The Olympic Games

The Olympic Games were originally an ancient Greek religious festival in honour of Zeus, held in Olympia near Mount Olympus, the mythical home of the gods. The initial date for the beginning of the Games was 776 В. С. They were held every four years, in the middle of the summer; the main condition of the festival was that there should be peace throughout Greece. The ceremonies included contests in oratory, poetry, music, and art, as well as in athletic skills like wrestling, throwing the javelin, and running.

The Olympic Games were an exclusively male festival, open to young men from all the Greek cities. Women were not allowed to compete in the Olympic Games, or even to attend and watch them. The victors were traditionally crowned with olive leaves rather than with gold medals. Their importance in Greek life was so great that the Olympiad, the four-year interval between Games, was a main unit of the Hellenic calendar. To be a victor in the classical Olympic Games was a great honour not only for the athlete but for his city.

The classical Games continued for over a thousand years. The Games were suppressed by the Roman Emperor Theodosius in A. D. 392.

With growth of interest in sport in the nineteenth century and the organization of annual and traditional sporting contests, especially between schools and universities, the idea arose of reviving the Olympic Games in the modern world. A Frenchman, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, was the enthusiast whose personal drive and initiative brought about the inauguration of the modern Olympic Games in 1896 with the participation of 311 athletes from thirteen countries, competing in nine sports.

At first the modern Games were limited to men. Women first competed in the Games in 1910, playing golf. The first womens participation only began in Paris in 1924 with the inclusion of women's athletics in the programme. In recent Olympiads the women's programme has been greatly extended and in 1980 yet another event — hockey, one of the most popular of girls team games was added to the programme of the Moscow Games.

Winter sports were brought into the Olympic programme through the organization of special Winter Games, first held in France at Chamonix in 1924, with competitions in ice hockey, speedskating, figure skating, and skiing. These are still the basic events of the winter programme, with the addition of bobsleigh and toboggan races, and ice hockey.

The most impressive moment in the opening ceremony of the Games is the taking of the Olympic oaths. First a representative athlete from the host country, holding a corner of the Olympic flag, takes the following oath on behalf of all the participants.

The Olympic flag has a motif of five interlocking rings on a white background. The five rings represent the five inhabited continents of the world and symbolize universal brotherhood. The six colours, the white of the background and the blue, yellow, black, green, and red of the rings, represent the nations of the world, since every national flag contains at least one of these colours. The ceremonial embroidered flag, by the Olympic rules, must reside in the principal municipal building of the host city until the next Games.

The motto of the Games is "Citius, altius, fortius" (Latin — faster, higher, braver). Officially there are individual and team victors but no victor countries; from the very beginning of the Games, however, the Press has made an unofficial count of the medals won by the sportsmen of each participating country and has kept an unofficial points score. Until Olympics in 1952 the team of the United States dominated the Summer Games. Since the Helsinki Games, when the USSR took part in them for the first time, competition in all events of the programme has become keener, and one country has ceased to dominate. The US hold on first place is being successfully challenged by the USSR and the German Democratic Republic.

Each Olympiad the size of the Olympic Games has been growing in the scale of competition, number of competitors, and size of the audience watching them — live or by television. When the first modern Games were held in Athens, the spectators numbered only thousands; the cinema brought scenes from them to small, audiences weeks later. Today huge stadiums accommodate tens of thousands of spectators, while television brings the scene directly to the homes of the whole world.