Sunday and after all sporting events have concluded. Flag-bearers from each participating country enter the stadium, followed by the athletes who enter together, without any national distinction. Three national flags are hoisted while the corresponding national anthems are played: the flag of the current host country; the flag of Greece, to honor the birthplace of the Olympic Games; and the flag of the country hosting the next Summer or Winter Olympic Games. The president of the organizing committee and the IOC president make their closing speeches, the Games are officially closed and the Olympic flame is extinguished. In what is known as the Antwerp Ceremony, the mayor of the city that organized the Games transfers a special Olympic flag to the president of the IOC, who then passes it on to the mayor of the city hosting the next Olympic Games. The next host nation then also briefly introduces itself with artistic displays of dance and theatre representative of its culture.
As is customary, the last medal presentation of the Games is held as part of the closing ceremony. Typically, the marathon medals are presented at the Summer Olympics, while the cross-country skiing mass start medals are awarded at the Winter Olympics.
Medal presentation
A medal ceremony is held after the conclusion of each Olympic event. The winner — along with the second- and third-place competitors or teams — stand on top of a three-tiered rostrum to be awarded their respective medals by a member of the IOC. After the medals have been received, the national flags of the three medalists are raised while the national anthem of the gold medalist's country is played. Volunteering citizens of the host country also act as hosts during the medal ceremonies, assisting the officials who present the medals and acting as flag-bearers. In the Summer Olympics, each medal ceremony is held at the venue where the event has taken place, but the ceremonies at the Winter Olympics are usually held in a special "plaza."
Symbols
The Olympic Movement uses symbols to represent the ideals embodied in the Olympic Charter. The Olympic symbol — better known as the Olympic rings — consists of five intertwined rings and represents the unity of the five inhabited continents (Africa, The Americas is considered one continent, Asia, Europe and Oceania). The colored version of the rings — blue, yellow, black, green and red — over a white field forms the Olympic flag. These colors were chosen because every nation had at least one of them on its national flag. The flag was adopted in 1914 but flown for the first time only at the 1920 Summer Olympics in Antwerp, Belgium. It has since been hoisted during each celebration of the Games.
The Olympic motto — Citius, Altius, Fortius — a Latin expression meaning "Faster, Higher, Stronger" was proposed by Pierre de Coubertin in 1894 and has been official since 1924. The motto was coined by Coubertin's friend, the Dominican priest Henri Didon OP, for a Paris youth gathering of 1891.
Coubertin's Olympic ideals are expressed in the Olympic creed:
The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win but to take part, just as the most important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle. The essential thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well.
Months before each Games, the Olympic Flame is lit at the Temple of Hera in Olympia in a ceremony that reflects ancient Greek rituals. A female performer, acting as a priestess joined by ten female performers as Vestal Virgins, ignites a torch by placing it inside a parabolic mirror which focuses the sun's rays; she then lights the torch of the first relay bearer, thus initiating the Olympic torch relay that will carry the flame to the host city's Olympic stadium, where it plays an important role in the opening ceremony. Though the flame has been an Olympic symbol since 1928, the torch relay was only introduced at the 1936 Summer Games to promote the Third Reich.
The Olympic mascot — an animal or human figure representing the cultural heritage of the host country — was introduced in 1968. It has played an important part of the Games' identity promotion since the 1980 Summer Olympics when the Soviet bear cub Misha reached international stardom. The mascot of the Summer Olympics in London was named Wenlock after the town of Much Wenlock in Shropshire. Much Wenlock still hosts the Wenlock Olympian Games, which were an inspiration to Pierre de Coubertin for the Olympic Games.
Cartoon from the 1936 Olympics imagines the year 2000 when spectators will have been replaced by television and radio, their cheers coming from loudspeakers.
Effect of television
The 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin were the first Games to be broadcast on television, though only to local audiences. The 1956 Winter Olympics in Italy were the first internationally televised Olympic Games, and the broadcasting rights for the following Winter Games in California were sold for the first time to specialized television broadcasting networks, CBS paid $394,000 for the American rights. In the following decades, the Olympics became one of the ideological fronts of the Cold War, and the International Olympic Committee wanted to take advantage of this heightened interest via the broadcast medium. The sale of broadcast rights enabled the IOC to increase the exposure of the Olympic Games, thereby generating more interest, which in turn enhanced the appeal of TV air time to the advertisers. This cycle allowed the IOC to charge ever-increasing fees for those rights. For example, CBS paid $375 million for the American broadcast rights for the 1998 Nagano Games, while NBC spent $3.5 billion for the American rights to air every Olympic Games from 2000 to 2012. In 2011, NBC agreed to a $4.38 billion contract with the IOC to broadcast the Olympics through the 2020 Games, the most expensive television rights deal in Olympic history. NBC then agreed to a $7.75 billion contract extension on May 7, 2014, to air the Olympics through the 2032 Games. NBC also acquired the American television rights to the Youth Olympic Games, beginning in 2014, and the Paralympic Games. More than half of the Olympic Committee's global sponsors are American companies, and NBC is one of the major sources of revenue for the IOC.
Viewership increased exponentially from the 1960s until the end of the 20th century. This was due to the advent of satellites for broadcasting live television worldwide starting in 1964, and the introduction of color television in 1968. The global audience for the 1968 Mexico City Games was estimated to be 600 million, whereas the audience numbers at the Los Angeles Games of 1984 had increased to 900 million; this number had swelled to 3.5 billion by the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona. With such high costs charged to broadcast the Games, the added pressure of the internet and increased competition from cable, the television lobby demanded concessions from the IOC to boost ratings. The IOC responded by making a number of changes to the Olympic program; at the Summer Games, the gymnastics competition was expanded from seven to nine nights, and a Champions Gala was added to attract greater interest; the events programs were also expanded for swimming and diving, both popular sports with a broad base of television viewers. Due to the substantial fees NBC has paid for rights to the Olympics, the IOC has allowed the network to influence the event scheduling to maximize U.S. television ratings when possible.
Use of performance-enhancing drugs
In the early 20th century, many Olympic athletes began using drugs to improve their athletic abilities. For example, in 1904, Thomas Hicks — a gold medalist in the marathon — was given strychnine by his coach. At the time, taking different substances was allowed, as there was no data regarding the effect of these substances on a body of an athlete. The only Olympic death linked to performance enhancing occurred at the 1960 Rome games. A Danish cyclist, Knud Enemark Jensen, fell from his bicycle and later died. A coroner's inquiry found that he was under the influence of amphetamines. By the mid-1960s, sports federations started to ban the use of performance-enhancing drugs; in 1967 the IOC followed suit.
According to British journalist Andrew Jennings, a KGB colonel stated that the agency's officers had posed as anti-doping authorities from the International Olympic Committee to undermine doping tests and that Soviet athletes were "rescued with [these] tremendous efforts." On the topic of the 1980 Summer Olympics, a 1989 Australian study said "There is hardly a medal winner at the Moscow Games, certainly not a gold medal winner, who is not on one sort of drug or another: usually several kinds. 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 program, 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. He was also one of the main figures involved in the implementation of the Russian doping program prior to the 2016 Summer Olympics.
The first Olympic athlete to test positive for the use of performance-enhancing drugs was Hans-Gunnar Liljenwall — a Swedish pentathlete at the 1968 Summer Olympics — who lost his bronze medal for alcohol use. One of the most publicized doping-related disqualifications occurred after the 1988 Summer Olympics where Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson who won the 100-meter dash tested positive for stanozolol.
In 1999, the IOC formed the World Anti-Doping Agency in an effort to systematize the research and detection of performance-enhancing drugs. There was a sharp increase in positive drug tests at the 2000 Summer Olympics and 2002 Winter Olympics due to improved testing conditions. Several medalists in weightlifting and cross-country skiing from post-Soviet states were disqualified because of doping offences. The IOC-established drug testing regimen — now known as the Olympic Standard — has set the worldwide benchmark that other sporting federations attempt to emulate. During the Beijing games, 3,667 athletes were tested by the IOC under the auspices of the World Anti-Doping Agency. Both urine and blood tests were used to detect banned substances. In London over 6,000 Olympic and Paralympic athletes were tested. Prior to the Games, 107 athletes tested positive for banned substances and were not allowed to compete.
Sex discrimination
Women were first allowed to compete at the 1900 Summer Olympics in Paris, but at the 1992 Summer Olympics, 35 countries were still only fielding all-male delegations. This number dropped rapidly over the following years. In 2000, Bahrain sent two women competitors for the first time: Fatema Hameed Gerashi and Mariam Mohamed Hadi Al Hilli. In 2004, Robina Muqimyar and Fariba Rezayee became the first women to compete for Afghanistan at the Olympics. In 2008, the United Arab Emirates sent female athletes — Maitha Al Maktoum competed in taekwondo and Latifa Al Maktoum in equestrian — to the Olympic Games for the first time. Both athletes were from Dubai's ruling family.
By 2010, only three countries had never sent female athletes to the Games: Brunei, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Brunei had taken part in only three celebrations of the Games, sending a single athlete on each occasion, but Saudi Arabia and Qatar had been competing regularly with all-male teams. In 2010, the International Olympic Committee announced it would "press" these countries to enable and facilitate the participation of women for the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. Anita DeFrantz, chair of the IOC's Women and Sports Commission, suggested that countries be barred if they prevented women from competing. Shortly thereafter, the Qatar Olympic Committee announced that it "hoped to send up to four female athletes in shooting and fencing" to the 2012 Summer Games.
In 2008, Ali Al-Ahmed, director of the Institute for Gulf Affairs, likewise called for Saudi Arabia to be barred from the Games, describing its ban on women athletes as a violation of the International Olympic Committee charter. He noted: "For the last 15 years, many international nongovernmental organizations worldwide have been trying to lobby the IOC for better enforcement of its own laws banning gender discrimination. ... While their efforts did result in increasing numbers of women Olympians, the IOC has been reluctant to take a strong position and threaten the discriminating countries with suspension or expulsion." In July 2010, The Independent reported: "Pressure is growing on the International Olympic Committee to kick out Saudi Arabia, who is likely to be the only major nation not to include women in their Olympic team for 2012. ... Should Saudi Arabia ... send a male-only team to London, we understand they will face protests from equal rights and women's groups which threaten to disrupt the Games."
At the 2012 Summer Olympics, every participating nation included female athletes for the first time in Olympic history. Saudi Arabia included two female athletes in its delegation; Qatar, four; and Brunei, one — Maziah Mahusin, in the 400 m hurdles. Qatar made one of its first female Olympians, Bahiya al-Hamad (shooting), its flagbearer at the 2012 Games, and runner Maryam Yusuf Jamal of Bahrain became the first Gulf female athlete to win a medal when she won a bronze for her showing in the 1500 m race.
The only sport on the Olympic program that features men and women competing together is the equestrian disciplines. There is no "Women's Eventing" or “Men's Dressage.” As of 2008, there were still more medal events for men than women. With the addition of women's boxing to the program in the 2012 Summer Olympics, however, female athletes were able to compete in all the same sports as men. In the winter Olympics, women are still unable to compete in the Nordic combined. There are currently two Olympic events in which male athletes may not compete: synchronized swimming and rhythmic gymnastics.
Comentários