Significant Events, Issues, Controversies and Developments of the Modern Olympic Games

The Modern Olympic Games is an athletic games and races held every four years at some city chosen for this event, beginning with Athens in 1896.

Here are some notable events from each Olympics.

1896 Athens Olympics

• The United States of America won the unofficial medal competition.

1900 Paris Olympics

• Women, in the Olympics, for the first time, competed in tennis.

1904 St. Louis Olympics

• Only 8 countries sent athletes.

1908 London Olympics

• Great Britain won the unofficial medal competition.

1912 Stockholm Olympics

• Swimming events for women were added to the program

1924 Olympics

• The first Winter Olympics were held. It was held in Chamonix, France.
• The Summer Games were in Paris.

1928 Olympics

• Summer Olympics were held in Amsterdam, The Netherlands and the Winter Olympics were in St. Moritz, Switzerland.
• Women athletes competed in track and fields & gymnastics for the first time.

1936 Olympics

• The Olympic Flame was first used in the Berlin Olympiad.
• Summer Games were held in Berlin, Germany while the Winter Olympics were in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany.

1948 Olympics

• In the Winter Olympics which was held in St. Moritz, Switzerland, Alpine skiing (downhill and slalom) was added in the program.
• London was the site of the Summer Games.

1952 Olympics

• The 1952 Olympic marked the first participation of the USSR (Russia participated in 1912).
• Summer Olympics were in Helsinki while Winter Games were in Oslo Norway.

1956 Olympics

• Melbourne Australia hosted the Summer Olympics of 1956 with Soviet Union taking the largest number of medals.
• The Winter Games was in Cortina d’ Ampezzo, Italy.

1964 Olympics

• The Olympics were held in Asia for the first time at Tokyo, Japan.
• Innsbruck, Austria was the site of the Winter Games.

1968 Olympics

• On October 2, 1968, ten days before the start of the 1968 Summer Olympics the Plaza de las Tres Culturas was the scene of the Tlatelolco massacre, in which more than 300 student protesters were killed by army and police. After the event, the International Olympic Committee held an urgent meeting to consider cancelling the games.
• South Africa was expelled from the Olympic organization in 1970 because of its policy of not allowing blacks and whites to compete together. (It was readmitted in 1991)
• The 1968 Summer Olympics were hosted by Mexico City, Mexico and the Winter Olympics by Grenoble, France.

1972 Olympics

• The 1972 Summer Olympic Games was marred by an Arab terrorist attack on the Israeli Team. Eleven Israelis died.
• Winter Games of 1972 Olympics was in Sapporo, Japan.

1976 Olympics

• The Olympics were boycotted by most African nations which were protesting New Zealand’s participation; they objected to the fact that a New Zealand rugby team was touring South Africa.
• Summer Games were in Montreal, Canada and Winter Games were in Innsbruck, Austria again.
• Canada, the host country, left with only five silver and six bronze medals. It was the first and only time to date in Olympic history that the host country of the Summer Games won no gold medals.

1980 Olympics

• 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow were boycotted by more than 30 countries, most significantly, the USA, West Germany, and Japan.
• The Soviet Union won a record 197 medals and East Germany won 126 medals.
• The Winter Games were in Lake Placid, New York, USA.

1984 Olympics

• The Soviet Union and East Germany won the most medals at the 1984 Winter Olympics at Sarajevo, Yugoslavia.
• The Summer Games held in Los Angeles, USA were boycotted by Soviet Union and other Communists nations.
• Competition was dominated by US – 174, West Germany – 59 and Romania – 53.

1988 Olympics

• A record 160 nations, participated in the Summer Games, despite a boycott of North Korea and 6 other nations sympathetic to its demand to act as co-host.
• Competition was dominated by Soviet Union, 132 medals and East Germany, 102.
• The Winter Olympics was in Calgary, Canada.

1992 Olympics

• The athletes of the USSR, which had broken up the previous year, were represented as the Unified Team.
• The Summer Games were held in Barcelona.
• The Unified team collected 112 medals, US – 108 medals, Germany – 82 and China - 54.
• In the Winter Games, held at Albertville, France, Germany won most medals (26) and Unified Team (23).

1994 Winter Olympics - Lillehammer, Norway

• For the first time, the Winter Olympics were not held in the same year as the Summer Games of the Olympiad.

1996 Atlanta Olympics

• Muhammad Ali lit the Olympic torch during the opening ceremonies of the games and received a replacement gold medal from the 1960 Summer Olympics.
• A terrorist bombing called the Centennial Olympic Park bombing happened during this Olympiad, 2 people died, and 111 were injured.
• The US collected 101 medals all in all.

1998 Winter Olympics - Nagano, Japan

• Women’s ice hockey was contested at the Olympic Games for the first time ever, and the US beat the Canadians 3-1 for the gold medal.
• Germany garnered a total of 29 medals in this Olympic Games.

2000 Sydney Olympics

• A record 199 nations entered the stadium, the only missing IOC member being Afghanistan (suspended due to the Taliban regime’s prohibition against practicing any kind of sports).
• Most remarkable was the entering of North and South Korea as one team, using a specially designed unification flag: a white background flag with a blue map of the Korea peninsula; the two teams would compete separately, however.
• The United States collected a total of 92 medals.

2002 Winter Games - Salt Lake City, Utah, USA

• The Winter Games were held in Salt Lake City with the theme slogan “Light the Fire Within.”
• China won its first and second Winter Olympic gold medals, both by women’s short track speed skater Yang Yang.

2004 Athens Olympics

• The total number of participating nations increased from 199 to 202.
• The US, once again had the largest number of medals with a total of 102.

2006 Winter Games – Turin, Italy

• Turin, with a metropolitan area of 1.7 million, was the largest city to have ever hosted a Winter Olympics.

2008 Beijing Olympics

• For the third time, the Summer Olympics was held once again in Asia in Beijing, the capital of China - one of the fastest growing countries in the world.
• The Olympic slogan is “One World, One Dream”, which calls upon the world to unite in the Olympic spirit.
• The Beijing Summer Olympics was held from August 8 – August 24, 2008.

The next Summer Olympics will be held in 2012. It is officially known as the Games of the XXX Olympiad and will take place in London, UK from 27 July to 12 August 2012. London will become the first city to officially host the modern Olympic Games 3 times having previously done so in 1908 and in 1948.

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