Where Were the Last Olympics Held?

Where Were the Last Olympics Held?

The Olympic Games event is the largest sports event in the world with thousands of athletes representing about 200 countries in various games. The games are governed by the International Olympics Committee (IOC). Both the winter and summer Olympics are held after every four years, but two are two years apart. The first Olympics is thought to have taken place in Olympia, Greece in the 8^th century.

Ancient Olympics

Ancient Olympic games were considered an athletic and religious festival. They were held for four years, and the participants were from the cities and Kingdoms of ancient Greece. Ancient Olympic games featured athletics and combat games such as chariot racing, wrestling, and the pankration, horse. During the Olympics religious activities such as offering sacrifices in honor of the Zeus, the god of sky and thunder who was the king of other gods. The winners of the games were respected, admired and considered immortal. The games became popular during the 5^th and 6^th centuries but gradually became less important as the Romans spread their influence over Greece.

Modern Olympics

The Greek revived the Olympic Games in the mid-19th century. In 1959, Zappas restored the Panathenaic Stadium which hosted the Olympics in 1870 and 1875. The International Olympic Committee (IOC0) was founded in 1890 by Baron Pierre de Coubertin with the aim of establishing a rotating sports event that would take place after every four years. In 1896 the first Olympics games under the IOC were held in Panathenaic Stadium, Athens. A total of 14 countries and 241 athletes participated in the event. In 1908, figure skating was introduced followed by ice hockey in 1920 as part of the Summer Olympics. Several other winter games were later introduced, and in 1924 the IOC decided to hold its first Winter Olympics separate from the Summer Olympics in Chamonix, France. At first, it was suggested that the same country would hold both Olympics, but the idea was quickly abandoned, but both events occurred in the same year until 1992 when the IOC decided that the two events would take place two years of each other.

Hosting of The Olympics Games

Athens became the first city to hold the Olympics under the IOC - since then, several cities have also hosted the games. The United States holds the record for hosting the largest number of Olympic events with four Summer Olympics and four Winter Olympics - the most recent being the 2002 winter Olympics. Of the seven continents, only Antarctica and Africa have yet to hold an Olympic event. To date, there have been twenty-eight summer Olympics and twenty winter Olympics. The Summer Olympics of 1916, 1940, and 1944 were cancelled due to the World Wars while the 1940 and 1944 Winter Olympics were also cancelled for the same reason. The most recent Summer Olympics was held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 2016 while the Summer Olympics was last held in Sochi, Russia in 2014. The next Summer Olympics will be held in Tokyo, Japan in 2020 then Paris, France in 2024 while Pyeongchang, South Korea will host the 2018 Winter Olympics followed by Beijing, China in 2022.