Summer Olympic Games

History

Early years

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) was founded in 1894 when Pierre de Coubertin, a French pedagogue and historian, sought to promote international understanding through sporting competition. The first edition of The Olympic Games was held in Athens in 1896 and attracted just 245 competitors, of whom more than 200 were Greek, and only 14 countries were represented. Nevertheless, no international events of this magnitude had been organised before. Female athletes were not allowed to compete, though one woman, Stamata Revithi, ran the marathon course on her own, saying, "If the committee doesn't let me compete, I will go after them regardless". Women first participated officially in the 1900 Paris Games, with 22 women competing in five sports. Female participation has increased dramatically since then, with nearly half of the athletes in recent Games being women.

The 1896 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the Olympiad, was an international multi-sport event which was celebrated in Athens, Greece, from 6 to 15 April 1896. It was the first Olympic Games held in the modern era. About 100,000 people attended for the opening of the games. The athletes came from 14 nations, with most coming from Greece. Although Greece had the most athletes, the U.S. finished with the most champions; 11 Americans placed first in their events vs. the 10 from Greece. Ancient Greece was the birthplace of the Olympic Games, consequently Athens was perceived to be an appropriate choice to stage the inaugural modern Games. It was unanimously chosen as the host city during a congress organised by Pierre de Coubertin in Paris, on 23 June 1894. The IOC was also established during this congress.

Despite many obstacles and setbacks, the 1896 Olympics were regarded as a great success. The Games had the largest international participation of any sporting event to that date. Panathinaiko Stadium, the first big stadium in the modern world, overflowed with the largest crowd ever to watch a sporting event. The highlight for the Greeks was the Marathon victory by their compatriot Spiridon Louis, a water carrier. He won in 2 hours, 58 minutes and 50 seconds, setting off wild celebrations at the stadium. The most successful competitor was German wrestler and gymnast Carl Schuhmann, who won four gold medals.

Greek officials and the public were enthusiastic about the experience of hosting an Olympic Games. This feeling was shared by many of the athletes, who even demanded that Athens be the permanent Olympic host city. The IOC intended for subsequent Games to be rotated to various host cities around the world. The second Olympics was held in Paris.

Four years later the 1900 Summer Olympics in Paris attracted more than four times as many athletes, including 20 women, who were allowed to officially compete for the first time, in croquet, golf, sailing, and tennis. The Games were integrated with the Paris World's Fair and lasted over five months. It has been disputed which exact events were Olympic, as some events were for professionals, some had restricted eligibility, and others lacked international competitors.

Tensions caused by the Russo–Japanese War and the difficulty of travelling to St. Louis may have contributed to the fact that very few top-ranked athletes from outside the U.S. and Canada took part in the 1904 Games, the first Games held outside Europe. The current three-medal format of gold, silver and bronze for first, second and third place was introduced at the 1904 Olympics.

The "Second International Olympic Games in Athens", as they were called at the time, were held in 1906. The IOC does not currently recognise these games as being official Olympic Games, although many historians do and credit the 1906 games with preventing the demise of the Olympics. The 1906 Athens games were the first of an alternating series of games to be held in Athens in even non-Olympic years, but the series failed to materialise. The games were more successful than the 1900 and 1904 games, with over 850 athletes competing, and contributed positively to the success of future games.

The 1908 London Games saw numbers rise again, as well as the first running of the marathon over its now-standard distance of 42.195 km (26 miles 385 yards). The first Olympic Marathon in 1896 (a male-only race) was raced at a distance of 40 km (24 miles 85 yards). The new marathon distance was chosen to ensure that the race finished in front of the box occupied by the British royal family. Thus the marathon had been 40 km (24.9 mi) for the first games in 1896, but was subsequently varied by up to 2 km (1.2 mi) depending on local conditions such as street and stadium layout. At the six Olympic games between 1900 and 1920, the marathon was raced over six distances. The Games saw Great Britain winning 146 medals, 99 more than second-placed Americans, its best result to this day.

At the end of the 1908 marathon, the Italian runner Dorando Pietri was first to enter the stadium, but he was clearly in distress and collapsed of exhaustion before he could complete the event. He was helped over the finish line by concerned race officials and later disqualified for that. As compensation for the missing medal, Queen Alexandra gave Pietri a gilded silver cup. Arthur Conan Doyle wrote a special report about the race in the Daily Mail.

The Games continued to grow, attracting 2,504 competitors, to Stockholm in 1912, including the great all-rounder Jim Thorpe, who won both the decathlon and pentathlon. Thorpe had previously played a few games of baseball for a fee, and saw his medals stripped for this 'breach' of amateurism after complaints from Avery Brundage. They were reinstated in 1983, 30 years after his death. The Games at Stockholm were the first to fulfil Pierre de Coubertin's original idea. For the first time since the Games started in 1896, all five inhabited continents were represented with athletes competing in the same stadium.

The scheduled 1916 Summer Olympics were to be held in Berlin, cancelled following the onset of World War I.

Interwar era

The 1920 Antwerp Games in war-ravaged Belgium were a subdued affair, but again drew a record number of competitors. This record only stood until 1924, when the Paris Games involved 3,000 competitors, the greatest of whom was Finnish runner Paavo Nurmi. The "Flying Finn" won three team gold medals and the individual 1,500- and 5,000-metre runs, the latter two on the same day.

Paris hosted the 1924 Games, becoming the first two-time host city. The Games were the last held under the IOC presidency of Pierre de Coubertin, father of the modern Olympics, and saw the introduction of the Olympic motto Citius, Altius, Fortius, the Olympic Village, and the Winter Olympics as an "International Winter Sports Week."

The 1928 Amsterdam Games was notable for being the first games which allowed females to compete at track & field athletics, and benefited greatly from the general prosperity of the times alongside the first appearance of sponsorship of the games, from the Coca-Cola Company. The 1928 games saw the introduction of a standard medal design with the IOC, choosing Giuseppe Cassioli's depiction of Greek goddess Nike with a winner being carried by a crowd of people. This design was used up until 1972.

The 1932 Los Angeles Games featured an Olympic Village and victory podium for the first time.

The 1936 Berlin Games were seen by the German government as a golden opportunity to promote their ideology. The ruling Nazi Party commissioned film-maker Leni Riefenstahl to film the games. The result, Olympia, was widely considered to be a masterpiece, despite the infusion of Adolf Hitler's theories of Aryan racial superiority. Individually, African-American sprinter and long jumper Jesse Owens won four gold medals, while the host nation won the most gold and overall medals. The 1936 Berlin Games also saw the introduction of the Torch Relay.

Due to World War II, the 1940 Games (scheduled to be held in Tokyo and temporarily relocated to Helsinki upon the outbreak of the war) were cancelled. The 1944 Games were set to be held in London but were also cancelled; instead, London hosted the first games after the end of the war, in 1948.

After World War II

The first post-war Games were held in 1948 in London, with both Germany and Japan excluded. Dutch sprinter Fanny Blankers-Koen won four gold medals on the track, emulating Owens' achievement in Berlin.

At the 1952 Helsinki Games, the USSR team competed for the first time and quickly emerged as one of the dominant teams, finishing second in the number of gold and overall medals won. Their immediate success might be explained by the advent of the state-sponsored "full-time amateur athlete". The USSR entered teams of athletes who were all nominally students, soldiers, or working in a profession, but many of whom were in reality paid by the state to train on a full-time basis, hence violating amateur rules. Finland made a legend of an amiable Czechoslovak Army lieutenant named Emil Zátopek, who was intent on improving on his single gold and silver medals from 1948. Having first won both the 10,000- and 5,000-metre races, he also entered the marathon, despite having never previously raced at that distance. Pacing himself by chatting with the other race leaders, Zátopek led from about halfway, slowly dropping the remaining contenders to win by two and a half minutes, and completed a trio of wins.

The 1956 Melbourne Games, the first in the Southern Hemisphere, were largely successful, with the exception of a water polo match between Hungary and the Soviet Union, which ended in a pitched battle between the teams on account of the Soviet invasion of Hungary. The equestrian events were held in Stockholm because of a foot-and-mouth disease outbreak in Britain at the time and the strict quarantine laws of Australia.

At the 1960 Rome Games, a young light-heavyweight boxer named Cassius Clay, later known as Muhammad Ali, arrived on the scene. Ali would later throw his gold medal away in disgust after being refused service in a whites-only restaurant in his home town of Louisville, Kentucky. He was awarded a new medal 36 years later at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. Other notable performers in 1960 included Wilma Rudolph, a gold medal list in the 100 metres, 200 metres, and 4 × 100 metres relay events.

The 1964 Tokyo Games were the first to be held in Asia and to be broadcast worldwide on television, enabled by the recent advent of communication satellites. These Games marked a turning point in the global visibility and popularity of the Olympics and are credited for heralding the modern age of telecommunications. Judo debuted as an official sport, and Dutch judoka Anton Geesink caused a stir when he won the final of the open weight division, defeating Akio Kaminaga in front of his home crowd.

Performances at the 1968 Games in Mexico City were affected by the altitude of the host city. These Games introduced the now-universal Fosbury flop, a technique which won American high jumper Dick Fosbury the gold medal. In the medal award ceremony for the men's 200-metre race, black American athletes Tommie Smith (gold medal winner) and John Carlos (bronze medal winner) took a stand for civil rights by raising their black-gloved fists and wearing black socks in lieu of shoes. The two athletes were subsequently expelled from the Games by the IOC. Věra Čáslavská, in protest against the 1968 Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia, and the controversial decision by the judges on the balance beam and floor, turned her head down and away from the Soviet flag while the national anthem was played during the medal ceremony. She returned home as a heroine of the Czechoslovak people but was made an outcast by the Soviet-dominated government.

Politics again intervened at the 1972 Games in Munich, but this time with lethal consequences. A Palestinian terrorist group named Black September invaded the Olympic village and broke into the apartment of the Israeli delegation. They killed two Israelis and held nine others as hostages, demanding that Israel release numerous prisoners. When the Israeli government refused the terrorists' demands, the situation developed into a tense stand-off while negotiations continued. Eventually, the captors, still holding their hostages, were offered safe passage and taken to an airport, where they were ambushed by German security forces. In the ensuing firefight, 15 people were killed, including the nine captive Israeli athletes and five of the terrorists. After much debate, the decision was taken to continue the Games, but the proceedings were understandably dominated by these events. Some memorable athletic achievements did occur during these Games, notably the winning of a then-record seven gold medals by United States swimmer Mark Spitz, Finland's Lasse Virén taking back-to-back gold medals in the 5,000 metres and 10,000 metres, and the winning of three gold medals by Soviet gymnastic star Olga Korbut, who achieved a historic backflip off the high bar. In the final of the men's basketball, the United States lost to the Soviet Union in what is widely considered as the most controversial game in international basketball history. In a close-fought match, the U.S. team appeared to have won by a score of 50–49. However, the final three seconds of the game were replayed three times by judges until the Soviet team came out on top and claimed a 51–50 victory. Ultimately the U.S. team refused to accept their silver medals.

There was no such tragedy at the 1976 Montreal Games, but bad planning and fraud led to the cost of these Games far exceeding the budget. Costing $1.5 billion (equivalent to $7.92 billion in 2025), the 1976 Summer Games were the most expensive in Olympic history (until the 2014 Winter Olympics) and it seemed, for a time, that the Olympics might no longer be a viable financial proposition. In retrospect, it is believed that contractors (suspected of being members of the Montreal Mafia) skimmed large sums of money from all levels of contracts while also profiting from the substitution of cheaper building materials of lesser quality, which may have contributed to the delays, poor construction, and excessive costs. In 1988, one such contractor, Giuseppe Zappia "was cleared of fraud charges that resulted from his work on Olympic facilities after two key witnesses died before testifying at his trial". The 1976 Games were boycotted by many African nations as a protest against a recent tour of apartheid-run South Africa by the New Zealand national rugby union team. Romanian gymnast Nadia Comăneci made history when she won the women's individual all-around gold medal with two of four possible perfect scores. She won two other individual events, with two perfect scores in the balance beam and all perfect scores in the uneven bars. Lasse Virén repeated his double gold in the 5,000 and 10,000 metres, making him the first athlete to ever win the distance double twice.

End of the 20th century

Following the Soviet Union's 1979 invasion of Afghanistan, 66 nations, including the United States, Canada, West Germany, and Japan, boycotted the 1980 Games held in Moscow. Eighty nations were represented at the Moscow Games – the smallest number since 1956. The boycott contributed to the 1980 Games being a less publicised and less competitive affair, which was dominated by the host country.

According to British journalist Andrew Jennings, a KGB colonel stated that the agency's officers had posed as anti-doping authorities from the IOC to undermine doping tests and that Soviet athletes were "rescued with [these] tremendous efforts". On the topic of the 1980 Summer Olympics, an Australian study in 1989 said "There is hardly a medal winner at the Moscow Games, certainly not a gold medal winner, who is not on one sort of drug or another: usually several kinds. The Moscow Games might as well have been called the Chemists' Games."

Documents obtained in 2016 revealed the Soviet Union's plans for a statewide doping system in track and field in preparation for the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. Dated prior to the country's decision to boycott the Games, the document detailed the existing steroids operations of the programme, along with suggestions for further enhancements. The communication, directed to the Soviet Union's head of track and field, was prepared by Dr. Sergei Portugalov of the Institute for Physical Culture. Portugalov was also one of the main figures involved in the implementation of the Russian doping programme prior to the 2016 Summer Olympics.

In 1984, the Soviet Union and 13 Soviet allies retaliated by boycotting the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. Romania and Yugoslavia notably are the only two countries from the Eastern Bloc that did attend the 1984 Olympics. These games were perhaps the first games of a new era to make a profit. Although a boycott led by the Soviet Union depleted the field in certain sports, 140 National Olympic Committees took part, which was a record at the time. The Games were also the first time mainland China (People's Republic) participated.

The 1988 Games, in Seoul, was very well planned, but the games were tainted when many of the athletes, most notably men's 100 metres winner Ben Johnson, failed mandatory drug tests. Despite splendid drug-free performances by many individuals, the number of people who failed screenings for performance-enhancing chemicals overshadowed the games.

The 1992 Barcelona Games featured the admittance of players from one of the North American top leagues, the NBA, exemplified by, but not limited to, U.S. basketball's "Dream Team". The 1992 games also saw the reintroduction to the Games of several smaller European states which had been annexed into the Soviet Union during World War II. At these games, gymnast Vitaly Scherbo set an inaugural medal record of five individual gold medals at a Summer Olympics and equalled the inaugural record set by Eric Heiden at the 1980 Winter Olympics.

By then the process of choosing a location for the Games had become a commercial concern; there were widespread allegations of corruption potentially affecting the IOC's decision process.

At the Atlanta 1996 Summer Olympics, one highlight was 200 metres runner Michael Johnson smashing the world record in front of a home crowd. Canadians savoured Donovan Bailey recording a gold medal run in the 100-metre dash. There were also emotional scenes, such as when Muhammad Ali, clearly affected by Parkinson's disease, lit the Olympic torch and received a replacement medal for the one he had discarded in 1960. There were 8.3 million tickets sold for events at this Olympics, a record broken only in 2024. The atmosphere at the Games was marred, however, when a bomb exploded during the celebration in Centennial Olympic Park. In June 2003, the principal suspect in this bombing, Eric Robert Rudolph, was arrested.

The 2000 Summer Olympics, held in Sydney, Australia, showcased individual performances by local favourites Ian Thorpe in the pool and Cathy Freeman, an Indigenous Australian whose triumph in the 400 metres united a packed stadium. Briton Steve Redgrave won a rowing gold medal in an unprecedented fifth consecutive Olympics, and Eric "the Eel" Moussambani, a swimmer from Equatorial Guinea, received wide media coverage when he completed the 100-metre freestyle swim in by far the slowest time in Olympic history. He nevertheless won the heat as both his opponents had been disqualified for false starts. His female compatriot Paula Barila Bolopa also received media attention for her record-slow and struggling but courageous performance. The Sydney Games also saw the first appearance of a joint North and South Korean contingent at the opening ceremonies, though they competed in all events as different teams. Controversy occurred in the women's artistic gymnastics when the vaulting horse was set to the wrong height during the all-around competition.

Start of the 21st century

In 2004, the Olympic Games returned to their birthplace in Athens, Greece. At least $7.2 billion was spent on the 2004 Games, including $1.5 billion on security. Michael Phelps won his first Olympic medals, tallying six gold and two bronze medals. Pyrros Dimas, winning a bronze medal, became the most decorated weightlifter of all time with four Olympic medals, three gold and one bronze. Although unfounded reports of potential terrorism drove crowds away from the preliminary competitions at the first weekend of the Olympics (14–15 August 2004), attendance picked up as the Games progressed. A third of the tickets failed to sell, but ticket sales still topped figures from the Seoul and Barcelona Olympics (1988 and 1992). IOC President Jacques Rogge characterised Greece's organisation as outstanding and its security precautions as flawless. All 202 NOCs participated at the Athens Games with over 11,000 participants.

The 2008 Summer Olympics was held in Beijing, People's Republic of China. Several new events were held, including the new discipline of BMX for both men and women. Women competed in the steeplechase for the first time. The fencing programme was expanded to include all six events for both men and women; previously, women had not been able to compete in team foil or sabre events, although women's team épée and men's team foil were dropped for these Games. Marathon swimming events were added, over the distance of 10 km (6.2 mi). Also, the doubles events in table tennis were replaced by team events. American swimmer Michael Phelps set a record for gold medals at a single Games with eight, and tied the record of most gold medals by a single competitor previously held by both Eric Heiden and Vitaly Scherbo. Another notable star of the Games was Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt, who became the first male athlete ever to set world records in the finals of both the 100 and 200 metres in the same Games. Equestrian events were held in Hong Kong.

London held the 2012 Summer Olympics, becoming the first city to host the Olympic Games three times. In his closing address, Jacques Rogge described the Games as "Happy and glorious". The host nation won 29 gold medals, the best haul for Great Britain since the 1908 Games in London. The United States returned to the top of the medal table after China dominated in 2008. The IOC had removed baseball and softball from the 2012 programme. The London Games were successful on a commercial level because they were the first in history to completely sell out every ticket, with as many as one million applications for 40,000 tickets for both the Opening Ceremony and the 100m Men's Sprint Final. Such was the demand for tickets to all levels of each event that there was controversy over seats being set aside for sponsors and National Delegations which went unused in the early days. A system of reallocation was put in place so the empty seats were filled throughout the Games.

Recent Games

Rio de Janeiro in Brazil hosted the 2016 Summer Olympics, becoming the first South American city to host the Olympics, the second Olympic host city in Latin America, after Mexico City in 1968, as well as the third city in the Southern Hemisphere to host the Olympics after Melbourne, Australia, in 1956 and Sydney, Australia, in 2000. The preparation for these Games was overshadowed by controversies, including political instability and an economic crisis in the host country, health and safety concerns surrounding the Zika virus, and significant pollution in the Guanabara Bay. However, these concerns were superseded by a state-sponsored doping scandal involving Russian athletes at the Winter Olympics held two years earlier, which affected the participation of its athletes in these Games.

The 2020 Summer Olympics were originally scheduled to take place from 24 July to 9 August 2020 in Tokyo, Japan. The city was the fifth in history to host the Games twice and the first Asian city to have this title. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the then-Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, the IOC and the Tokyo Organising Committee announced that the 2020 Games were to be delayed until 2021, marking the first time that the Olympic Games have been postponed. This was the first time since 1900 that the games were not held in a leap year, and were instead hosted in a non-leap year. Unlike previous Olympics, these Games took place without spectators because of concerns over COVID-19 and a state of emergency imposed in the host city. Nevertheless, the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games featured many memorable moments and feats of technical excellence. One star of the Games, U.S. gymnast Simone Biles, gracefully bowed out to focus on her mental health, but later returned to claim an individual bronze medal. Norway's Karsten Warholm smashed his own world record in the 400m hurdles.

The 2024 Summer Olympics were held in Paris, France, making it the second city after London to host the Summer Olympics three times (the other times being 1900 and 1924, marking a centenary since the latter). This is the first of any Olympic Games after the pandemic to allow spectators to attend. In a first, the opening ceremonies were staged outside the main stadium with the athletes parading on boats along the River Seine. Following this, the open water swimming competitions also occurred in the Seine. Paris 2024 was the first Olympics in history to reach full gender parity on the field of play, with equal numbers of male and female athletes.

Future Games

The 2028 Summer Olympics will be held in Los Angeles, California, United States, making it the third city (after Paris (1900,1924, 2024) and London (1908, 1948, 2012)) to host the Games three times (the other times being 1932 and 1984), with the U.S. hosting the Summer Olympics for the fifth time.

The 2032 Summer Olympics will be held in Brisbane, Australia, which is the third city to host the Games in Australia and the fourth south of the equator.

Sports

As of 2024 there have been a total of 44 sports, spanning 65 disciplines, included in the Summer Olympic programme at one point or another in the history of the Games. The schedule consisted of 32 sports for the recent Summer Olympics (2024), with 36 sports planned for the next Summer Olympics (2028) where two sports will make their debuts (flag football and squash) and a further two disciplines (coastal rowing and lacrosse sixes) will be introduced. In addition, figure skating and ice hockey were initially part of the Summer Olympic programme (figure skating in 1908 and 1920 and ice hockey in 1920) before moving to the Winter Olympics.

The various Olympic Sports federations are grouped under a common umbrella association, called the Association of Summer Olympic International Federations (ASOIF). In the table below, the sports of aquatics, baseball and softball, basketball, rugby and volleyball have been separated into their disciplines.

Current sport No longer included

Qualification

Qualification rules for each of the Olympic sports are set by the International Sports Federation (IF) that governs that sport's international competition.

For individual sports, competitors typically qualify by attaining a certain place in a major international event or on the IF's ranking list. There is a general rule that a maximum of three individual athletes may represent each nation per competition. National Olympic Committees (NOCs) may enter a limited number of qualified competitors in each event, and the NOC decides which qualified competitors to select as representatives in each event if more have attained the benchmark than can be entered.

Nations most often qualify teams for team sports through continental qualifying tournaments, in which each continental association is given a certain number of spots in the Olympic tournament. Each nation may be represented by no more than one team per competition; a team consists of just two people in some sports.

Some National Olympic Committees, whose nations are underrepresented after qualifications, may be granted wild card quotas, which are termed Universality Places, in some eligible sports.

Popularity of Olympic sports

The IOC divides Summer Olympic sports into five categories (A – E) based on popularity, gauged by six criteria: television viewing figures (40%), internet popularity (20%), public surveys (15%), ticket requests (10%), press coverage (10%), and number of national federations (5%). The category of a sport determines the share of Olympic revenue received by that sport's International Federation. Sports that were new to the 2016 Olympics (rugby and golf) have been placed in Category E.

The current categories are:

^a Aquatics encompasses the disciplines of artistic swimming, diving, marathon swimming, swimming, and water polo.

All-time medal table

The table below uses official data provided by the IOC.

Defunct nation

status after the 2024 Summer Olympics

Medal leaders by year

Number of occurrences

List of Summer Olympic Games

The IOC has never decided which events of the early Games were "Olympic" and which were not. The founder of the modern Olympics, Pierre de Coubertin, ceded that determination to the organisers of those Games.