History of Olympic

   History of Olympic

 

          Today we are going to discuss about the most famous sport competition Olympic and its history. How it is evolved, upgraded into modern version and its journey till now. We will pass by glories as well as dark-side of Olympic also.

 

Ancient Olympics:

The Ancient Olympic Games were religious and athletic festivals held every four years at the sanctuary of Zeus in Olympia, Greece. Competition was among representatives of several city-states and kingdoms of Ancient Greece. These Games featured mainly athletic but also combat sports such as wrestling and the pankration, horse and chariot racing events. It has been widely written that during the Games, all conflicts among the participating city-states were postponed until the Games were finished. This cessation of hostilities was known as the Olympic peace or truce. 

The 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. According to legend, it was Heracles who first called the Games "Olympic" and established the custom of holding them every four years. The myth continues that after Heracles completed his twelve labours, he built the Olympic Stadium as an honour to Zeus. The most widely accepted inception date for the Ancient Olympics is in 776 BC . The Ancient Games featured running events, a pentathlon, boxing, wrestling, pankration, and equestrian events. Tradition has it that Coroebus, a cook from the city of Elis, was the first Olympic champion.

The Olympics were of fundamental religious importance, featuring sporting events alongside ritual sacrifices honouring both Zeus and Pelops, divine hero and mythical king of Olympia. Pelops was famous for his chariot race with King Oenomaus of Pisatis. The winners of the events were admired and immortalised in poems and statues. 

# Various uses of the term "Olympic" to describe athletic events in the modern era have been documented since the 17th century. The first such event was the Cotswold Games or "Cotswold Olimpick Games", an annual meeting near Chipping Campden, England, involving various sports. It was first organised by the lawyer Robert Dover between 1612 and 1642, with several later celebrations leading up to the present day. The British Olympic Association, in its bid for the 2012 Olympic Games in London, mentioned these games as "the first stirrings of Britain's Olympic beginnings".

# L'Olympiade de la République, a national Olympic festival held annually from 1796 to 1798 in Revolutionary France also attempted to emulate the ancient Olympic Games. The competition included several disciplines from the ancient Greek Olympics. The 1796 Games also marked the introduction of the metric system into sport.

# In 1834 and 1836, Olympic games were held in Ramlösa, and an additional in Stockholm, Sweden in 1843, all organised by Gustaf Johan Schartau and others. At most 25,000 spectators saw the games.

# In 1850, an Olympian Class was started by William Penny Brookes at Much Wenlock, in Shropshire, England. In 1859, Brookes changed the name to the Wenlock Olympian Games. This annual sports festival continues to this day. The Wenlock Olympian Society was founded by Brookes on 15 November 1860.

# Between 1862 and 1867, Liverpool held an annual Grand Olympic Festival. Devised by John Hulley and Charles Melly, these games were the first to be wholly amateur in nature and international in outlook, although only 'gentlemen amateurs' could compete.

 

Modern Games:

 

The modern Olympic Games or Olympics are leading international sporting events featuring summer and winter sports competitions in which thousands of athletes from around the world participate in a variety of competitions. The Olympic Games are considered the world's foremost sports competition with more than 200 nations participating. It is normally held every four years (called Olympiad), alternating between the Summer and Winter Games every two years in the four-year period.

 

                                                 Baron Pierre de Coubertin

 

Their creation was inspired by the ancient Olympic Games, which were held in Olympia, Greece (from the 8th century BC to the 4th century AD). Baron Pierre de Coubertin founded the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in 1894, leading to the first modern Games in Athens in 1896. The IOC is the governing body of the Olympic Movement, with the Olympic Charter defining its structure and authority.

The evolution of the Olympic Movement during the 20th and 21st centuries has resulted in several changes to the Olympic Games. Some of these adjustments include: -

·         Winter Olympic Games: for snow and ice sports

·         Paralympic Games: for athletes with a disability

·         Youth Olympic: Games for athletes aged 14 to 18

·         World Games: for sports that are not contested in the Olympic Games

·         Deaflympics and Special Olympics are also endorsed by the IOC.

 

The Olympic Movement consists of international sports federations (IFs), National Olympic Committees (NOCs), and organising committees for each specific Olympic Games. As the decision-making body,

International Olympic Committee (IOC) is responsible for

ü  Choosing the host city for each Games

ü  It organizes and funds the Games according to the Olympic Charter.

ü  It determines the Olympic program, consisting of the sports to be contested at the Games.

There are several Olympic rituals and symbols, such as the Olympic flag and torch, as well as the opening and closing ceremonies. The first, second, and third-place finishers in each event receive Olympic medals: gold, silver, and bronze respectively.

The Games have grown so much that nearly every nation is now represented. This growth has created numerous challenges and controversies, including boycotts, doping, bribery, and a terrorist attack in 1972. Every two years the Olympics and its media exposure provide athletes with the chance to attain national and sometimes international fame. The Games also constitute an opportunity for the host city and country to showcase themselves to the world.

The Oxford Olympics Study 2016 found that sports-related costs for the Summer Games since 1960 were on average US$5.2 billion and for the Winter Games $3.1 billion. This does not include wider infrastructure costs like roads, urban rail, and airports, which often cost as much or more than the sports-related costs.

* The most expensive Summer Games were Beijing 2008 at US$40–44 billion and

* The most expensive Winter Games were Sochi 2014 at US$51 billion.

As of 2016, costs per athlete were, on average, US$599,000 for the Summer Games and $1.3 million for the Winter Games. For London 2012, cost per athlete was $1.4 million; for Sochi 2014, $7.9 million.

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

 

Dark Side of Olympic:

 

The Olympic games are a great sports event, featuring amazing athletes. Sadly, the games also have a terrible dark side. Most of what I wrote about it in this post, written about the 2016 Summer Olympics.

Host cities routinely lose enormous amounts of money on the games, and end up with decaying stadiums that have little or no value. Even worse, governments often forcibly displaced large numbers of people from their homes and businesses in order to make room for Olympic venues. Over 1 million people lost their homes for the 2008 Beijing games alone. Brazil has similarly evicted large numbers of people for the Rio Olympics, and even more to build stadiums for the 2014 World Cup. Most of those evicted are the poor and people lacking in political power. The Olympics also often become propaganda showcases for authoritarian regimes, as happened with the 2008 Olympics in China, and the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia.

These problems are not inevitable results of holding a major international sports competition. I outlined some ways to eliminate, or at least cut back on them:

We can reform the Olympics to put an end to it. The forcible evictions are perhaps the easiest problem to fix. The International Olympic Committee and the international community more generally should insist that organizers commit to building the necessary venues without forcibly displacing residents. If a city cannot or will not do that, it should not be allowed to host the games. No sports event is worth the forcible displacement of innocent people from their homes. But God knows how much Govt. and Olympic committee is serious about these people.

Brazil didn’t learn its lesson, apparently, because more violence followed in advance of the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. About 70,000 people were displaced by the Olympics, and almost a thousand poor people — mostly black men — were killed during “pacification” efforts to clean up the city’s image between 2015 and summer 2016.

 

A lot of queries strike our mind when we think about Olympic is that how sports and games are being added to Olympic family? Who decided which games and sports will be held in upcoming Olympics and which will be excluded?

When come across these questions, the hot potatoes are

a) Why baseball is excluded ? 

b) why cricket is not a part of Olympic?

Why baseball is no longer an Olympic game?

As we know Olympic games is governed by International Olympic Committee (IOC), henceforth selection of sports and games also decided by this committee.

At the IOC meeting on July 7, 2005, baseball and softball were voted out of the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, United Kingdom, becoming the first sports voted out of the Olympics since polo was eliminated from the 1936 Olympics. The elimination excised 16 teams and more than 300 athletes from the 2012 Olympics.

Baseball and softball suffered from the regional nature of the sports — softball more than baseball. Each sport is popular in North and South America and east Asia. Neither has much interest in Europe, where a large amount of the IOC’s influence comes from.

Baseball and softball were voted out of the Olympics by the IOC in 2005. They didn’t give a single reason, but some of those are following:

·         The relatively small number of countries that could field a team, and the even smaller number of countries that were actually competitive.

 

·         MLB’s unwillingness to let its players go to the Olympics. Compare that to hockey, where the NHL has taken a break in some years to make the Winter Olympics hockey tournament a major event with the world’s best. Instead, the Olympic baseball tournament was largely amateurs (sport which is for pleasure not for money), and didn’t generate much buzz. It is not economical for the country.

That last one is probably the real killer. As with so many things, follow the money. The IOC saw a chance to make a big splash and generate revenue, but when MLB wouldn’t play along… well, move on to the next thing.

 

Why cricket is not included in Olympic?

It is surprise to know that Cricket was played for the first and the last time at the Olympics way back in 1900. Due to the lack of following for cricket in associate nations and also the reluctance from the cricket boards of different countries, the gentleman's game has not featured in any edition since.

Cricket is the longest format sports in the world. Shortest format of cricket, T20 takes 3.5 hours to complete which doesn’t fit with motto of Olympic. Although cricket is most popular sport in specific regions but still it is not earn fame across the globe.

Slow Pacing

You will never see a cricket World Cup, let alone a four- or five-day Olympic tournament. Even Twenty20 cricket, currently the shortest type of cricket and the likely format for an Olympic competition, takes at least three-and-a-half hours for a single match. If the tournament followed the same format as Olympic football (soccer), with 16 teams in four groups, that would make for over 100 hours of cricket, far too long for the Games, which feature around 300 events, all of which would be cricket's rivals for viewer attention.

 

Lack of Global Interest

The Olympic Games is about representation as much as anything—about bringing all parts of the world together under the banner of sports. Cricket is one of the most popular sports in the world, with an estimated one billion-plus people counted as fans, but that doesn't make it a global game. Top-level international cricket is played by only a handful of nations, and many residents in ICC associate and affiliate nations would have only a passing interest at most.

Logistics and Cost

Cricket demands a high level of expertise in administration and preparation of the cricket pitch—which would be difficult and potentially very expensive for a non-cricket-playing host. No nation is interested spent more on cricket which has less viewers as compared to other.

Unfit in the Olympic Motto

The Olympic motto is "Faster, Higher, Stronger," but cricket could more accurately be described as "Longer, Savvier, More Consistent."

          Cricket may only enter into Olympic with T10 format (Takes 2hr for completion). Undoubtedly cricket lovers are increasing like anything nowadays, but ICC should share a major part of broadcasting income with IOC.

         

Facts:

        

v                v  Though Brazil was ranked 12th globally in social inequality, the government managed to find           $14 billion to host the games, money that could've been spent to benefit poor and working              Brazilians.

                     v  The most expensive Summer Games were Beijing 2008 at US$40–44 billion and

v  The most expensive Winter Games were Sochi 2014 at US$51 billion.

v  The Games were held every four years, and this period, known as an Olympiad, was used by Greeks as one of their units of time measurement.