The Summer Olympic Games or the Games of the Olympiad are an international multi-sport event, occurring every four years, organized by the International Olympic Committee.

1. Summer Olympic Games
www.transitweb.ch
Dominic Patric de Neuville
The Summer Olympic Games or the Games of the Olympiad are an
international multi-sport event, occurring every four years, organized by
the International Olympic Committee. Medals are awarded in each event,
with gold medals for first place, silver for second and bronze for third, a
tradition that started in 1904. The Winter Olympics were also created due
to the success of the summer Olympics.
The olympics have increased from a 42-event competition with fewer
than 250 male athletes to a 300-event sporting celebration with over
10,000 competitors from 205 nations. Organizers for the 2008 Summer
Olympics in Beijing expected approximately 10,500 athletes to take part
in the 302 events on the program for the games.[1]
The United States has hosted four Summer Olympics Games, more than
any other nation. The United Kingdom will have hosted three Summer
Olympics Games when they return to the British capital in 2012, all of
them have been (and will be) in London, making it the first city to hold the
Summer Olympic Games three times. Australia, France, Germany and
Greece have all hosted the Summer Olympic Games twice. Other
countries that have hosted the summer Olympics are Belgium, China,
Canada, Finland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, South Korea, Spain,
the Soviet Union and Sweden. In the 2016 Summer Olympics, Rio de
Janeiro will host the first Summer Games in South America. Four cities
have hosted two Summer Olympic Games: Los Angeles, London, Paris
and Athens. Stockholm, Sweden, has hosted events at two Summer
Olympic Games, having hosted the games in 1912 and the equestrian
events at the 1956 Summer Olympics—which they are usually listed as
jointly hosting.[2] Events at the summer Olympics have also been held in
Hong Kong and the Netherlands (both represented by their own NOCs),
with the equestrian events at the 2008 Summer Olympics being held in
Hong Kong and two sailing races at the 1920 Summer Olympics being
held in the Netherlands.
Five countries – Greece, Great Britain, France, Switzerland and Australia
– have been represented at all Summer Olympic Games. The only
country to have won at least one gold medal at every Summer Olympic
Games is Great Britain, ranging from one gold in 1904, 1952 and 1996 to
fifty-six golds in 1908.

2. Qualification
Qualification rules for each of the Olympic sports are set by the
International Sports Federations (IFs) that governs that sport's
international competition.[3]
For individual sports, competitors typically qualify through attaining a
certain place in a major international event or on the IF's ranking list.
National Olympic committees 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.[3][4]
Nations 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.
History
Early years
The modern Olympic Games were founded in 1894 when Pierre Fredy,
Baron de Coubertin sought to promote international understanding
through sporting competition. He based his Olympics on the Wenlock
Olympian Society Annual Games, which had been contested in Much
Wenlock since 1850.[5]
The first edition of de Coubertin's games, held in Athens in 1896,
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 organized before. Female athletes
were not allowed to compete, though one woman, Stamata Revithi, ran
the marathon course on her own, saying "[i]f the committee doesn’t let
me compete I will go after them regardless".[6]
The 1896 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the I
Olympiad, was an international multi-sport event which was celebrated in
Athens, Greece, from April 6 to April 15, 1896. It was the first Olympic
Games held in the Modern era. Ancient Greece was the birthplace of the

3. 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 organized by
Pierre de Coubertin, a French pedagogue and historian, in Paris, on
June 23, 1894. The International Olympic Committee (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.[7] The highlight for the Greeks was
the marathon victory by their compatriot Spiridon Louis. The most
successful competitor was German wrestler and gymnast Carl
Schuhmann, who won four gold medals.
After the Games, Coubertin and the IOC were petitioned by several
prominent figures including Greece's King George and some of the
American competitors in Athens, to hold all the following Games in
Athens. However, the 1900 Summer Olympics were already planned for
Paris and, except for the 1906 Intercalated Games, the Olympics did not
return to Greece until the 2004 Summer Olympics.
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 5
months. It is still disputed which events exactly were Olympic, since few
or maybe even none of the events were advertised as such at the time.
Numbers declined for the 1904 Games in St. Louis, Missouri, United
States, due in part to the lengthy transatlantic boat trip required of the
European competitors, and the integration with the Louisiana Purchase
Exposition World's Fair, which again spread the event out over an
extended period. In contrast with Paris 1900, the word Olympic was used
for practically every contest, including those exclusively for school boys
or for Irish-Americans.
A series of smaller games were held in Athens in 1906. The IOC does
not currently recognize these games as being official Olympic Games,
although many historians do. The 1906 Athens games were the first of
an alternating series of games to be held in Athens, but the series failed
to materialize. The games were more successful than the 1900 and 1904
games, with over 900 athletes competing, and contributed positively to
the success of future games.

4. 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 winner of the first Olympic Marathon in 1896 (a
male-only race) was Spiridon "Spiros" Louis, a Greek water-carrier. He
won at the Olympics in 2 hours 58 minutes and 50 seconds at a distance
of 40 km (24 miles 85 yards). The new marathon distance of 42.195 km
(26 miles 385 yards) 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 for the first games in 1896, but was subsequently varied by
up to 2 km due to local conditions such as street and stadium layout. At
the six Olympic games between 1900 and 1920, the marathon was raced
over six different distances.
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, but later he was disqualified and
the gold medal was awarded to John Hayes, who had trailed him by
around 30 seconds.
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 fulfill Pierre de Coubertin's original idea. For the first time
since the Games started in 1896 were all continents represented with
athletes competing in the same stadium.
www.transitweb.ch
Dominic Patric de Neuville