Olympic Games
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Olympic Games are an international event of summer and winter sports, in which thousands of athletes compete in a wide variety of events. The Games are currently held every two years, with Summer and Winter Olympic Games alternating. Originally, the ancient Olympic Games were held in Olympia, Greece, from the 8th century BC to the 5th century AD. In the late 19th century, Baron Pierre de Coubertin was inspired by Olympic festivals to revive the Games. For this purpose, he founded the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in 1894, and two years later, the modern Olympic Games were established in Athens. The IOC has since become the governing body of the Olympic Movement, whose structure and actions are defined by the Olympic Charter.
The evolution of the Olympic Movement during the 20th century forced the IOC to adapt the Games to the world’s changing social circumstances. Some of these adjustments included the creation of the Winter Games for ice and snow sports, the Paralympic Games for athletes with physical disabilities, and the Youth Olympic Games for teenage athletes. The IOC also had to accommodate the Games to the varying economical, political, and technological realities of the 20th century. As a result, the Olympics shifted away from pure amateurism, as envisioned by Coubertin, to allow participation of professional athletes. The growing importance of the mass media created the issue of corporate sponsorship and commercialization of the Games.
The Olympic Movement currently comprises international sports federations (IFs), National Olympic Committees (NOCs), and organizing committees for each specific Olympic Games. As the decision-making body, the IOC is responsible for choosing the host city for each Olympic Games. The host city is responsible for organizing and funding a celebration of the Games consistent with the Olympic Charter. The Olympic program, consisting of the sports to be contested at each Olympic Games, is also determined by the IOC. The celebration of the Games encompasses many rituals and symbols, such as the Olympic flag and torch, as well as the opening and closing ceremonies. There are over 13,000 athletes that compete at the Summer and Winter Olympics in 33 different sports and nearly 400 events. The first, second, and third place finishers in each event receive gold, silver or bronze Olympic medals, respectively.
The Games have grown in scale to the point that nearly every nation is represented. Such growth has created numerous challenges, including boycotts, doping, bribery of officials, and terrorism. Every two years, the Olympics and its media exposure provide unknown athletes with the chance to attain national, and in particular cases, international fame. The Games also constitute a major opportunity for the host city and country to promote and showcase themselves to the world.
Ancient Olympics
The origin of the Ancient Olympics is shrouded in mystery and legend.[1] One of the most popular myths identifies Heracles and his father Zeus as the progenitors of the Games.[2] [3][4] According to legend, it was Heracles who first called the Games “Olympic” and established the custom of holding them every four years.[5] A legend persists 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” (Greek: στάδιον, Latin: stadium, “stage”), which later became a unit of distance. Another myth associates the first Games with the ancient Greek concept of Olympic truce (ἐκεχειρία, ekecheiria).[6] The most widely accepted date for the inception of the Ancient Olympics is 776 BC; this is based on inscriptions, found at Olympia, of the winners of a footrace held every four years starting in 776 BC.[7] The Ancient Games featured running events, a pentathlon (consisting of a jumping event, discus and javelin throws, a foot race and wrestling), boxing, wrestling, and equestrian events. [8][9] Tradition has it that Coroebus, a cook from the city of Elis, was the first Olympic champion.[10]
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.[11] The winners of the events were admired and immortalized in poems and statues.[12][13] 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.[14]
The Olympic Games reached their zenith in the 6th and 5th centuries BC, but then gradually declined in importance as the Romans gained power and influence in Greece. There is no consensus on when the Games officially ended, the most common-held date is 393 AD, when the emperor Theodosius I declared that all pagan cults and practices be eliminated.[15] Another date cited is 426 AD, when his successor Theodosius II ordered the destruction of all Greek temples.[16] After the demise of the Olympics, they were not held again until the late 19th century.
Modern Games
Forerunners and revival
Baron Pierre de Coubertin
The first significant attempt to emulate the ancient Olympic Games was the L’Olympiade de la République, a national Olympic festival held annually from 1796 to 1798 in Revolutionary France.[17] The competition included several disciplines from the ancient Greek Olympics. The 1796 Games also marked the introduction of the metric system into sport.[17] In 1850 an Olympian Class began at Much Wenlock, in Shropshire, England. It was renamed the Wenlock Olympian Games in 1859, and continues today as the Wenlock Olympian Society Annual Games. In 1866, a national Olympic Games in Great Britain was organized by Dr. William Penny Brookes at London’s Crystal Palace.[18]
Greek interest in reviving the Olympic Games began after the country’s independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1829. It was first proposed by poet and newspaper editor Panagiotis Soutsos in his poem “Dialogue of the Dead”, published in 1833. Evangelis Zappas, a wealthy Greek philanthropist, sponsored the first modern international Olympic Games in 1859 in an Athens city square. Athletes came from Greece and the Ottoman Empire. Later Zappas paid for the complete restoration of the ruins of the ancient Panathenian Stadium so that it could stage two further editions of the Games, one in 1870 and a second in 1875.[19]
In the search for a reason for the French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871), historian Baron Pierre de Coubertin theorized that the soldiers had not received proper physical education.[20] In 1890, after attending the Olympian Games of the Wenlock Olympian Society, Coubertin decided that a large-scale revival of the Olympic Games was achievable.[21] Coubertin built on the ideas of Brookes and Zappas with the aim to internationalize the Olympic Games.[21] He presented these ideas during the first Olympic Congress of the newly created International Olympic Committee (IOC). This meeting was held from June 16 to June 23, 1894, at the Sorbonne University in Paris. On the last day of the Congress, it was decided that the first multinational Olympic Games would take place two years later in Athens.[22] The IOC was fully responsible for the Games’ organization, and, for that purpose, elected the Greek writer Demetrius Vikelas as its first president.[23]
1896 Games
There were fewer than 250 athletes at the first Olympic Games of the modern times. The Panathenian Stadium, restored for Zappas’s Games of 1870 and 1875, was refurbished a second time in preparation for this inaugural edition in 1896.[24] These Olympics featured nine sporting disciplines: athletics, cycling, fencing, gymnastics, shooting, swimming, tennis, weightlifting, and wrestling; rowing events were scheduled for competition but had to be cancelled due to bad weather conditions.[25] The Greek officials and public were enthusiastic about the experience of hosting the inaugural Games. This feeling was shared by many of the athletes, who even demanded that Athens be the host of the Olympic Games on a permanent basis. The IOC had, however, envisaged these modern Olympics to be an itinerating and truly global event. As such they decided to hold the second Games in Paris.[26]
Changes and adaptations
Following the success of the 1896 Games, the Olympics entered a period of stagnation that threatened their survival. The celebrations in Paris in 1900 and St. Louis in 1904 were overshadowed by the World’s Fair exhibitions, held at the same time and location. The St. Louis Games, for example, hosted 650 athletes, but 580 were originally from the United States. The homogeneous nature of this edition was a low point for the Olympic Movement.[27] 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. These Games are not officially recognized and no further editions have been held since. 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 Olympics.[28]
Winter Games
The Winter Olympics were 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; this event became the first Winter Olympic Games.[29] The IOC mandated that the Winter Games be celebrated every four years on the same year as their summer counterpart.[30] This tradition was upheld until the 1992 Games in Albertville, France; after that, beginning with the 1994 Games, the Winter Olympics were held on the third year of each Olympiad.
Paralympics
In 1948, Sir Ludwig Guttman, determined to promote the rehabilitation of soldiers after World War II, organized a multi-sport event between several hospitals to coincide with the 1948 London Olympics. Guttman’s event, known then as the Stoke Mandeville Games, became an annual sports festival. Over the next twelve years, Guttman and others continued their efforts to use sports as an avenue to healing. For the 1960 Olympic Games, in Rome, Guttman brought 400 athletes to compete in the “Parallel Olympics”, which became known as the first Paralympics. Since then, the Paralympics have been held in every Olympic year. As of the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, South Korea, the host city for the Olympics has also played host to the Paralympics.[31]
Youth Games
Starting in 2010, the Olympic Games will be complemented by Youth Games, where athletes between the ages of 14 and 18 will compete. The Youth Olympic Games were conceived by IOC president Jacques Rogge in 2001 and approved during the 119th Congress of the IOC.[32][33] The first Summer Youth Games will be in Singapore in 2010, while the inaugural Winter Games will be hosted in Innsbruck, Austria, two years later.[34] These Games will be shorter than the senior Games; the summer version will last twelve days, while the winter version will last nine days.[35] The IOC will allow 3,500 athletes and 875 officials to participate at the Summer Youth Games, and 970 athletes and 580 officials at the Winter Youth Games.[36][37] The sports to be contested will coincide with those scheduled for the traditional senior Games, however there will be a reduced number of disciplines and events.[38]
Recent Games
From 241 participants representing 14 nations in 1896, the Games have grown to 10,500 competitors from 204 countries at the 2008 Summer Olympics.[39] The scope and scale of the Winter Olympics is smaller. For example, Turin hosted 2,508 athletes from 80 countries competing in 84 events, during the 2006 Winter Olympics.[40] During the Games most athletes and officials are housed in the Olympic village. This village is intended to be a self-contained home for all the Olympic participants. It is furnished with cafeterias, health clinics, and locations for religious expression.[41]
The number of participating countries is higher than the 193 that are current members of the United Nations. The IOC 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 set up their own National Olympic Committees. 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.[42]
International Olympic Committee
The Olympic Movement encompasses a large number of national and international sporting organizations and federations, recognized media partners, as well as athletes, officials, judges, and every other person and institution that agrees to abide by the rules of the Olympic Charter.[43] As the umbrella organization of the Olympic Movement, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) is responsible for selecting the host city, overseeing the planning of the Olympic Games, updating and approving the sports program, and negotiating sponsorship and broadcasting rights.[44] The Olympic Movement is made of three major elements:
- International Federations (IFs) are the governing bodies that supervise a sport at an international level. For example, the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA) is the IF for football (soccer), and the Fédération Internationale de Volleyball (FIVB) is the international governing body for volleyball). There are currently 35 IFs in the Olympic Movement, representing each of the Olympic sports.[45]
- National Olympic Committees (NOCs) represent and regulate the Olympic Movement within each country. For example, the United States Olympic Committee (USOC) is the NOC of the United States. There are currently 205 NOCs recognized by the IOC.[39]
- Organizing Committees for the Olympic Games (OCOGs) constitute the temporary committees responsible for the organization of a specific celebration of the Olympics. OCOGs are dissolved after each Games, once the final report is delivered to the IOC.
French and English are the official languages of the Olympic Movement. The other language used at each Olympic Games is the language of the host country. Every proclamation (such as the announcement of each country during the parade of nations in the opening ceremony) is spoken in these three languages.[46]
Criticism
The IOC has often been criticized for being an intractable organization, with several members on the committee for life. The leadership of IOC presidents Avery Brundage and Juan Antonio Samaranch was especially controversial. Brundage was president for over 20 years, and during his tenure he protected the Olympics from untoward political involvement.[47] He was accused of both racism, for his handling of the apartheid issue with the South African delegation, and anti-Semitism.[48] Under the Samaranch presidency, the office was accused of both nepotism and corruption.[49] Samaranch’s ties with the Franco regime in Spain was also a source of criticism.[50]
In 1998, it was uncovered that several IOC members had taken bribes from members of the Salt Lake City bid committee for the hosting of the 2002 Winter Olympics, to insure their votes were cast in favor of the American bid. The IOC pursued an investigation which led to the resignation of four members and expulsion of six others. The scandal set off further reforms that would the way host cities are selected, to avoid similar cases in the future.[51]
A BBC documentary entitled Panorama: Buying the Games, aired in August 2004, investigated the taking of bribes in the bidding process for the 2012 Summer Olympics.[52] The documentary claimed it was possible to bribe IOC members into voting for a particular candidate city. After being narrowly defeated in their bid for the 2012 Summer Games,[53] Parisian Mayor Bertrand Delanoë specifically accused the British Prime Minister Tony Blair and the London Bid Committee (headed by former Olympic champion Sebastian Coe) of breaking the bid rules. He cited French President Jacques Chirac as a witness; Chirac gave guarded interviews regarding his involvement.[54][55] The issue was never fully explored. The Turin bid for the 2006 Winter Olympics was also shrouded in controversy. A prominent IOC member, Marc Hodler, strongly connected with the rival bid of Sion, Switzerland, alleged bribery of IOC officials by members of the Turin Organizing Committee. These accusations led to a wide-ranging investigation. The allegations also served to sour many IOC members against Sion’s bid and potentially helped Turin to capture the host city nomination.[56]
Commercialization
The IOC originally resisted funding by corporate sponsors. It was not until the retirement of IOC president Avery Brundage, in 1972, that the IOC began to explore the potential of the television medium and the lucrative advertising markets available to them.[57] Under the leadership of Juan Antonio Samaranch the Games began to shift toward international sponsors who sought to link their products to the Olympic brand.[58]
Budget
During the first half of the 20th century the IOC was run on a small budget.[58][59] As president of the IOC from 1952 to 1972, Avery Brundage rejected all attempts to link the Olympics with commercial interest.[57] Brundage believed the lobby of corporate interests would unduly impact the IOC’s decision-making.[57] Brundage’s resistance to this revenue stream meant the IOC left organizing committees to negotiate their own sponsorship contracts and use the Olympic symbols.[57] When Brundage retired the IOC had US$2 million in assets; eight years later the IOC coffers had swelled to US$45 million.[57] This was primarily due to a shift in ideology toward expansion of the Games through corporate sponsorship and the sale of television rights.[57] When Juan Antonio Samaranch was elected IOC president in 1980 his desire was to make the IOC financially independent.[59]
The 1984 Summer Olympics became a watershed moment in Olympic history. The Los Angeles-based organizing committee, led by Peter Ueberroth, was able to generate a surplus of US$225 million, which was an unprecedented amount at that time.[60] The organizing committee had been able to create such a surplus in part by selling exclusive sponsorship rights to select companies.[60] The IOC sought to gain control of these sponsorship rights. Samaranch helped to establish The Olympic Program (TOP) in 1985, in order to create an Olympic brand.[58] Membership in TOP was, and is, very exclusive and expensive. Fees cost US$50 million for a four year membership.[59] Members of TOP received exclusive global advertising rights for their product category, and use of the Olympic symbol, the interlocking rings, in their publications and advertisements.[61]
Impact of television
The 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin were the first Games to be broadcast on television, though only to local audiences.[62] The 1956 Winter Olympics were the first internationally televised Olympic Games,[63] and the following Winter Games had their broadcasting rights sold for the first time to specialized television broadcasting networks—CBS payed US$394,000 for the American rights,[64]and the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) allocated US$660,000.[58] In the following decades the Olympics became one of the ideological fronts of the Cold War. Superpowers jockeyed for political supremacy, and the IOC wanted to take advantage of this heightened interest via the broadcast medium.[64] The sale of broadcast rights enabled the IOC to increase the exposure of the Olympic Games, thereby generating more interest, which in turn created more appeal to advertisers who purchased advertising time on television. This cycle allowed the IOC to charge ever-increasing fees for those rights.[64] For example, CBS paid US$375 million for the rights of the 1998 Nagano Games,[65] while NBC spent US$3.5 billion for the broadcast rights of all the Olympic Games from 2000 to 2008[58]
Viewership increased exponentially from the 1960s until the end of the century. Worldwide audience estimates for the 1968 Mexico City Games was 600 million, whereas at the Los Angeles Games of 1984, the audience numbers had increased to 900 million; that number swelled to 3.5 billion by the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona.[66] However, at the 2000 Summer Games in Sydney, NBC drew the lowest ratings for any Summer or Winter Olympics since 1968.[67] This was attributed to two factors: one was the increased competition from cable channels, the second was the internet, which was able to display results and video in real time. Television companies were still relying on tape-delayed content, which was becoming outdated in the information era.[68] A drop in ratings meant that television studios had to give away free advertising time.[69] 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.[70] 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 draw greater interest.[71] The IOC also expanded the swimming and diving programs, both popular sports with a broad base of television viewers.[71] Finally, the American television lobby was able to dictate when certain events were held so that they could be broadcast live during prime time in the United States.[72] The result of these efforts was mixed: the ratings for the 2006 Winter Games, held in Europe, were significantly lower than those for the 2002 Games, while there was a sharp increase in viewership for the 2008 Summer Olympics, staged in Beijing.[73][69]
Controversy
The sale of the Olympic brand has been controversial. The argument is that the Games have become indistinguishable from any other commercialized sporting spectacle.[61] Specific criticism was levelled at the IOC for market saturation during the 1996 Atlanta and 2000 Sydney Games. The cities were awash in corporations and merchants attempting to sell Olympic-related wares.[74] The IOC responded by indicating they would address this to prevent further spectacles of over-marketing at future Games.[74] Another criticism is that the Games are funded by host cities and national governments; the IOC incurs none of this cost, yet controls all the rights and profits from the Olympic symbols. The IOC also takes a percentage of all sponsorship and broadcast income.[61] Host cities continue to compete ardently for the right to host the Games, even though there is no certainty that they will earn back their investments.[75]
Nikita and Tad
Sea Urchins
