Olympic Games

As mandated by the Olympic Charter, various elements frame the opening ceremonies of a celebration of the Olympic Games.Most of these rituals were established by 1920 Summer Olympics in Antwerp, Belgium

The ceremonies typically start with the hoisting of the host country’s flag and the performing of its national anthem.[citation needed] The host nation then presents artistic displays of music, singing, dance, and theatre representative of the culture of that country.

The traditional part of the ceremonies starts with a “Parade of Nations” (or of athletes), during which most participating athletes march into the stadium, country by country. Each country’s delegation is led by a sign with the name of their country and by their nation’s flag.

Traditionally (starting at the 1928 Summer Olympics), Greece enters first, due to its historical status as the origin of the Olympics, while the host nation marches last. (In 2004, when the Games were held in Athens, Greece marched last as host nation rather than first, although the flag of Greece was carried in first.) Between these two nations, all other participating nations march in alphabetical order of the dominant language of the host country, or in French or English alphabetical order if the host country does not write its dominant language in an alphabet which has a set order. In the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, both Spanish and Catalan were official languages of the games, but due to politics surrounding the use of Catalan, the nations entered in French alphabetical order. The XVIII Olympic Winter Games in Nagano, Japan saw nations entering in English alphabetical order since the Japanese language grouped both China and Chinese Taipei together in the Parade of Nations. For the 2008 Summer Olympics, instead of using either French or English, the countries were ordered by how many strokes it took to write the country’s name in Written Chinese, specifically Simplified Chinese.

The Olympic movement uses many symbols, most of them representing Coubertin’s ideas and ideals. The Olympic Rings are the most widely used symbol. These five intertwined rings represent the unity of the five inhabited continents (with the Americas regarded as one continent). The five colored rings on a white field form the Olympic Flag. The colors, white, red, blue, green, yellow, and black, were chosen such that each nation has at least one of these colors in its national flag. The flag was adopted in 1914, but the first Games at which it was flown were Antwerp, 1920. It is hoisted at each celebration of the Games.

The Olympic Motto is “Citius, Altius, Fortius,” a Latin phrase meaning “Swifter, Higher, Stronger.” Coubertin’s ideals are probably best illustrated by 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.”

Prior to each Games, the Olympic Flame is lit in Olympia, Greece and brought to the host city by runners carrying the torch in relay. There it plays an important role in the opening ceremonies. Though the torch fire has been around since 1928, the relay was introduced in 1936 as part of the then German government’s attempt to promote their National Socialist ideology.

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 since 1980 with the debut of Misha, a Russian bear.

French and English are the official languages of the Olympic movement.

Most Olympic Games have been held in Western cities; only a few games have been held in other places, and all bids by countries in South America and Africa have failed. Many believe the games should expand to include locations in poorer regions. Some people assert that the infrastructure investments could provide long term benefit.However, many host cities regret the high costs associated with hosting the games as a poor investment

In the past, the IOC has often been criticised for being a monolithic organisation, with several members remaining a member at old age, or even until their deaths. The leadership of IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch especially has been strongly criticised. Under his presidency, the Olympic Movement made great progress, but has been seen as autocratic and corrupt. Samaranch’s ties with the Franco regime in Spain and his long term as an IOC president (21 years, until he was 81 years old) have also been points of criticism.

In 1998, it became known that several IOC members had taken bribes from the organising committee for the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Utah, in exchange for a vote on the city at the election of the host city. The IOC started an investigation, which led to four members resigning and six being expelled. The scandal set off further reforms, changing the way in which host cities are elected to avoid further bribes. Also, more active and former athletes were allowed in the IOC, and the membership terms have been limited.

The same year (1998), four European groups organized the International Network Against Olympic Games and Commercial Sports to oppose their cities’ bids for future Olympic Games. Also, an Anti-Olympic Alliance had formed in Sydney to protest the hosting of the 2000 Games. Later, a similar movement in Vancouver and Whistler, British Columbia organized to protest the hosting of the 2010 Winter Games. These movements were particularly concerned about adverse local economic impact and dislocation of people to accommodate the hosting of the Olympics.

A BBC documentary aired in August 2004, entitled Panorama: “Buying the Games”, investigated the taking of bribes in the bidding process for the 2012 Summer Olympics. The documentary claimed it is possible to bribe IOC members into voting for a particular candidate city. In an airborne television interview on the way home, the Mayor of Paris Bertrand Delanoë specifically accused the British Prime Minister Tony Blair and the London Bid Committee (headed by former Olympic gold medalist Sebastian Coe) of breaking the bid rules with flagrant financial and sexual bribes. He cited French President Jacques Chirac as a witness but President Chirac gave rather more guarded interviews. In particular, Bulgaria’s member Ivan Slavkov, and Muttaleb Ahmad from the Olympic Council of Asia, were implicated. They have denied the allegations. Mayor Delanoë never mentioned the matter again. Others have alleged that the 2006 Winter Olympics were held in Turin because officials bribed the IOC and so Turin got the games and Sion, Switzerland (which was the favorite) did not.

The Olympic Movement has been accused of being overprotective of its symbolism (in particular, it claims an exclusive copyright over any arrangement of five rings and the term “olympics”), and have taken action against things unrelated to sport, such as the role-playing game Legend of the Five Rings. It was accused of homophobia in 1982 when it successfully sued the Gay Olympics, an event now known as the Gay Games, to ban it from using the term “olympics” in its name.

A number of organizations are involved in organizing the Olympic Games. Together they form the Olympic Movement. The rules and guidelines by which these organizations operate are outlined in the Olympic Charter.

At the heart of the Olympic Movement is the International Olympic Committee (IOC), currently headed by Jacques Rogge. It can be seen as the government of the Olympics, as it takes care of the daily problems and makes all important decisions, such as choosing the host city of the Games, and the programme of the Olympics.

Three groups of organisations operate on a more specialised level:

* International Federations (IFs), the governing bodies of a sport (e.g., FIFA, the IF for football (soccer), and the FIVB, the international governing body for volleyball.)
* National Olympic Committees (NOCs), which regulate the Olympic Movement within each country (e.g., USOC, the NOC of the United States)
* Organizing Committees for the Olympic Games (OCOGs), which take care of the organisation of a specific celebration of the Olympics.

At present, 202 NOCs and 35 IFs are part of the Olympic Movement. OCOGs are dissolved after the celebration of each Games, once all subsequent paperwork has been completed.

More broadly speaking, the term Olympic Movement is sometimes also meant to include everybody and everything involved in the Olympics, such as national sport governing bodies, athletes, media, and sponsors of the Olympic Games.

Despite what Coubertin had hoped for, the Olympics did not bring total peace to the world. In fact, three Olympiads had to pass without Olympics because of war: due to World War I the 1916 Games were cancelled, and the summer and winter games of 1940 and 1944 were cancelled because of World War II. A recent and more ironic example is that in the 2008 South Ossetia War, Georgia and Russia started their engagement on the same day the 2008 Summer Olympics began.

Terrorism has also become a recent threat to the Olympic Games. In 1972, when the Summer Games were held in Munich, West Germany, eleven members of the Israeli Olympic team were taken hostage by terrorist group Black September in what is known as the Munich massacre. A bungled liberation attempt led to the deaths of the nine abducted athletes who had not been killed prior to the rescue, as well as that of a policeman, with five of the terrorists also being killed.

During the Summer Olympics in 1996 in Atlanta, a bombing at the Centennial Olympic Park killed two and injured 111 others. The bomb was set by Eric Robert Rudolph, an American domestic terrorist, who is currently serving a life sentence at ADX Florence in Florence, Colorado.

The Winter Olympics in 2002 in Salt Lake City were the first Olympic games held since September 11, 2001, which meant a higher level of security, which is now required for all Olympic games, as they may become terrorist targets.

There have been pro-Tibet / pro-human rights protests during the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games Torch Relay, some of which included violent incidents.

The Olympics have also been used by regimes with human rights crisis to try and cleanse their reputation, silencing dissenting voices by means of genocide, torture and disappearances, as was the case on the 1968 Tlatelolco Massacre in Mexico City prior to the 1968 Summer Olympics and the 2008 Tibetan unrest before the Beijing Olympics.

The Olympics has been affected by political incidents on many occasions. One of the most well-known politically-based incident was the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, where the games were used as propaganda by the German Nazis. At this Olympics, Luz Long helped Jesse Owens (a black athlete) to win the long jump, at the expense of his own silver medal; some describe this as the “true Olympic Spirit.”The Soviet Union did not participate in the Olympic Games until the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki. Instead, the Soviets organized an international sports event called Spartakiads, from 1928 onward. Many athletes from Communist organizations or close to them chose not to participate or were even barred from participating in Olympic Games, and instead participated in Spartakiads.
A political incident on a smaller scale occurred at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City. Two American track-and-field athletes, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, performed the Black Power salute on the victory stand of the 200-meter track and field race. In response, the IOC’s president Avery Brundage told the USOC to either send the two athletes home, or withdraw the complete track and field team. The USOC opted for the former.

The government of the Islamic Republic of Iran specifically orders its athletes not to compete in any Olympic heat, semi-final, or finals that includes athletes from Israel. At the 2004 Olympics, an Iranian judoka who had otherwise earned his place, did not compete in a heat against an Israeli judoka.

One of the main problems facing the Olympics (and sports in general) is doping, or the use of performance enhancing drugs. In the early 20th century, many Olympic athletes began using drugs to enhance their performance. For example, the winner of the marathon at the 1904 Games, Thomas J. Hicks, was given strychnine and brandy by his coach, even during the race. As these methods became more extreme, it became increasingly evident that doping was not only a threat to the integrity of sport, but could also have potentially fatal side-effects on the athlete. The only Olympic death caused by doping occurred at the Rome Games of 1960. At the cycling road race in Rome, 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 were starting to ban the use of performance enhancing drugs, and the IOC followed suit in 1967.

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. Seventy-three athletes have followed him over the next 38 years, several medal winners among them. The most publicised doping-related disqualification was that of Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson, who won the 100 meter dash at the 1988 Seoul Olympics, but tested positive for stanozolol. He subsequently had his gold medal stripped. It was awarded to runner-up Carl Lewis, who himself has at times been under suspicion of using performance enhancing drugs, though has never tested positive.

Despite the testing, many athletes continued to use medication to improve their athletic ability without getting caught. In 1990, documents were revealed that showed many East German female athletes had been unknowingly administered anabolic steroids and other drugs by their coaches and trainers. Girls as young as eleven were started on the drug regimen without prior consent from their parents. American female swimmers, including Shirley Babashoff accused the East Germans of using performance enhancing drugs as early as the 1976 Games. No clear evidence of doping was discovered until after the fall of the Berlin Wall, when the aforementioned documents proved that East Germany had embarked on a state-sponsored program to dramatically improve their competitiveness at the Olympic Games and other international sporting events. Many of the culprits have been subsequently tried and found guilty of various crimes in the German penal system.

In the late 1990s, the IOC took initiative in a more organised battle against doping, leading to the formation of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) in 1999. The recent 2000 Summer Olympics and 2002 Winter Olympics have shown that this battle is not nearly over, as several medalists in weightlifting and cross-country skiing were disqualified due to doping offences. One possibly innocent victim of the anti-doping movement at the Olympics was the Romanian gymnast Andreea R?ducan who was stripped of her gold medal in the All-Around Competition of the 2000 Sydney games. Test results indicated the presence of the banned stimulant pseudophedrine which had been prescribed to her by an Olympic doctor. Raducan had been unaware of the presence of the illegal substance in the medicine that had been prescribed to her for a cold she had during the games. During the 2006 Winter Olympics, only one athlete failed a drug test and had a medal revoked. The only other case involved 12 athletes with high levels of haemoglobin and their punishment was a five day suspension for health reasons. The techniques for unfairly improving an athlete’s abilities have gotten far more sophisticated over the years. As a result, the International Olympic Committee introduced blood testing for the first time at the 2006 Games in Turino, Italy.

The 1956 Melbourne Olympics were the first Olympics to be boycotted. The Netherlands, Spain, and Switzerland refused to attend because of the repression of the Hungarian Uprising by the Soviet Union; additionally, Cambodia, Egypt, Iraq and Lebanon boycotted the games due to the Suez Crisis.

In 1972 and 1976, a large number of African countries threatened the IOC with a boycott, to force them to ban South Africa, Rhodesia, and New Zealand. The IOC conceded in the first two cases, but refused to ban New Zealand in 1976 because the boycott was prompted by a New Zealand rugby union tour to South Africa, and rugby was not an Olympic sport. The countries withdrew their teams after the games had started; some African athletes had already competed. A lot of sympathy was felt for the athletes forced by their governments to leave the Olympic Village; there was little sympathy outside Africa for the governments’ attitude. Twenty-two countries (Guyana was the only non-African nation) boycotted the Montreal Olympics because New Zealand was not banned.

Also in 1976, due to pressure from the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Canada told the team from the Republic of China (Taiwan) that it could not compete at the Montreal Summer Olympics under the name “Republic of China”, despite a compromise that would have allowed Taiwan to use the ROC flag and anthem. The Republic of China refused and as a result did not participate again until 1984, when it returned under the name “Chinese Taipei” and used a special flag.

In 1980 and 1984, the Cold War opponents boycotted each other’s games. Sixty-five nations refused to compete at the Moscow Olympics in 1980 because of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The boycott reduced the number of nations participating to only 81, the lowest number of nations to compete since 1956. The Soviet Union and 14 of its Eastern Bloc partners (except Romania) countered by boycotting the Los Angeles Olympics in 1984. They contended that they could not guarantee the safety of their athletes. Soviet officials were quoted as saying, “chauvinistic sentiments and an anti-Soviet hysteria are being whipped up in the United States.” The 1984 boycotters staged their own Friendship Games in July-August.

There had been growing calls for boycotts of the 2008 Olympics in Beijing in protest of China’s poor human rights record and response to the recent disturbances in Tibet, Darfur, and Taiwan. President George W. Bush showcased these concerns in a highly publicized speech in Thailand just prior to the opening of the Games. Ultimately no nations withdrew before the games began. There have also been campaigns calling for Chinese goods to be boycotted.

The Youth Olympic Games (YOG) are planned to be a “junior” version of the Games, complementing the current “senior” Games, and will feature athletes between the ages of 14 and 18. The idea for such an event was conceived by IOC president Jacques Rogge, in 2001. At the 119th IOC session in Guatemala City in July 2007, the IOC approved the Games.

The Youth Games versions will be shorter: the summer version will last at most twelve days; the winter version will last a maximum of nine days. The IOC will allow a maximum of 3,500 athletes and 875 officials to participate at the summer games, while 970 athletes and 580 officials are expected at the winter games. Each participating country will be allowed to send at least four athletes. The sports contested at these games will be the same as those scheduled for the traditional Games, but with a limited number of disciplines and events, and including some with special appeal to youth. Education and culture are also key components to this Youth edition.

Estimated cost for the games are currently $30 million for the summer and $15–$20 million for winter games. It has been stated that the IOC will “foot the bill” for the Youth Games.

The first host city will be Singapore in 2010; the bidding for the first Winter edition in 2012 is underway.

After the initial success, the Olympics struggled. The celebrations in Paris (1900) and St. Louis (1904) were overshadowed by the World’s Fair exhibitions, which were held at the same time and location. The 1906 Intercalated Games (so-called because they were the second games held within the third Olympiad) were held in Athens, as the first of an alternating series of Athens-held Olympics. Although originally the IOC recognised and supported these games, they are currently not recognised by the IOC as Olympic Games, which has given rise to the explanation that they were intended to mark the 10th anniversary of the modern Olympics. The 1906 Games again attracted a broad international field of participants (in 1904, 80% of the athletes had been American) and generated great public interest, thereby marking the beginning of a rise in both the popularity and the size of the Games.

From the 241 participants representing 14 nations in 1896, the Games have grown to nearly 11,100 competitors from 202 countries at the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens. The scope and scale of the Winter Olympics is much smaller than that of their Summer counterpart. For example, Turin Italy hosted 2,633 athletes from 80 countries competing in 84 events during the 2006 Winter Olympics. As participation in the Olympics has grown, so has its profile in the international media. The Olympic Games are one of the world’s largest media events. At the Sydney Games in 2000, there were over 16,000 broadcasters and journalists, and an estimated 3.8 billion viewers watched the games on television. The sale of broadcast rights has turned into an integral part of the formula by which countries recoup some of the costs incurred by hosting the Games.