Hockey

HOCKEY

Field hockey was first introduced at the Olympic Games for men in 1908 in London. It was subsequently removed from the Olympics at the 1924 Paris Olympic Games due to the lack of an international structure. It was back in 1928 after The International Hockey Federation (FIH) was founded.

Changes for 2016

For Rio 2016 the FIH have changed the structure of games, instead of two 35-minute halves, there will be 60-minute games broken into four quarters. After the first and third quarters each team will have a two-minute break, with a 10-minute break at half-time.

Hockey icon in the Olympic Games

Trivia

• Great Britain won gold, silver and bronze in hockey competition in 1908, the first time the sport was contested at Olympic level.
• For a long period of time India and Pakistan dominated the Olympics, with India winning gold in every Olympics from 1928-1956.
• Women's hockey was introduced at the 1980 Moscow Games.
• Zimbabwe's gold medal winning women's hockey players were each rewarded with an ox when they returned home from the 1980 Games.
• Olympic field hockey games were first played on artificial turf in Montreal in 1976.
• At Barcelona in 1992, Andreas Keller won a gold medal as part of the German field hockey team, and became the third generation of his family to win a medal in the event. His grandfather, Erwin, earned a silver medal in 1936 and his father, Carsten, a gold in 1972.
• The best all-time performing hockey players at the Olympic Games is the Indian players Leslie Claudius and Udham Singh with four medals each (3 gold). They played in the same teams between 1948–1960. 

Leslie Claudius, one of the best all time hockey player

Cycling

CYCLING

Cycling is a core Olympic sport, and one of five sports that has been contested at every summer Olympic Games since 1896. Some cycling events such as the 1,000m sprint and the 4,000m team pursuit have had a long history at the Olympics, while others have been dropped from the program such as the Tandem event or recently added such as the Omnium.

Cycling icon in the Olympic Games

Four Disciplines

There are currently four disciplines in Olympic cycling: track, road, mountain-bike and BMX. BMX was the latest to be added to the Olympic program, in 2008.

In London 2012 there were some significant changes to the cycling program. Removed from the program was the men's and women's individual pursuit and points race, and the men's Madison. Added to the women's program was the team sprint, team pursuit and the keirin, while Omnium was a new race for both men and women. The net result is that all event types now have competitions for both men and women.

The new event the Omnium comprises six events:

1. Flying lap (against the clock)
2. Points race
3. Elimination
4. Individual pursuit
5. Scratch race
6. Time trial

Current Events

Here are the 18 cycling event that are currently part of the Olympic program. The year that each event was first on the program is listed.

• Track events
  • 1000m Sprint Men — 1906 to current
  • 1000m Sprint Women — 1988 to current
  • Team Pursuit Men — 1908, 1920 to current
  • Team Pursuit Women — 2012 to current
  • Keirin Men — 2000 to current
  • Keirin Women — 2012 to current
  • Omnium Men — 2012 to current
  • Omnium Women — 2012 to current
  • Team sprint Men — 2000 to current
  • Team sprint Women — 2012 to current
• Road events
  • Individual Road Race Men — 1896 to current
  • Individual Road Race Women — 1984 to current
  • Individual Road Time Trial Men — 1996 to current
  • Individual Road Time Trial Women — 1996 to current
• Mountain Bike event. There is a men's and women's cross country event. In each of these, the competitors start at the same time and complete laps of a closed off-road course for about 2 hours. The first athlete to cross the finish line after a set number of laps wins.
  • Cross-country Men — 1996 to current
  • Cross-country Women — 1996 to current
• BMX events
  • BMX Individual Men — 2008 to current
  • BMX Individual Women — 2008 to current

Trivia

• Cycling has been part of the Olympic Games since the beginning of the modern era.
• Track racing has been held at all Olympic Games except for 1912 in Stockholm, when only a road race event was held. This road race was the longest race of any kind ever in Olympic history, held over a distance of 320km (199 miles), the winner finishing in 10 hours 42 minutes. 
• In Rome 1960, after taking amphetamines, Danish cyclist Knuth Jensen collapsed during a race, fatally fracturing his skull. The official cause of death was heat stroke.
• Tandem Cycling is a discontinued track cycling event at the Olympics, though tandem cycling is an event at the Paralympics.
• East German athlete Christa Rothenburger won a silver medal in track cycling in Seoul in 1988. Seven months earlier she had won the women's 1000 meter speed skating event at the Winter Olympics in Calgary. She became the first and only athlete to win medals in both a Summer and Winter Olympics in the same year.
• In 1984, women were admitted to Olympic cycling with the inclusion of a single road race. 
• In 2008 in Beijing, representing Australia in BMX cycling was a rider called Kamakazi, who had changed his name from Jamie Hildebrandt by deed poll.
• The best all-time performing cyclist at the Olympic Games is British cyclist Chris Hoy, who added to his tally at the 2012 London Games to make it six gold medals in total.
• US cyclist Lance Amstrong was stripped of the bronze medal he won in Sydney 2000 in the cycling road time trial taken, after being found guilty of systematic drug cheating from 1999-2005.

Chris Hoy, won six medals in total.

Athletics

ATHLETICS

Athletics has been contested at every Summer Olympics since the birth of the modern Olympic movement at the 1896 Summer Olympics. The athletics program traces its earliest roots to events used in the ancient Greek Olympics  The modern program includes track and field events, road running events, and race walking events. Cross country running was also on the program in earlier editions but it was dropped after the 1924 Summer Olympics.

Athletics icon in the Olympic Games

More About Some Events

• The 100m Olympic sprint champion is hailed the fastest man on earth. This event has been on all Olympic Games programs and has provided many highlights. 
• The marathon was originally conceived as a race for the 1896 Olympics in Athens, commemorating the run of the soldier Pheidippides from a battlefield at the site of the town of Marathon. 
• The Decathlon has been included in the Olympic Games since 1912. The decathlon comprises 10 different events, with points are awarded for each event with the overall winner having the most points. 
• The first time an athletics relay race was held was in 1908. It was a Medley relay, consisting of 1600 meters being run by four athletes per team, the first two runners each ran 200 meters, the third runner ran 400m and the fourth ran 800m. The winning US team included African-American John Taylor, the first black athlete to have won a gold medal. The runners did not carry a baton as they do now, the transfers were by "touch" .

Jesse Owens ,1936 

Some Notable Olympic Athletes

• The star of the 1912 Games in Stockholm was the American Indian Jim Thorpe, who won both the decathlon and pentathlon. However, in the following year it was discovered that he once played semi-professional baseball, and he was subsequently striped of his gold medals. In 1982, he was officially pardoned by the IOC, 29 years after his death. Replicas of his 1912 medals were presented to his family at the start of 1983.
• In Stockholm, 1912, Finland began its domination of long-distance running events, as Hannes Kolehmainen picked up three gold medals and a silver.
• Charley Paddock, the American sprinter who won the 100m in 1920, died in a plane crash in 1943 while serving as a captain in the US Marines.
• Holland's "Fanny" Blankers-Koen won 4 gold medals in track and field at the 1948 London Games. Fanny was 30 years old and the mother of 2 at the time.
• In 1952, Emil Zatopek of Czechoslovakia became the only man to win gold metals in the 5000 meters, the 10,000 meters, and the marathon in the same Olympiad. It was also his first attempt at the marathon.
• In 1956, the gold medal winning hammer thrower from America, Hal Connolly, won despite a physical disability - his left arm was inches shorter and much less developed that his right.
• The Olympic torchbearer for the 1956 Olympics was a virtually unknown 19 year old at the time he carried the torch into the stadium at Melbourne. Ron Clarke went on to become the world's finest distance runner in the 1960s.
• In Tokyo 1964, American Al Oerter won the discus throw for the third straight time, despite a cervical disc injury and torn rib cartilage.
• In Mexico City, 1968, Bob Beamon shattered the long-jump world record by more than 21 inches, Dick Fosbury revolutionized the high-jump with his back-first "Fosbury flop" technique, taking home the gold, and Al Oerter won the discus toss a fourth time.
• In 1984, American Carl Lewis repeated Jesse Owens' 1936 feat, winning gold medals in the same four events. In 1992, Carl Lewis won two more gold medals, bringing his total to eight. In 1996, he got his ninth gold medal by winning the long jump.
• In 1996, America's Michael Johnson won both the 200m and 400m races; Marie-José Perec from France did the same.
• In 2008, Jamaican Usain Bolt became the first man to win gold in the 100m, 200m and 4x100m sprints. He repeated that effort in London 2012, becoming the first man ever to win six Olympic gold medals in sprinting.
• In 2012, South African Oscar Pistorius (aka the 'Blade Runner') became the first double amputee to take part in both the Olympics and Paralympics. He competed in the Olympic Games 400m and the 4 x 400 m relay races.

Usain Bolt, won six gold medals in sprinting

Gymnastics

   

GYMNASTICS

Gymnastics events have been contested at every Summer Olympic Games since the birth of the modern Olympic movement at the 1896 Summer Olympic in Athens. For 32 years, only men were allowed to compete. Beginning at the 1928 Summer Olympic in Amsterdem, women were allowed to compete in artistic gymnastics events as well. Rhythmic gymnastics events were introduced at the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, and Trampolining events were added at the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney.

Gymnastic icon in the Olympic Games

Events

There are three separate disciplines at the Olympic Games in the sport of gymnastics. They are:

• Gymnastics - Artistic
• Gymnastics - Trampoline
• Gymnastics - Rhythmic

      

                                                             Gymnastic Artistic                             

Trivia

• The youngest ever Olympian was Greek gymnast Dimitrios Loundras.  who competed in the 1896 Athens Olympics when he was 10 years old (this does not count the young boys who competed as coxswain in the rowing events in 1896)
• Club Swinging was an early Olympic gymnastics event,as was tumbling and rope climbing. See more unusual Olympic gymnastics events.
• In 1904 in St Louis, one of the most remarkable athletes was the American gymnast George Eyser, who won six medals even though his left leg was made out of wood.
• In 1928, Luigina Giavotti became the youngest medalist of all time, helping the Italian gymnastics team pick up a silver at the age of 11 years and 302 days.
• During the London Olympics in 1948, one of nine members of Czechoslovakia women's gymnastics team, Eliska Misakova, became ill when she arrived in London. Diagnosed with polio, she died on the last day of the Olympics, the same day her remaining teammates won the competition.
• In 1964, Soviet gymnast Larissa Latynina won six medals for the third time in a row. She is the gymnast with the most medals (18) and the most medals in individual events (14).
• No gymnast had ever achieved a perfect score of 10 until Romanian gymnast Nadia Comaneci scored seven of them at the 1976 Montreal games. In 1980, she returned to win two more gold medals.
• In 1980, Soviet athlete Aleksandr Dityatin won a record eight medals in gymnastics.
• In 1984, 16-year-old Mary Lou Retton earned her place on Wheaties boxes by winning four gymnastics medals - including a gold in all-around gymnastics - just six weeks after undergoing knee surgery.
• In 1992, Gymnast Vitaly Scherbo of the Unified Team won six gold medals in gymnastics.
• In 1996, the US won gold in gymnastics, with the help of Kerri Strug, who nailed her second vault despite having a sprained ankle.
• In 2000, Russian gymnast Alexei Nemov won six medals, as he had done in Atlanta in 1996.
• Although both men and women compete in some form in all sports, rhythmic gymnastics is one of two (the other is synchronized swimming) sporting disciplines that are solely for women.
• Gymnast Svetlana Boginskaya competed at the Olympic Games for three different countries, Soviet Union (1988), Unified Team (1992) and Belarus (1996). She won two gold medals for the Soviet Union and one for the Unified, making her one of the few athletes to win gold medals for more than one country at the Olympics.

Russian gymnast, Alexei Nemov have won six medals

Table Tennis

TABLE TENNIS

Table tennis competition has been in the Summer Olympic Games since 1988, with singles and doubles events for men and women. Athletes from China have dominated the sport, winning a total of 47 medals in 28 events, including 24 gold medals.

In 1992 (only), two bronze medals were awarded in each event. Due to China's dominance in the sport the format was changed for the 2012 Olympics, such that only two competitors from each country can enter (instead of 3). 

This format makes it such that one country cannot win all three top medals - as has been the case during both the Individual Men's and Women's events at the Beijing Olympic tournament, where China dominated and won all 6 medals. In 2008, the doubles events were replaced by team events to lessen the emphasis on doubles play.

Pingpong icon in the Olympic Games

Trivia

• The table tennis events have been dominated by athletes from China.
• The best all-time performing Table Tennis Player at the Olympic Games is Wang Nan from China with 4 gold and one silver from 2000–2008. The best performing male player is Lin Ma also from China with 3 golds. 

The best male player in Olympic Games, Lin Ma

Swimming

SWIMMING

Swimming has been a sport at every modern Summer Olympics. It has been open to women since 1912. Along with the track & field athletics and gymnastics. It has been one of the most popular spectator sports at the Games. Swimming has the second largest number of events.

Swimming icon in the Olympic Games

Trivia

• In 1896, a boat dropped everyone into the icy waters of the Mediterranean, and the first swimmer to shore won. That fist gold medalist in swimming was Hungarian Alfred Hajos.
• The 1900 Paris swimming events were held in the River Siene, which meant that the contestants had to contend with the current too.
• The London Olympics in 1908 was the first time a swimming pool (100 m) was used for swimming events. Prior to that, the site for the swimming events were the ocean (1896), the River Seine (1900), and a little lake in St. Louis, USA (1904).
  
  
• There have been some unusual swimming events at the early Olympic Games, including the plunge for distance, underwater swimming race and the swimming obstacle race.
• Women competed in swimming events for the first time at the Olympic in 1912, but none of them were from USA, as that country did not allow its female athletes to compete in events without long skirts.                                              
• The first women's swimming gold medal was won by the Australian Sarah 'Fanny' Durack, who won the 100m freestyle in 1912.

• In 1924, Johnny Weissmuller won three golds and a bronze in water-based events; he later became known for playing Tarzan at the movies.
• In 1936, Denmark's 12-year-old Inge Sorensen won a bronze medal in the 200-meter breaststroke, making her the youngest medalist ever in an individual event.
• The Butterfly event in swimming was "invented" for the 1956 Games after some swimmers had begun to exploit a loophole in the breaststroke rules.
• In 1996, Amy Van Dyken of the U.S. won four gold medals in swimming. Also, Ireland's Michelle Smith won three golds and a bronze in swimming. Smith was accused of using performance-enhancing drugs; this remained unproven, but she was suspended in 1998 for tampering with a urine sample.
• Mark Spitz from USA won seven gold medals and at the Munich Games (1972), and won them all in world record time.
• In 1980, Russian swimmer Vladimir Salnikov became the first swimmer ever under 15 minutes (14:58.27) in the 1500m freestyle.
• In 1984, US Swimmers Nancy Hogshead and Carie Steinseifer registered the first tie in Olympic history in the 100-meter freestyle . Both swimmers touched the wall at 55.92.
• In 2000, 17-year-old Ian Thorpe of Australia won four medals (three gold) in swimming, breaking his own world record in the 400m freestyle.
• In 2000, Eric "the Eel" Moussambani of Equatorial Guinea was the year's lovable loser, taking 112.72 seconds in the 100m freestyle event — more than twice as long as Pieter van den Hoogenband's gold-winning performance. 
• An 10km Open Water Swimming event was added to the Olympic program for the first time in 2008.
• In 2008, US swimmer Michael Phelps became the most successful man at an Olympics by winning eight gold medals. His haul of 18 gold medals between 2004–2012 is the most out of all sports. 

Olympic swimming 1912

The Greatest Swimmer at the Olympic Games

Who is the greatest Swimmer of all time based on Olympic Games performances? We have used a weighted total medal count of each male and female Swimmer from all modern Olympic Games to rank their overall performance.

The best all-time overall performance in swimming at the Olympic Games is by USA swimmer Michael Phelps. His haul of 18 gold medals between 2004–2012 is the most out of all sports. The highest ranked female swimmer is Jenny Thompson, also from the US, with 12 medals including 8 gold. 

The best all time swimmer, Michael Phelps

Diving

DIVING

Diving was first introduced in the official programme of the Summer Olympic Games ath the 1904 Games of St. Louis and has been an Olympic sport since. It was known as "Fancy diving" for the acrobatics stunts performed by divers during the dive (such assomersaults and twists). This discipline of Aquatics is regulated and supervised by the International Swimming Federation (FINA), the international federation (IF) for aquatic sports.

There are several events as part of the Olympic diving program: 10m platform, 3m springboard individual and synchronized events (all for men and women). The newest addition is synchronized diving for the springboard and platform, which was added to the program for 2000. In synchronized diving two divers complete a dive simultaneously in which the dives are perfectly timed for height and distance from the board or platform, speed of rotation, and angle of entry into the water.

Competitors choose from a list of dives that have been rated according to their degree of difficulty (or they can create their own). Points are awarded for approach, take-off, elevation, execution of movements and entry into the water.

Diving icon in the Olympic Games

Trivia

• Diving was first introduced in 1904 and has been an Olympic sport since. In 1904 there were two events for men, platform diving event (called "fancy high diving" because of the somersaults and twists that were performed) and a plunge for distance event.

• At the 1908 Summer Olympics the men's spring board was added to the program.

• Women's events were added later. The platform event was added in 1912 and the springboard in 1920.

• A platform diving event for men, called "plain high diving", was included in 1912 in which no acrobatic moves were allowed, only a simple straight dive off the platform. This event was included until 1928, where it was merged with "fancy high diving" into one competition called "highboard diving"

• In 1952. divers complained about being distracted by a photographer who was dressed up in a frogman outfit and was taking photos of them from underwear.

• In 1988, Greg Louganis hit his head on the diving board but successfully defended his Olympic springboard title a few days later.

• In 1992, 13-year-old Fu Mingxia of China won the platform diving event, making her the second-youngest person to win an individual gold medal.

• In Sydney 2000, synchronized diving for the springboard and platform events was added to the program

• In Beijing 2008, British Synchronized Diver Tom Daley will be 14 years and 80 days old when the Games begin, beating the record for the youngest British male Olympian by over a year. The previous youngest was also a diver. Fred Hodges, who was 15 years and 94 days when he went to the 1936 Olympics.

• The best all-time performing diver at the Olympic Games is Chinese diver Guo Jingjing with six medals in total between 2000-2008

Guo jingjing, The best all time diver at the Olympic Games