History of the Olympic games.

AS and A Level Physical Education (Sport & Coaching)

History Of The Olympic Games

In this essay I am going to write about the Olympic Games. They interest me as I am an athlete myself and enjoy watching and following them.

The Olympic Games is held every four years, in a different country each time, and takes place over about two and a half weeks. It is the biggest and probably most popular sporting event in the world today, with thousands of sportsmen taking part in more than twenty sports. The audiences are measured in billions and people watch it on television all over the world.

Most of the countries of the world have teams competing in the Olympics. But the Games are not a contest between nations. Although tables are often published showing how many medals are won by each country, this is not why they are held. The spirit of the Olympics is to take part in friendly competition and bring the top sportspeople of the world together. Although athletes put in years of vigorous training, it is still a friendly competition.

The idea of the Olympics was started nearly 3000 years ago in Greece. During the festivals in honour of the Greek gods, there were sporting contests held. The most important was the Olympic Games, held every four years in dedication to the father of the gods, Zeus. Free men from all over the Greek world gathered at the Games to demonstrate their sporting spirit in the sacred surroundings of Olympia, in the state of Elis. The athletes would train for ten months and completed their training, a month before the Games, in front of the judges who would decide on those worthy to compete at Olympia. The winners were presented with a crown of olive leaves. But the real reward would be the fame, respect and glory of victory the winners got. When they got home celebrations were held and they were showered with gifts. The first recorded Olympic Games took place in 776 BC. At this time there was only one event, a race over a distance of about 180m called a “stade”. It was given this name as it was nearly the length of the stadium at Olympia. In the first Olympics it was won by a young cook called Coroebus from Elis. New events were introduced time such as long jump, the discus throw and chariot racing. The competition period was extended to five days and the festival to a month. During these times a truce was declared and all wars throughout the Greek world had to stop and nobody could carry weapons into Olympia. From the 15th Olympic Games, athletes had to run naked (this was because one man won a race by throwing off all his clothes to make him lighter!). This meant that no women wee allowed to watch or even compete in the games. If they did, it was punishable by death. They had their own festival, in honour of the goddess Hera. It was held every five years, and the chief event was a 30m race for young girls. These ancient Olympics lasted for over a thousand years, but started to lose importance in the second century BC as the Romans started to take over Greece. Although they kept up the Games, they ruined the spirit by introducing violent sports such as Gladiator fighting. In AD 394, Emperor Theodosius of Rome officially stopped the Games as he wanted to put an end to pagan festivals because he was a Christian.

However, this was not the end of the Olympics. In the late 1800s they were revived by a French scholar named Baron Pierre de Coubertin. He had been inspired by the excavation of the ancient site of Olympia in the 1870s. His aim was to transfer the Olympic spirit of ancient Greece to the modern times by bringing the young people of the world together in friendly competition. In 1894, he founded the International Olympic Committee, which was the governing body of the Games. The first modern Olympic Games were held in Athens in 1896, as a tribute to the ...

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Each Olympics is awarded to a specific city, not a country. This caused problems when some cities started trying to bribe the Olympic committee and all started bidding for the Olympics. There are Winter Olympics held at winter sports resorts as well. These are also a big event involving winter sports such as skiing but not quite as big as the Olympic Games. Also held every four years are the Paralympics and the Special Olympics. The Paralympics are for people with physical disabilities and the Special Olympics are for people with mental handicap. The idea of sport for disabled people came from Dr Ludwig Guttman, who used it in the treatment of paraplegics in the Second World War. After the war, he pioneered competitive sport for the paralyzed. These paralympic games are held shortly after every Olympic Games and the winners receive Olympic medals. The city chosen responsible for organizing the Games with events taking place at various sites in and around the city. It also has to provide an “Olympic Village” where the competitors and their coaches live during the Games. Each country is allowed to enter at least one competitor in each event and up to three if the competitors achieve the set standard. In most of the team events, only one entry per country is allowed. Each country has its own Olympic organization with the responsibility of looking after its team. The staging of each sport is up to the world governing body for that sport. The Games were strictly for amateurs only at first but nowadays professionals and amateurs compete together. There have been many problems in the past to do with the distinction between professionals and amateurs. An example is the athlete Jim Thorpe whose gold medal in the ten event decathlon was taken away in 1888 because it was revealed he had accepted payment of two dollars a game for playing minor league baseball as a student a few years earlier! There was a mass campaign to have his name reinstated. It wasn’t until 1983 until his name was put back into the record books and replica medals were given to his children. Nowadays although professionals and amateurs compete together, they still don’t get paid anything by the Olympics for competing or even winning. But the gold medal is enough for most. Unfortunately a lot of athletes would go as far as taking drugs to get a medal. An example is Ben Johnson in 1988 at Seoul who smashed the 100m world record previously set by Carl Lewis. But three days later he tested positive for steroids. It was revealed that his coach and doctor had been giving him anabolic steroids for building muscles artificially. He was banned from competing for four years and stripped of his record. Is drug taking really worth all this?

Some traditions of the Games include the flame which is carried from torch to torch after being lit by the sun in Olympia by hundreds to the Olympic site. There is also the flag which is five rings interlinked (black, green, blue, red and yellow) on a white background. At least one of the colours from the flag of every nation is included in the six colours of the flag. But some of the ancient Olympic traditions haven’t been carried on such as running naked. They aren’t as much a religious festival anymore either as the idea of Greek gods was banished long ago. But on the good side instead of just Greece, the whole world now takes part.

I conclude this essay by saying that the Olympics is definitely the most popular and successful sporting events in history. Although being shadowed by cheating and drugs the Olympics is still going strong after all these years and hopefully will carry on for many years after.