The Olympics: History & Fun Facts

I don’t think the Olympics needs much of an introduction. Every two years (except when there’s a pandemic that screws up the schedule), thousands of athletes from hundreds of countries all over the world compete in either the summer or winter Olympics. Today, the Olympics aims to create a sense of unity, bringing together the countries of the world in some friendly competition.

In this episode, I’m going to talk about the history of the Olympics, going way back to when it first started in Greece, and I’ll also scatter in some fun facts and figures along the way.

The Early Olympics

The first known Olympics were held in the summer of 776 B.C. in Olympia, a sort of religious sanctuary in southern Greece where people went to worship their gods. In fact, the entire games were created in honour of the guy whose name you’ve heard lots of times before on this podcast if you’re a regular listener - Zeus.

Visitors flocked to see the Temple of Zeus, where there stood a huge gold and ivory statue of the king of the guy himself. Zeus was said to have taken up residence in Olympia around 1200 BC when the Eleans conquered the surrounding area. Zeus marked his ascension by hurling a thunderbolt into the sacred grove from his home atop Mount Olympus.

Athletes prayed to Zeus for victory and left gifts to thank him for their success. There were no gold, silver and bronze medals; instead, winners were given a wreath of leaves and a hero's welcome back home. Athletes competed for the glory of their city and winners were seen as being touched by the gods.

Worshipping Zeus was one of the few things the ancient Greeks agreed on. Divided into different city-states, or settlements, the Greeks were often at war with each other. But even in times of unrest, duelling settlements declared a truce so their athletes could take part in the Olympics.

Before the games began, messengers were sent out to announce a 'sacred truce', which meant that any wars should be called off so that people could travel safely to Olympia. People would travel from city-states in every corner of the Greek world, coming from as far away as Iberia (Spain) in the west and the Black Sea (Turkey) in the east.

From the first edition in 776 BC until 550 BC, the Games took place among the sanctuary itself. The sacred olive tree of Zeus, from which the victory wreaths were cut, marked the finishing line for all races. The first stadium was a simple affair using the natural embankments of the surrounding hills. It went through several incarnations over the years, sometimes even moving around to attract more spectators.

While usually quite a serene and idyllic site, what usually was just a big wheat field turned into complete chaos around the time of the Olympics. Anyone who wanted to get a big audience from all over the Greek world showed up in Olympia. Painters, artists, and all sorts of creators and tradesmen all went there to put their wares on display. For anyone who wanted to raise their profile, this was the perfect place and time to do it.

Despite all the reincarnations of the stadium, the length of the track inside the stadium remained constant. It always measured 600ft or 192m and the reason is unknown, but one of the stories is that this was the distance Hercules could run on a single breath.

The main event in the early Olympics actually wasn’t a sporting event, but a sacrifice. On the third day of the games, 100 oxen were sacrificed and burnt on the Altar of Zeus. This altar was not made from stone, but from the leftover ash of all the sacrificed oxen. By around 200 AD, the mound of ash stood six meters high! However, while Olympia is a sanctuary to Zeus, he wasn’t the only deity worshipped at the site. There were over 70 different altars, and people could make their sacrifice to pretty much anyone they wanted to.

Only men were allowed to compete in the games, and in the early days, it was a rule that they must compete naked. Considering this episode is all about the weird facts as well as the history, I had to find out more about this strange detail.

Why Naked?!

There are indisputable records going back to the philosopher Plato in the 5th century BC and even Homer's Iliad, as well as many drawings that confirm it was common practice for all male track and field athletes to take part naked. This included the often dangerous sports of discus throwing, wrestling, boxing and horse racing without any protective clothing. The only exception seems to have been for charioteers, who wore long white tunics.

Fun fact: the words gymnastics and gymnasium are based on the Greek adjective gymnos, which means lightly-clad or naked.

When this naked tradition started is open to debate. According to Dionysius of Halicarnassus, a writer in the 1st century BC, Greek athletes did not compete in the nude until the 15th Olympiad in 720 B.C., more than half a century after the birth of the first Olympic Games in 776 B.C, when a Spartan runner named Acanthus was said to have set the fashion by appearing without the customary loincloth.

However, 200 years later, the origin was attributed to a different sprinter, Osippus, who won the one-stade footrace (about 180m) at the Olympics of 720 B.C. Apparently, he realised that a naked man could run faster than one impeded by a loincloth.

In the 7th century AD, more than 1300 years later, writer Isidore of Seville suggested that during a race in Athens, one of the runners had the bad luck to trip over his own loincloth when it slipped down. A magistrate in charge of the games ordered a new ruling that athletes should compete naked.

So who knows when this practice actually started! But for now, let’s get back to the history and not focus a whole episode on Olympic nudity.

How About the Women?

So if men were only allowed to compete, how about the women? Most women weren’t even allowed to attend the Olympics as spectators, let alone compete. Specifically, unmarried women and girls were allowed to attend, but married women were barred. If they were caught sneaking in, they could be thrown off the side of a mountain as punishment.

However, women could still own horses in the chariot races at the Olympics, and unmarried women had their own festival at Olympia every four years. It was called Heraia and was held in honour of Hera, Zeus's wife. Little is known about this festival other than what Pausanias, a 2nd century AD Greek traveler, wrote.

It was supposedly organised and supervised by a committee of 16 women and included friendly competitions like running races. (Unfortunately, married women couldn’t compete in this either, but they could watch.) The women wore their hair free down their back, and a tunic hanging almost as low as the knees covering only the left shoulder and breast. Winners were awarded crowns of sacred olive branches, just like the men.

The Decline and Rebirth of the Olympics

After the Roman Empire conquered Greece in the mid-2nd century BC, the Games continued, but their standards and quality declined. In one notorious example from 67 AD, the decedent Emperor Nero entered an Olympic chariot race, only to disgrace himself by declaring himself the winner even after he fell off his chariot during the event.

In 393 AD, Emperor Theodosius, a Christian, called for a ban on all “pagan” festivals, ending the ancient Olympic tradition after nearly 12 centuries.

It would be another 1,500 years before the Olympics would make its triumphant return. The man responsible for its rebirth was a Frenchman named Baron Pierre de Coubertin, who presented the idea in 1894.

He organised a meeting with 79 delegates who represented nine countries, and they all voted unanimously for the Olympic Games to return. They gave him the task of putting together an international committee, which would become the IOC (the International Olympic Committee) that we know today. Athens was chosen for the revival, and planning began.

The Start of the Modern Olympics

The first modern Olympics took place in 1896. It welcomed 60,000 spectators and featured 280 participants (unfortunately still all male) from 12 nations, competing in 43 events including track and field, gymnastics, swimming, wrestling, cycling, tennis, weightlifting, shooting and fencing.

Many events, including sprinting and wrestling, are still part of the modern games. Other sports such as chariot racing obviously no longer happen today. Another one that’s been long forgotten is the full-combat martial art called pankration, which was known as the ultimate fighting sport and was sort of a combination of wrestling, boxing and other fighting sports, but with no weight classes, no time limits, and no rules except no biting and no eye gouging. The fight would only end either by submission (an opponent could raise his index finger as a sign of being defeated), or death.

After the success of the 1896 Games, the Olympics entered a period of stagnation which threatened its survival. The subsequent Games held in 1900 and 1904 failed to attract much participation or attention.

The 1904 Olympics

The 1904 Olympics was complete chaos, most of all for its blatant racism. It was held at the Louisiana Purchase Exhibition in Missouri, and the prospect of an arduous trip to a second-tier city in the American Midwest kept almost all of the top European athletes away. Of the 650 athletes in the 1904 Olympics, 580 were American. Fewer than half the events had even one non-American entrant.

At this time, America was in the process of stepping out into the world as an imperialist power. One of the centrepieces of the fair in which the Olympics was held was its Philippine village, featuring people from America’s newly acquired territory in a replicated “native habitat” that spread out over 47 acres. Smaller villages were constructed to house Pygmies from Central Africa, American Indians from Mexico, Syrians, Turks, and other “savages”. Visitors could gawk at them as they simulated a normal day back home. The display was in the spirit of both turn-of-the-century colonialism and social science, and it was there to remind spectators how awesome and forward-thinking white Americans were.

The Olympics had their own role to play in this too. A man named James E. Sullivan (not James P. Sullivan, a.k.a. Sully from Monsters Inc.) was nationally famous for sponsoring and officiating athletic competitions. In 1904, he was the head of the fair’s Department of Physical Culture. He was in charge of promoting the virtues of American-style athleticism. If the display of “primitive” people from around the world was meant to show America’s cultural superiority, Sullivan saw an Olympic games dominated by American achievement as a demonstration of their physical superiority.

Working together with the Department of Anthropology, they decided they would hold what Sullivan called a “Special Olympics” in which the “savages” would mimic their white counterparts. The event was called “Anthropology Days” and featured European-style competitions: shot put, high jump, long jump, and others. It went poorly - none of the people they’d roped in actually wanted to do it, and with so many languages spoken, the starting gun concept was understandably lost on many of the participants, as was the idea of breaking through the finish line - many would stop short or run below the tape.

The event was a total failure, and luckily, it never saw the light of day in future Olympics. This year wasn’t a total embarrassment though: George Poage became the first African-American to win a medal, taking home the bronze in the 400-meter hurdles. Frank Pierce became the first American Indian Olympian, running in the marathon and setting the stage for Jim Thorpe to dominate the games in 1912.  And two Zulus, working at one of the exhibits in the fair asked if they could run the marathon, and they ended up placing 5th and 12th. 

The 1904 games were utterly chaotic for other reasons, too: there seemed to be something weird going on with the marathon runners. I told Ellie when researching this episode yesterday that some facts made me laugh a lot, and this is what I was laughing at:

• William Garcia was a competitor who almost died after the insane amount of dust on the track coated his oesophagus and tore his stomach lining.
• Another runner, John Lordon, began to puke uncontrollably from the heat and forfeited.
• Len Tau, a runner from South Africa, was chased nearly a mile off course by rabid street dogs.
• Fred Lorz was the first in the lead after the gun went off, but he suffered cramps and hitched a ride with some people in a car. After he rode for 11 miles, he passed the finish line at a little over 3 hours. Alice Roosevelt, the 20-year-old daughter of President Theodore Roosevelt, was about to award him the gold medal when people called him a cheat and he was disqualified.
• Thomas Hicks was bizarrely given a dose of egg whites and strychnine (basically a type of pesticide) by his handlers, which was the first recorded instance of drug use in the modern Olympics. He would later start hallucinating just before the finish line, but he went on to win. He lost 8lbs during the run.

Moving on from the Chaos of 1904

The Olympics truly took off as an international sporting event after 1924, when the Games were held in Paris. Around 3,000 athletes (now with more than 100 women among them) from 44 nations competed that year, and for the first time the Games featured a closing ceremony.

The Winter Olympics was added in this year too, to showcase winter sports including figure skating, ice hockey, and bobsledding. The summer and winter events were always held in the same year, but since 1994 they have been held separately and have alternated every two years.

In 1948, Sir Ludwig Guttmann, determined to promote the rehabilitation of soldiers after World War II, organised a multi-sport event between several hospitals to coincide with the 1948 London Olympics. Originally known as the Stoke Mandeville Games, Guttmann's event became an annual sports festival. This continued for the next 12 years.

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. Since then, the Paralympics have been held in every Olympic year and, starting with the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, the host city for the Olympics has also hosted the Paralympics. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) signed an agreement in 2001 which guaranteed that host cities would be contracted to manage both the Olympic and Paralympic Games. The agreement came into effect at the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing, and at the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver. (I didn’t realise it was so recent!)

Two years before the 2012 Games, the London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games chairman Sebastian Coe made the following statement about the Paralympics and Olympics in London: “We want to change public attitudes towards disability, celebrate the excellence of Paralympic sport and to enshrine from the very outset that the two Games are an integrated whole.”

When the 2004 Summer Olympics returned to Athens for the first time in more than a century, nearly 11,000 athletes from a record 201 countries competed. In a gesture that joined both ancient and modern Olympic traditions, the shotput competition that year was held at the site of the classical Games in Olympia.

There have only been 3 times when the regularity of the games was interrupted because of global events: in 1916 during WW1, in 1940 and 1944 because of WW2, and then in 2020 when it was delayed because of Covid.

Women in the Olympics

Women were first allowed to compete at the 1900 Summer Olympics in Paris, but at the 1992 Summer Olympics (so 92 years later), 35 countries were still only sending all-male delegations. This number thankfully dropped rapidly over the following years. In 2000, Bahrain sent two women competitors for the first time; in 2004, Afghanistan sent two women; and in 2008, the United Arab Emirates also sent two women.

By 2010, only three countries had never sent female athletes to the Games: Brunei, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar. Brunei had taken part in only three Olympic Games, sending only a single athlete on each occasion, but Saudi Arabia and Qatar had been competing regularly with all-male teams.

In 2010, the International Olympic Committee announced it would "press" these countries to enable and facilitate the participation of women for the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. Anita DeFrantz, chair of the IOC's Women and Sports Commission, suggested that countries be barred if they prevented women from competing. Shortly thereafter, the Qatar Olympic Committee announced that it "hoped to send up to four female athletes in shooting and fencing" to the 2012 Summer Games.

In 2008, Ali Al-Ahmed, director of the Institute for Gulf Affairs, likewise called for Saudi Arabia to be barred from the Games, describing its ban on women athletes as a violation of the International Olympic Committee charter. In July 2010, The Independent reported: "Pressure is growing on the International Olympic Committee to kick out Saudi Arabia, who are likely to be the only major nation not to include women in their Olympic team for 2012. Should Saudi Arabia send a male-only team to London, we understand they will face protests from equal rights and women's groups which threaten to disrupt the Games.”

At the 2012 Summer Olympics, every participating nation included female athletes for the first time in Olympic history. (Literally only 9 years ago. What?!) Saudi Arabia included two female athletes in its delegation; Qatar, four; and Brunei, one.

The only sport on the Olympic programme that features men and women competing together is the equestrian disciplines. As of 2008, there were still more medal events for men than women. With the addition of women's boxing to the programme in the 2012 Summer Olympics, however, female athletes were able to compete in all the same sports as men. There are currently two Olympic events in which male athletes may not compete: synchronised swimming and rhythmic gymnastics.

The Olympics on TV

The 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin were the first Games to be broadcast on television, though only to local audiences. The 1956 Winter Olympics in Italy were the first internationally televised Games, and the broadcasting rights for the following Winter Games in California were sold for the first time to specialised broadcasting networks—CBS paid $394,000 for the American rights.

In the following decades, the sale of broadcasting rights enabled the IOC to increase the exposure of the Olympic Games, generating more interest, which then enhanced the appeal of TV air time to the advertisers. This allowed them to charge ever-increasing fees for those rights. For example, CBS paid $375 million for the American broadcast rights for the 1998 Games, while NBC spent $3.5 billion for the American rights to air every Olympic Games from 2000 to 2012. In 2011, NBC agreed to a $4.38 billion contract with the IOC to broadcast the Olympics through the 2020 Games, the most expensive television rights deal in Olympic history.

Viewership increased massively from the 1960s onwards. This was due to the launch of satellites for broadcasting live TV worldwide starting in 1964, and the introduction of colour TV in 1968. The global audience for the 1968 Mexico City Games was estimated to be 600 million, which increased to 900 million for the Los Angeles Games of 1984, and then to 3.5 billion by the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona.

The sale of the Olympic brand has been controversial. The argument is that the Games have become indistinguishable from any other commercialised sporting event. Another criticism is that the Games are funded by host cities and national governments; the IOC incurs none of the cost, yet controls all the rights and profits from the Olympic symbols. The IOC also takes a percentage of all sponsorship and broadcast income.

We’ve also seen the sale of broadcast rights to be a huge pain in the UK this year, with the BBC receiving loads of complaints about the lack of live Tokyo Olympics coverage, with viewers not realising that IOC had sold the majority of UK TV rights to Discovery.

During the London 2012 and Rio 2016 Olympics, the BBC was able to offer dozens of free livestreams of different sports, revolutionising the way British viewers watched the games and providing publicity to niche events that normally wouldn’t have had as much attention. But now, this is no longer possible, after Olympics organisers decided to sell the European television rights for the games to Discovery in a £920m deal. Discovery has now put the vast majority of the coverage behind a paywall, accessible only through their Eurosport channels or on their new £6.99-a-month streaming service Discovery+. Thanks for that!

Fun Facts

So I don’t end the episode talking about the jolly subjects of sexism and commercialism, I thought I’d end instead by going through some random fun facts about the Olympics.

• During the 2012 London Games, the Olympic Village required 165,000 towels for a bit more than two weeks of activity.

• From 1912-1948, artists participated in the Olympics: Painters, sculptors, architects, writers, and musicians competed for medals in their respective fields. They competed by creating works of art that often celebrated the sporting successes going on at the same time.

• Some other sports that are sadly not part of the Olympics anymore are solo synchronised swimming, tug of war, rope climbing, hot air ballooning, duelling pistol, tandem bicycle, swimming obstacle race, and plunge for distance (in which the competitor dives from a stationary take-off from a height of 18 inches above the water. Upon reaching the water the plunger glides face downward for a period of 60 seconds without imparting any propulsion to the body from the arms and legs. They do this for a minute, and the longest recorded distance plunged wins.)
• The oldest Olympian ever was Swedish shooter Oscar Swahn who won gold when he was 60 years old in the 1908 Olympics. In the 1920 Olympic Games in Antwerp he participated again, won his sixth Olympic medal and was crowned oldest Olympian at age 72.
• London is the only city to host the summer Games three times: 1908, 1948 and 2012.
• Speaking of the London Olympics, in London 1908, the Games went on for 187 days — they started in April and didn't end until October.
• During the 1936 Berlin Games, two Japanese pole-vaulters tied for second place. Instead of competing again, they cut the silver and bronze medals in half and fused the two different halves together so that each of them had a half-silver and half-bronze medal.