19 Facts About Olympics

Origin of the Olympics is shrouded in mystery and legend; one of the most popular myths identifies Heracles and his father Zeus as the progenitors of the Games.

Olympics were of fundamental religious importance, featuring sporting events alongside ritual sacrifices honouring both Zeus and Pelops, divine hero and mythical king of Olympia.

Olympics presented these ideas during the first Olympic Congress of the newly created International Olympic Committee.

Winter Olympics was created to feature snow and ice sports that were logistically impossible to hold during the Summer Games.

In 1960, Guttmann brought 400 athletes to Rome to compete in the "Parallel Olympics", which ran in parallel with the Summer Olympics and came to be known as the first Paralympics.

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The 1984 Summer Olympics are often considered the most financially successful modern Olympics and a model for future Games.

Conversely hosting the Olympics appears to increase the host country's exports, as the host or candidate country sends a signal about trade openness when bidding to host the Games.

Games have had significant negative effects on host communities; for example, the Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions reports that the Olympics displaced more than two million people over two decades, often disproportionately affecting disadvantaged groups.

Furthermore, at least four cities withdrew their bids for the 2022 Winter Olympics, citing the high costs or the lack of local support, resulting in only a two-city race between Almaty, Kazakhstan and Beijing, China.

Nevertheless, from sporting and business standpoints, the 2002 Olympics were one of the most successful Winter Games in history; records were set in both the broadcasting and marketing programs.

Olympics cited French president Jacques Chirac as a witness; Chirac gave guarded interviews concerning his involvement but the allegation was never fully explored.

The Summer Olympics programme includes 26 sports, while the Winter Olympics programme features 15 sports.

Olympics's medals were posthumously restored by the IOC in 1983 on compassionate grounds.

Olympics was officially cleared of intentionally avoiding the bout, but his receipt of the prize money raised suspicion.

Russia was partially banned from the 2016 Summer Olympics and was banned from the 2018 Winter Olympics due to the state-sponsored doping programme.

At the 2012 Summer Olympics, every participating nation included female athletes for the first time in Olympic history.

In preparation for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, the Russian Olympic Committee naturalised a South Korean-born short-track speed-skater, Ahn Hyun-soo, and an American-born snowboarder, Vic Wild.

One of the most famous cases of changing nationality for the Olympics was Zola Budd, a South African runner who emigrated to the United Kingdom because there was an apartheid-era ban on the Olympics in South Africa.

The 2020 Summer Olympics were held in Tokyo in 2021 due to postponement from the COVID-19 pandemic.