49 Fun Facts About Olympic History

The stadium for the 1896 Athens Olympics had been rebuilt in what material?

Marble, and white: the ancient stadium had long lain in disrepair when George Averoff, a wealthy Greek living in Egypt, paid for the rebuilding with a last-minute gift of 920,000 drachmas.

Who is known as the father of the modern Olympic Games?

Pierre de Coubertin left one last instruction when he died in 1937: his body was buried in Lausanne, but his heart was removed and sealed in a monument beside the ruins of ancient Olympia.

The Wenlock Olympian Games, which inspired the modern Olympics' founder, began in which country?

England's Shropshire town of Much Wenlock first staged them in 1850, the idea of the local doctor William Penny Brookes, and London 2012 named its one-eyed mascot Wenlock in their honour.

Where was the 1894 congress that founded the IOC held?

The Sorbonne, Paris, hosted a congress billed as a debate on amateurism in sport; reviving the Olympics began as a single item on the programme, and it was the item the delegates voted through.

The early IOC wanted each president to come from where?

The next host country: Greece was about to stage the first Games, so the writer Demetrius Vikelas took the chair, and he gave it up to a Frenchman once Paris was next.

From 1912 to 1948 the Olympics also gave medals for works of art inspired by sport, in which of these fields?

Painting sat beside sculpture, music, literature and architecture, and the 1912 gold for literature went to an ode sent in under two false names by the man who had founded the Games.

Boston-born James Connolly, the first champion of the modern Olympics in 1896, walked out of which university to compete?

Harvard would not give him leave, so he quit and sailed for Athens, where his triple jump on the opening day made him the first Olympic champion in more than 1,500 years.

Which event did Greek hero Spyridon Louis win in 1896?

The marathon was a new race devised for these Games, and Louis won it by seven minutes; Greeks showered him with gifts, jewellery among them, and he went home to his village and never raced again.

What were winners given at the 1896 Games instead of gold?

A silver medal and olive branch went to each winner, the runner-up took a lesser medal and a laurel branch, and whoever came third went home with nothing at all.

Which American city hosted the 1904 Olympics, the first to award gold, silver and bronze medals to the top three?

St Louis proved so hard to reach from Europe that fewer than 100 of about 650 competitors came from outside North America, and the hosts won more than three-quarters of the golds.

The 1900 and 1904 Games were both staged as part of what?

World's fairs swallowed both Games: Paris strung its events across five months with no opening ceremony, swimmers raced in the Seine, and most contests were never labelled Olympic.

In which sport did Margaret Abbott win at Paris 1900, never learning that her tournament had been the Olympics?

Golf: the Chicago art student, in Paris to study, shot 47 over nine holes in a field that included her own mother, and died in 1955 unaware that the event counted as Olympic.

Which sport appeared only once, at Paris 1900, and drew a single paying spectator?

Croquet drew only French entrants, a few of them among the first women ever to compete at the Games, and sold a single ticket; the sport was never invited back.

What name is given to the 1906 Athens Games held midway through an Olympic cycle?

The Intercalated Games were meant to give Athens an Olympics of its own every four years, midway between the travelling ones; only 1906 ever took place, and the IOC later declined to count it as official.

Why was Dorando Pietri disqualified after crossing the line first in 1908?

Umpires helped him up after he turned the wrong way into the stadium and collapsed five times; losing made him more famous than the winner, with a cup from Queen Alexandra and a song by Irving Berlin.

Jim Thorpe was stripped of his 1912 golds for having done what?

Played semi-pro baseball is what plenty of college athletes did for summer cash, but they hid behind aliases; he had signed on in North Carolina under his own name, and a newspaper found it in 1913.

In which two events did Jim Thorpe win gold at Stockholm 1912?

Pentathlon and decathlon add up to fifteen events, and he won eight of them outright; the story goes that Sweden's king called him the greatest athlete in the world and he answered, 'Thanks, King.'

The five-ringed Olympic flag first flew at the 1920 Games, held in which war-battered city?

Antwerp lost one of those first flags as the Games ended: the American diver Hal Prieste shinned up a pole on a dare, kept it in a suitcase for 77 years and handed it back at Sydney 2000, aged 103.

Why were blue, yellow, black, green, red and white chosen for the rings and field?

Every nation's flag had at least one of them, the designer boasted in 1913: the five ring colours plus the white field, he wrote, reproduce those of all nations without exception.

Which word did the IOC add to the Olympic motto 'Faster, Higher, Stronger' in 2021?

Together was voted in days before the delayed 2020 Games opened; the first three words were borrowed by the founder of the Games from a friend, the French friar Henri Didon.

Which Asian capital handed back the 1940 Olympics as war spread?

Tokyo gave the Games back in 1938, a year into Japan's war with China; Helsinki stepped in, only for the Second World War to cancel them, as the First had cancelled the Games of 1916.

Which town hosted the first Winter Olympics in 1924?

Chamonix staged it as an 'International Winter Sports Week', backed by the IOC but not an official Olympics; it went so well that the IOC created the Winter Games afterwards and counted Chamonix as the first.

Which town hosted the 1994 Winter Olympics, the first held midway between Summer Games?

Lillehammer's Games came just two years after Albertville's, the only time the gap has been that short, after a 1986 rule change; some of the ice hockey was played in a rink blasted out of the inside of a mountain.

The Olympic flame first burned in 1928, atop a tower beside the stadium in which Dutch city?

Amsterdam's flame burned in a bowl atop the Marathon Tower, and the man who designed tower and stadium, Jan Wils, won an Olympic gold of his own that summer: the art competition's architecture prize, for the stadium.

The torch relay from Olympia was invented for which Games?

Berlin 1936 organiser Carl Diem wanted a link to ancient Greece, though the ancient Games never had such a relay; the runners' steel torches were made by Krupp, the arms firm, and the lighting mirror by Zeiss.

Which American won four golds at the 1936 Olympics?

Jesse Owens took the 100 metres, 200 metres, long jump and sprint relay. The tale that Hitler snubbed him is a myth: after the first day the IOC told Hitler to greet every winner or none, and he chose none.

The Olympic flame is lit at Olympia before the temple of which goddess?

Hera's temple is where an actress playing a high priestess holds the torch in a curved mirror until the sun lights it; under cloud, as happened in 2024, a flame kindled at the rehearsal is used instead.

On its way to Sydney 2000, the Olympic flame made its first underwater journey, at which site?

Great Barrier Reef: marine biologist Wendy Craig Duncan swam the torch around Agincourt Reef for three minutes, its flame swapped for a specially built flare that burns under water and still looks like the real thing.

What was Barry Larkin's hoax Olympic torch in 1956?

Burning underpants in a pudding can, nailed to a silver-painted chair leg, fooled the police too: they escorted the Sydney student to the Town Hall, where the mayor took the torch and began his speech.

Why were the 1956 equestrian events held in Stockholm rather than Melbourne?

Australian quarantine laws demanded six months' isolation for any horse entering the country, and the government would not bend, so Stockholm staged a separate riders' Games, with the flame carried in on horseback.

Melbourne 1956 is the only Summer Games held in which months?

November and December caught the start of the southern summer; the closing ceremony was new too, because a young Melburnian, John Ian Wing, wrote in suggesting the athletes walk in as one mingled crowd instead of by nation.

A 1948 archery contest for injured veterans at an English hospital grew into which event?

The Paralympic Games trace back to 16 injured servicemen and women shooting arrows at Stoke Mandeville Hospital on the day the 1948 London Olympics opened; by Rome 1960 there were 400 athletes from 23 countries.

Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised gloved fists during the anthem at which Games?

Mexico City 1968 saw one glove each because Carlos had left his pair in the village; sharing was the idea of the silver medallist, Australia's Peter Norman, who wore a human-rights badge beside them.

Dick Fosbury's 1968 gold popularised a new technique in which event?

High jump bars used to be cleared face down; Fosbury went over backwards and head first, which only became safe once foam mats replaced sand pits, and his coaches had tried to talk him out of it.

Whose 1968 Olympic long jump beat the world record by 55 cm?

Bob Beamon skipped 28 feet altogether and had no idea how far he had gone until a teammate told him it was past 29; then his legs gave way and he sank to the track. Mike Powell finally beat the mark in 1991.

Why did the scoreboard show 1.00 for Nadia Comăneci's perfect 10 at the 1976 Olympics?

It had only three digits because its makers had been told that a 10.00 was not possible, so the first perfect 10 in Olympic gymnastics went up as 1.00; she was 14, and she earned six more before the Games ended.

Mark Spitz's 1972 record of seven golds in one Games stood until who beat it?

Michael Phelps won eight at Beijing 2008. Spitz knew about predictions falling short: four years before his seven he had publicly forecast six golds and come home with two, both in relays.

The US-led boycott of Moscow 1980 protested the Soviet invasion of which country?

Afghanistan was invaded in late December 1979, and more than 60 nations stayed away from Moscow; the governments of Britain and Australia backed the boycott, yet athletes from both went to the Games anyway.

Which US president announced the 1980 boycott?

Jimmy Carter gave Moscow a month to pull its troops out, and when the deadline passed he sent Muhammad Ali on a goodwill tour of Africa to drum up support for staying away.

Which future baseball commissioner led the 1984 Olympics to a surplus of more than $200 million?

Peter Ueberroth ran the Games on private money: sponsors paid to call their products 'official', and even a place in the torch relay was sold, at $3,000 a kilometre; the profit went to youth sport.

Which Canadian city spent 30 years paying off its Olympics after costs ran 720% over budget?

Montreal's mayor, Jean Drapeau, had promised that the Olympics could no more run a deficit than a man could have a baby; locals renamed the stadium, the Big O, the Big Owe, and the debt was finally cleared in 2006.

Which Winter Games bid scandal led the IOC to expel six of its own members in 1999?

Salt Lake City 2002 bidders had plied IOC members with cash, gifts and college tuition for their children; with the Games in crisis, the organisers hired Mitt Romney, a future presidential candidate, to rescue them.

Which company has sponsored every Summer Olympics since 1928?

Coca-Cola saw the centenary Games of 1996 go not to Athens, the first modern host, but to its own home town, Atlanta, where it and other sponsors, rather than taxpayers, paid the bills.

What did the IOC president announce after the 1972 Olympic Village attack?

The Games would go on after a single day of mourning, Avery Brundage told the stadium, and he outraged many listeners by using the same speech to liken the killings to the African boycott threat that had forced Rhodesia out.

Which city agreed to wait for the 2028 Olympics so a rival could host 2024?

Los Angeles was a stand-in: American officials had first picked Boston, whose bid collapsed as local opposition grew, and LA then agreed to let Paris go first and take 2028 instead.

Which British ski jumper finished last in both events at Calgary 1988 yet became a folk hero?

Eddie Edwards, 'Eddie the Eagle', learned he had made the team while lodging cheaply in a Finnish mental hospital, and his glasses fogged up in mid-air; the IOC then tightened entry rules to keep novices like him out.

Which Games were the first where the IOC split athlete places 50:50 between women and men?

Paris 2024 closed a circle, because the same city was where women first competed, in 1900, as barely 2 per cent of the field; even at London 2012 their share had reached only 44 per cent.

Which Zimbabwean swimming champion was elected IOC president in 2025, the first woman and first African in the job?

Kirsty Coventry needed just one round of voting to beat six men, Sebastian Coe among them; in the pool she had won seven of the eight Olympic medals Zimbabwe had taken by then.

Which Olympic tradition began in 1932 after the IOC president saw it used at the 1930 British Empire Games?

The victory podium turned the old ceremony round: until then winners had filed past a dignitary to collect their medals, and the IOC president, who had watched in Hamilton, Ontario, ordered one for both 1932 Games.