Which European country hosted the 1956 Winter Olympic Games?
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1956 Winter Olympics Olympic Games Winter Olympic Games
The 1956 Winter Olympics, officially known as the VII Olympic Winter Games (French: Les VIIes Jeux olympiques d'hiver) (Italian: VII Giochi olimpici invernali), was a winter multi-sport event celebrated in Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy. This celebration of the Games was held from 26 January to 5 February 1956. Cortina, which had originally been awarded the 1944 Winter Olympics, beat out Montreal, Colorado Springs and Lake Placid for the right to host the 1956 Games. The Cortina Games were unique in that many of the venues were within walking distance of each other. The organising committee received financial support from the Italian government for infrastructure improvements, but the rest of the costs for the Games had to be privately financed. Consequently, the organising committee was the first to rely heavily on corporate sponsorship for funding.

Thirty-two nations—the largest number of participating Winter Olympic countries to that point—competed in the four sports and twenty-four events. The Soviet Union made its Winter Olympics debut and won more medals than any nation. Austrian Toni Sailer became the first person to sweep all three alpine skiing events in a single Olympics. The figure skating competition was held outdoors for the last time at these Games. Logistically, the only problem encountered was a lack of snow at the alpine skiing events. To remedy this, the Italian army transported large amounts of snow to ensure the courses were adequately covered.

Politics did not impact the 1956 Winter Games as at the Summer Games in Melbourne, Australia, where the Soviet response to the Hungarian Uprising and the Suez War caused many nations to boycott the Games. The Cortina Olympics were the first Winter Olympics televised to a multi-national audience.  Since Communist countries had superior technology, western European countries like Finland and a few isolated geographic areas of West Germany and Austria were only able to receive Communist broadcasts of the Games. This was perceived to be a significant win for the Soviets in the propaganda front of the Cold War,  even though western Europe (including most of West Germany and Austria) was receiving the Eurovision broadcast signal. 

Host city selection

Cortina d'Ampezzo is a ski resort village situated in the Dolomite Alps in the north-eastern corner of Italy.   In 1956, it had a population of 6,500 people.   Count Alberto Bonacossa, an accomplished alpine skier, figure skater and a member of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) since 1925, spearheaded the effort to bring the Olympic Games to Cortina d'Ampezzo.Findling and Pelle (1996), p. 258 He persuaded the city council of Cortina to bid for the 1944 Games. During the 38th IOC Congress held in London in 1939, Cortina d'Ampezzo was awarded the 1944 Winter Olympics, but the Games were canceled due to the outbreak of World War II. 

In 1946 the Italian Winter Sports Federation convened in Milan and decided to support a new attempt from Cortina to host the Winter Games. A delegation, led by Count Bonacossa, presented Cortina's bid to host the 1952 Winter Olympics at the 40th IOC Session in Stockholm, Sweden. They were backed by the city's council and the Italian National Olympic Committee (CONI, Comitato Olimpico Nazionale Italiano). A rival bid from Oslo, Norway, soundly defeated Cortina.  Count Bonacossa's and CONI prepared a third bid, this time for the 1956 Winter Games. The host city selection took place in Rome, during the 43rd IOC Session. On 28 April 1949, Cortina d'Ampezzo was selected with 75% of the votes, over bids from Montreal, Colorado Springs and Lake Placid. Unfortunately, Bonacossa died on 30 January 1953, three years before he could witness Cortina host the Games. 

Organization

The 1956 Winter Olympics was organised by a committee composed of members of the Italian National Olympic Committee and the Italian government.  Observers were sent to the Oslo Games in 1952 to collect information regarding the sports programme, infrastructure, and accommodation requirements.Comitato Olimpico Nazionale Italiano (1956), pp. 117–118  The intelligence gathered there indicated that Cortina's facilities were not up to Olympic standards. The town did not have an ice stadium, or a speed skating rink; the alpine ski runs, ski jump and bobsleigh run were in poor condition. Cortina was a small village, and its infrastructure would be overwhelmed by the crowds expected for the Games. To accommodate the influx of people, new roads and rail lines had to be built, and the city's power grid and telephone lines expanded. Enhancements also had to be made to sewer and water capacity.Findling and Pelle (1996), p. 259–260  The Italian government supplied Italian lira 460 million for infrastructure improvements. The Italian Olympic Committee was responsible for funding the rest of the costs of hosting the Games. They did this by setting aside monies from their own budget, ticket sales, and even culling funds from local football betting pools.   The organising committee also took the unprecedented step of selling corporate sponsorship.  For example, Fiat was designated the official car of the 1956 Winter Olympics, and Olivetti supplied typewriters for the 400 journalists attending the Games. 

Politics

The Cold War began after the allied victory in World War II. Until 1952, many of the Communist countries of Eastern Europe had participated in Worker's Olympics or Spartakiads. The Soviet Union emerged from international isolation by eschewing the Spartakiad and participating in the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki; they made their Winter Olympics debut at the Cortina Games. Soviet general secretary Nikita Khrushchev's aim was to use international sports competitions, such as the Olympics, to demonstrate the superiority of Communism, strengthen political ties with other Communist countries, and project the Soviet Union as a peace-loving nation actively engaged in the world.   The Soviets' participation at the Olympics raised the level of competition as they won the most medals and more gold medals than any other nation.Findling and Pelle (1996), p. 261  The Cortina Games were held before the Hungarian uprising, and the Suez War, which occurred in the autumn of 1956; the Winter Games escaped the boycotts that plagued the Melbourne Olympics, which were celebrated in November and December of that year. 

Television

The Cortina Games were the first Winter Olympics to be broadcast to a multi-national audience.   Television as a mass communication technology was expanding rapidly in the 1950s. In the midst of the Cold War, Europe was a propaganda battlefield as countries relayed television signals across the Iron Curtain.Schwoch (2009), p. 39  By 1956, countries in the Soviet sphere of influence had achieved a technological advantage and were able to broadcast Communist television programmes into Finland, the eastern border regions and more isolated geographic areas of West Germany and Austria, where residents had coverage from an East German broadcast with a pro-Communist point-of-view. Most West Germans watched the 1956 Winter Olympics via Eurovision broadcasts which were relayed all over western Europe including all major West German stations (Eurovision connectivity in 1956  ) The political ramifications were not the only impact television had these Olympics. The Cortina Games did not generate revenue from television – the 1960 Winter Olympics in Squaw Valley were the first to do so -but were an experiment in the feasibility of televising a large multi-sport event.Guttman (1986), p. 135 For the first time at an Olympic Games, the venues were built with television in mind. For example, the grand stand at the cross-country ski venue (Lo Stadio della neve) was built facing south so that the television cameras would not be adversely affected by the rising or setting sun.

Events

Medals were awarded in 24 events contested in 4 sports (8 disciplines). The programme for the 1956 Winter Games saw two new events added to the four sports and twenty-two events from the 1952 Olympics, namely the men's 30 kilometre cross-country ski race and the women's 3x5 kilometre cross-country relay race. The Soviet Union requested the inclusion of a women's speed skating event, but this was rejected by the IOC at the 49th Session in Athens in 1954.
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Opening ceremonies

The opening ceremonies took place on Thursday, 26 January 1956 in the Olympic Ice Stadium. Temporary seating was added to boost the stadium's capacity to 14,000 people. Athletes representing 32 nations marched in the ceremony and Mr Giovanni Gronchi, President of the Italian Republic, declared the Games open. At this point, speed skater Guido Caroli skated into the stadium with the Olympic flame. While he was on a circuit of the Ice Stadium he tripped and fell over a television cable; he regained his feet and lit the cauldron.  The Olympic oath was delivered by Giuliana Chenal-Minuzzo; this was the first time a female athlete gave the oath at an Olympic Games.  The Olympic Hymn, officially recognised as such at the IOC congress in Paris on 13 June 1955, was played for the first time at the Cortina Games.

Bobsleigh

There were two bobsleigh events, the two-man and four-man competitions. Every participating nation was limited to two sleighs in each event. The sleighs made four runs, with the total time summed. The Italians won gold and silver in the two-man event. Switzerland took third place when they passed Spain on the fourth run.   In the four-man event held a week later, the Swiss won the gold medal, Italy picked up the silver, and the United States won the bronze.   Italy had participated in all six previous Olympic bobsleigh competitions but had never reached the podium.    Italians Renzo Alverà and Eugenio Monti won the silver in the two-man competition and were also on the silver-winning four-man sleigh.  Monti's silver medals at the 1956 Games were the first of six Olympic medals he would win in his bobsleigh career. The bobsleigh run at Cortina was eventually renamed the Eugenio Monti track to honour his bobsleigh career.   The medals won in bobsleigh would be the host nation's only medals at these Games.Comitato Olimpico Nazionale Italiano (1956), p. 689  One complaint of the bobsleigh events was that the track surface suffered extensive damage due to overuse. This hampered the performance of teams drawn late in the competition. 

Ice hockey

The eighth Olympic ice hockey tournament also served as both the European and World Championships. Split into three pools before the tournament, the ten participating nations began by playing each team in their pool in a round robin format. The top two teams from each pool advanced to the final rounds, with the remaining teams playing in a consolation group for 7th through 10th places. Canada, Czechoslovakia, and the Soviet Union finished their preliminary pools with undefeated records. Germany, the United States, and Sweden took second place in their pools.Noverr and Ziewacz (1983), p. 232

An important early matchup of the final rounds was the game between Canada (winners of six gold medals and one silver in the previous seven tournaments) and the United States (which had finished one place behind Canada each of the five times the Americans played). The United States beat Canada 4–1. The US then faced the USSR in a game that would eventually make the difference in the gold medal. The Soviets went on to win the match 4–0. The Soviets claimed the gold by beating Canada, while the United States took the silver and Canada, with their two losses, earned the bronze.  The victory of the Soviet team was particularly noteworthy given the fact that they only began competing internationally in 1954. 

Figure skating

The Cortina Games were the last Olympics to feature figure skating outdoors.  Skaters from the United States won five medals, sweeping the men's event and taking the top two spots in the ladies' event. Tenley Albright was the women's Olympic champion despite sustaining a serious injury in practice. Less than two weeks before the Olympics she was practicing her skating routine when she hit a rut in the ice and fell. Her skate cut through several layers of clothing, and sliced her right leg at the ankle.   Her teammate Carol Heiss won the silver, and Austrian Ingrid Wendl earned the bronze medal. Americans Hayes Jenkins, Ronald Robertson, and Jenkins' brother David Jenkins were the men's medallists. The Austrian pair of Sissy Schwarz and Kurt Oppelt took the gold medal in the pairs event.   Canadians Frances Dafoe and Norris Bowden won the silver and the Hungarian siblings Marianna Nagy and László Nagy defended their bronze medal from the 1952 Games. 

Speed skating

The Soviet Union dominated the speed skating events by winning seven of the twelve medals, including four golds. Soviet skaters set two world records, an Olympic record, and had at least one medallist in each of the four events. Yevgeny Grishin was the top individual performer, with two gold medals and two world records.  Grishin and Soviet teammate Yuri Mikhaylov tied in the 1,500 metre race. It was decided to award both of the athletes gold medals and leave the silver medal position vacant.   Sigvard Ericsson of Sweden earned gold and silver medals and set an Olympic record in the 10,000 metre event. 

Alpine skiing

Six alpine skiing events were held, three for men and three for women. The races were the downhill, slalom and giant slalom. Toni Sailer of Austria swept the men's gold medals, becoming the first person to win three alpine skiing golds in a single Olympics.  Led by Sailer, the Austrians dominated the alpine skiing events for both men and women, winning nine out of a possible eighteen medals.   The Austrians were particularly successful in the giant slalom; the men swept the medals and the women took silver and bronze. Chiharu Igaya won the first Winter Olympics medal for Japan when he placed second in the slalom.    Swiss teammates, Madeleine Berthod and Renée Colliard won the women's downhill and slalom races. Germany earned its only gold medal of the Games when Ossi Reichert took first in the giant slalom. 

Cross-country skiing

Two women's events were added to the cross-country skiing programme for the first time. The Soviet women took the top two spots in the individual 10 kilometre race but lost to Finland in the new 3x5 kilometre relay. The men had a new event as well, the 30 kilometre race, which was won by Veikko Hakulinen from Finland. The other three men's events were won by three different nations: Norway took the 15 kilometre race, Sweden the 50 kilometre event, and the Soviet Union won the relay.   Overall the Soviet Union won seven out of a possible eighteen medals in cross-country skiing. Sweden, behind the strong skiing of Sixten Jernberg, won six medals.   Jernberg won a gold, two silvers, and a bronze, which were the first of nine Olympic medals he would earn in his cross-country career. 

Nordic combined

There were significant changes to the Nordic combined event at the 1956 Games. The event had always been a cross-country race followed by a ski jump. Originally the competitors in the Nordic combined were entered into the open 18 kilometre cross-country race, which meant that they competed alongside athletes who were dedicated cross-country skiers. Their times were combined with their score from two ski jumps to determine the winner.  At the Cortina Games, the format was altered to allow the Nordic combined athletes to compete in a dedicated 15 kilometre cross-country race. Two days later they had three jumps on the ski jump hill. Their best two scores were combined with their cross-country time to determine a winner. This format would become the standard for Nordic combined competitions going forward.  Norway continued its dominance of Nordic combined when Sverre Stenersen won the gold medal. Since its inception at the 1924 Games, the country had only lost the Nordic combined event once.    Stenersen was followed by Bengt Eriksson of Sweden and Poland's Franciszek Gąsienica Groń.

Ski jumping

In the ski jumping event, the Swiss jumper, Andreas Däscher introduced a new style of jumping, which would soon come to be known as the Däscher technique. Before these Games, the athletes would hold their arms forward over their heads.  Däscher reasoned that if the athlete held his arms at his side he would fly farther. Adherents to this new style dominated the competition. Finnish jumpers Antti Hyvärinen and Aulis Källakorpi took first and second place; Harry Glass of Germany won the bronze medal.  This competition marked the end of Norwegian dominance in the sport. Since the first winter Games in 1924, the Norwegians had won the gold medal at each Olympics until 1956. The poor performance of the Norwegian jumpers was attributed to their refusal to use the new jumping technique. 

Closing ceremonies

The closing ceremonies took place on Sunday, 5 February in the Olympic Ice Stadium. They were preceded by a figure skating exhibition performed by the men's, women's, and pairs figure skating champions. The flag bearers of each nation then entered the stadium followed by the flags of Greece and the United States. These two flags were raised to honor the nation that founded the Olympics and the next country to host the Winter Games. Avery Brundage, chairman of the International Olympic Committee, declared the Olympics closed, and a fireworks display concluded the Games. 

Calendar

All dates are in Central European Time (UTC+1)
The opening ceremony was held on 26 January, along with the first games of the hockey tournament. From 27 January until 5 February, the day of the closing ceremony, at least one event final was held each day. 

† The numeral indicates the number of event finals for each sport held that day.

Venues

A unique feature of the Cortina Olympics was the proximity of many event locations which were in walking distance of each other within the town of Cortina. The speed skating events were held at Lake Misurina, roughly 13 km from Cortina. The venues featured grandstands heated by silica coils built into the seats. Silica coil heating was a technology that had only recently become economical.   The competitions were held without incident except for the skiing events, which suffered from a lack of snow.

A notable venue not found at the 1956 Games was an Olympic Village, where the athletes would be housed. The town of Cortina d'Ampezzo had a population of less than 7,000 people in 1956. Local hotels were concerned that after the Olympics an Olympic Village would so significantly increase the hotel capacity it would put many of them out of business. Athletes were billeted by local families or stayed in hotels during the Games. 

The Olympic Ice Stadium (Stadio Olimpico Del Ghiaccio)   was intended to be the focal point of the Games. It was built on the banks of the Boite river just north of Cortina. After new roads and a bridge had been constructed, the stadium was an eight-minute walk from the center of town. The stadium was built to accommodate 6,000–7,000 people. Due to space limitations the grandstands were constructed vertically, with tiers built directly on top of each other. There were two artificial ice rinks of 30 by, with a total ice surface of 4320 sqm. A special cooling plant was built under the stadium, which froze the ice through the evaporation of ammonia. The construction cost totaled ITL 1.3 billion (US$2.1 million in 1956), making it the most expensive venue of these Games. The stadium was used for the opening and closing ceremonies, all of the figure skating competitions and select ice hockey events. After the Games, the organising committee made the Ice Stadium a gift to the city of Cortina. It was used as an ice skating rink in the winter and an outdoor gymnasium for judo and gymnastics in the summer.Comitato Olimpico Nazionale Italiano (1956), pp. 124–133

The Apollonio Stadium was used for select games of the ice hockey tournament. Considerable work had to be done to bring the stadium up to date. A second rink was added to allow for two games to be held simultaneously. The stadium was outfitted with electric lights and the seating capacity was enlarged to accommodate 2,000 people. 

The bobsleigh run (Pista Olimpica di Bob – Eugenio Monti),  was originally constructed in 1928. The track was rebuilt and expanded several times during the years leading up to the Olympics. A state-of-the-art signal board was installed displaying a diagram of the run with the position of each sleigh on the run shown with lights. 

Situated around  from Cortina, near Zuel, the "Italia" Jump (Trampolino Olimpico Italia) was originally built in 1923 as the "Franchetti" Jump. After modifications in 1926, the first structure was demolished in 1939 and rebuilt in 1940. With the 1956 Games coming to Cortina, the jump had to be updated again to comply with the technical demands of the Olympics. On April 15, 1955, the "Franchetti" Jump was finally demolished and the new "Italia Jump" was completed in the same year at a cost of nearly ITL 310 million ($500,000).  The reinforced concrete platform was 54 m high, and possessed a  long, 35° steep in-run. Two grandstands, each with a capacity for 3,000 people, were placed on either side of the landing slope; a natural amphiteatre at the bottom of the hill could hold up to 40,000 standing spectators. A special road was built between Cortina and the venue for the transport of athletes, officials and authorities. 

The Snow Stadium (Stadio della neve) was constructed 2 km from Cortina, and hosted all of the cross-country events. Two grandstands were constructed to accommodate 6,000 people. Three types of cross-country courses were constructed: one of 15 km, three of 5 km, and four of 10 km. Some of these courses went through the bobsleigh run. As a result, a bridge had to be constructed so events occurring in the two venues would not interfere with each other. 

The alpine runs (Le piste alpine) were built on the slopes of Monte Tofana and Monte Faloria in the nearby Dolomite alps. The men's and women's downhill and slalom races were held on Tofana. Faloria was the site of the two giant slalom events. It took nearly two years to complete construction of the runs. In previous years, lack of snow was never an issue, but in the winter of 1956 there was insufficient snowfall for skiers to safely navigate the runs. As a consequence, snow had to be transported from other parts of the mountains by the Italian army. 

The Misurina rink (La pista di Misurina) was the location of the speed skating events. This was the last time that speed skating at the Olympics was held on natural ice. It was 13 km from Cortina. The rink was established at the northern end of the lake with a mountain backdrop. Stands were constructed to accommodate 8,500 people. Despite the event being held outdoors on lake ice, two world records and two Olympic records were broken during the competition. 

Three of the venues for these games (the bobsleigh run, indoor arena, and ski jump) would serve as film location for the 1981 James Bond film For Your Eyes Only.

Participating nations

A total of 32 nations sent athletes to Cortina d'Ampezzo. Along with the Soviet Union, Bolivia and Iran competed at the Winter Games for the first time. Korea, Liechtenstein, and Turkey returned after having missed the 1952 Winter Olympics, while Argentina, Denmark, New Zealand, and Portugal did not compete at these Games,  after having participated in the previous edition. Athletes from West Germany (FRG) and East Germany (GDR) competed together as the United Team of Germany, an arrangement that would continue for the following two Olympiads. 

Below is the list of participating nations, with the number of competitors indicated in brackets:

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Medal count

These are the top ten nations that won medals at the 1956 Winter Olympics:

* Two gold medals were awarded when Soviet skaters tied in the 1,500 metre speed skating competition. The modern Olympic Games or Olympics ( ) are the leading international sporting event 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 to be the world's foremost sports competition with more than 200 nations participating. The Olympic Games are held every four years, with the Summer and Winter Games alternating by occurring every four years but two years apart.

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. 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 the creation of the Winter Olympic Games for ice and winter sports, the Paralympic Games for athletes with a disability, and the Youth Olympic Games for teenage athletes. The IOC has had to adapt to a variety of economic, political, and technological advancements. As a result, the Olympics has shifted away from pure amateurism, as envisioned by Coubertin, to allowing participation of professional athletes. The growing importance of mass media created the issue of corporate sponsorship and commercialization of the Games. World wars led to the cancellation of the 1916, 1940, and 1944 Games. Large boycotts during the Cold War limited participation in the 1980 and 1984 Games.

The Olympic Movement consists of international sports federations (IFs), National Olympic Committees (NOCs), and organizing committees for each specific Olympic Games. As the decision-making body, the IOC is responsible for choosing the host city for each Games, and organizes and funds the Games according to the Olympic Charter. The IOC also 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. Over 13,000 athletes compete at the Summer and Winter Olympic Games in 33 different sports and nearly 400 events. 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 unknown 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.

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. This idea is a modern myth because the Greeks never suspended their wars. The truce did allow those religious pilgrims who were traveling to Olympia to pass through warring territories unmolested because they were protected by Zeus.  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 labors, he built the Olympic Stadium as an honor to Zeus. Following its completion, he walked in a straight line for 200 steps and called this distance a "stadion" (, Latin: stadium, "stage"), which later became a unit of distance. The most widely accepted inception date for the Ancient Olympics is 776 BC; this is based on inscriptions, found at Olympia, listing the winners of a footrace held every four years starting in 776 BC.  The Ancient Games featured running events, a pentathlon (consisting of a jumping event, discus and javelin throws, a foot race, and wrestling), 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 honoring both Zeus (whose famous statue by Phidias stood in his temple at Olympia) 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 immortalized in poems and statues. 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. The Games were part of a cycle known as the Panhellenic Games, which included the Pythian Games, the Nemean Games, and the Isthmian Games. 

The Olympic Games reached their zenith in the 6th and 5th centuries BC, but then gradually declined in importance as the Romans gained power and influence in Greece. While there is no scholarly consensus as to when the Games officially ended, the most commonly held date is 393 AD, when the emperor Theodosius I decreed that all pagan cults and practices be eliminated.  Another date commonly cited is 426 AD, when his successor, Theodosius II, ordered the destruction of all Greek temples.

Modern Games

Forerunners

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 organized 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 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. The programme of the first modern Olympiad in Athens in 1896 was almost identical to that of the Liverpool Olympics. In 1865 Hulley, Brookes and E.G. Ravenstein founded the National Olympian Association in Liverpool, a forerunner of the British Olympic Association. Its articles of foundation provided the framework for the International Olympic Charter. In 1866, a national Olympic Games in Great Britain was organized at London's Crystal Palace.

Revival

Greek interest in reviving the Olympic Games began with the Greek War of Independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1821. It was first proposed by poet and newspaper editor Panagiotis Soutsos in his poem "Dialogue of the Dead", published in 1833. Evangelos Zappas, a wealthy Greek-Romanian philanthropist, first wrote to King Otto of Greece, in 1856, offering to fund a permanent revival of the Olympic Games. Zappas sponsored the first Olympic Games in 1859, which was held in an Athens city square. Athletes participated from Greece and the Ottoman Empire. Zappas funded the restoration of the ancient Panathenaic Stadium so that it could host all future Olympic Games.

The stadium hosted Olympics in 1870 and 1875. Thirty thousand spectators attended that Games in 1870, though no official attendance records are available for the 1875 Games. In 1890, after attending the Olympian Games of the Wenlock Olympian Society, Baron Pierre de Coubertin was inspired to found the International Olympic Committee (IOC). Coubertin built on the ideas and work of Brookes and Zappas with the aim of establishing internationally rotating Olympic Games that would occur every four years. He presented these ideas during the first Olympic Congress of the newly created International Olympic Committee. This meeting was held from 16 to 23 June 1894, at the University of Paris. On the last day of the Congress, it was decided that the first Olympic Games to come under the auspices of the IOC would take place in Athens in 1896. The IOC elected the Greek writer Demetrius Vikelas as its first president.

1896 Games

The first Games held under the auspices of the IOC was hosted in the Panathenaic Stadium in Athens in 1896. The Games brought together 14 nations and 241 athletes who competed in 43 events.  Zappas and his cousin Konstantinos Zappas had left the Greek government a trust to fund future Olympic Games. This trust was used to help finance the 1896 Games.   George Averoff contributed generously for the refurbishment of the stadium in preparation for the Games. The Greek government also provided funding, which was expected to be recouped through the sale of tickets and from the sale of the first Olympic commemorative stamp set.

Greek officials and the public were enthusiastic about the experience of hosting an Olympic Games. This feeling was shared by many of the athletes, who even demanded that Athens be the permanent Olympic host city. The IOC intended for subsequent Games to be rotated to various host cities around the world. The second Olympics was held in Paris. 

Changes and adaptations

After the success of the 1896 Games, the Olympics entered a period of stagnation that threatened their survival. The Olympic Games held at the Paris Exposition in 1900 and the World's fair at St. Louis in 1904 were side shows. The Games in Paris did not have a stadium, but were notable for being the first time women took part in the Games. When the St. Louis Games were celebrated roughly 650 athletes participated, but 580 were from the United States. The homogeneous nature of these celebrations was a low point for the Olympic Movement.  The Games rebounded when the 1906 Intercalated Games (so-called because they were the second Games held within the third Olympiad) were held in Athens. These Games were, but are not now, officially recognized by the IOC and no Intercalated Games have been held since. The Games attracted a broad international field of participants and generated great public interest. This marked the beginning of a rise in both the popularity and the size of the Olympics. 

Winter Games

The Winter Olympics was created to feature snow and ice sports that were logistically impossible to hold during the Summer Games. Figure skating (in 1908 and 1920) and ice hockey (in 1920) were featured as Olympic events at the Summer Olympics. The IOC desired to expand this list of sports to encompass other winter activities. At the 1921 Olympic Congress in Lausanne, it was decided to hold a winter version of the Olympic Games. A winter sports week (it was actually 11 days) was held in 1924 in Chamonix, France, in connection with the Paris Games held three months later; this event became the first Winter Olympic Games. Although it was intended that the same country host both the Winter and Summer Games in a given year, this idea was quickly abandoned. The IOC mandated that the Winter Games be celebrated every four years on the same year as their summer counterpart.  This tradition was upheld until the 1992 Games in Albertville, France; after that, beginning with the 1994 Games, the Winter Olympics were held every four years, two years after each Summer Olympics.

Paralympics

In 1948, Sir Ludwig Guttmann, determined to promote the rehabitation of soldiers after World War II, organized a multi-sport event between several hospitals to coincide with the 1948 London Olympics. Guttmann's event, known then as the Stoke Mandeville Games, became an annual sports festival. Over the next twelve years, Guttmann and others continued their efforts to use sports as an avenue to healing. For the 1960 Olympic Games, in Rome, Guttmann brought 400 athletes to compete in the "Parallel Olympics", which became known as the first Paralympics. Since then, the Paralympics have been held in every Olympic year. Since the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, South Korea, the host city for the Olympics has also played host to the Paralympics.  In 2001 the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) signed an agreement guaranteeing 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 the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver. Chairman of the London organising committee, Lord Coe, said about the 2012 Summer Paralympics and Olympics in London that,

Youth Games

In 2010, the Olympic Games were complemented by the Youth Games, which give athletes between the ages of 14 and 18 the chance to compete. The Youth Olympic Games were conceived by IOC president Jacques Rogge in 2001 and approved during the 119th Congress of the IOC.  The first Summer Youth Games were held in Singapore from 14–26 August 2010, while the inaugural Winter Games were hosted in Innsbruck, Austria, two years later.  These Games will be shorter than the senior Games; the summer version will last twelve days, while the winter version will last nine days. The IOC allows 3,500 athletes and 875 officials to participate at the Summer Youth Games, and 970 athletes and 580 officials at the Winter Youth Games. The sports to be contested will coincide with those scheduled for the senior Games, however there will be variations on the sports including mixed NOC and mixed gender teams as well as a reduced number of disciplines and events. 

21st-century games

From 241 participants representing 14 nations in 1896, the Games have grown to about 10,500 competitors from 204 nations at the 2012 Summer Olympics.  The scope and scale of the Winter Olympics is smaller. For example, Sochi hosted 2,873 athletes from 88 nations competing in 98 events during the 2014 Winter Olympics. During the Games most athletes and officials are housed in the Olympic Village. This village is intended to be a self-contained home for all the Olympic participants, and is furnished with cafeterias, health clinics, and locations for religious expression. 

The IOC allowed the formation of National Olympic Committees representing nations that did not meet the strict requirements for political sovereignty that other international organizations demand. As a result, colonies and dependencies are permitted to compete at Olympic Games. Examples of this include territories such as Puerto Rico, Bermuda, and Hong Kong, all of which compete as separate nations despite being legally a part of another country.  The current version of the Charter allows for the establishment of new National Olympic Committees to represent nations which qualify as "an independent State recognized by the international community".  Therefore, it did not allow the formation of National Olympic Committees for Sint Maarten and Curaçao when they gained the same constitutional status as Aruba in 2010, although the IOC had recognized the Aruban Olympic Committee in 1986.   After 2012, Netherlands Antilles athletes can choose to represent either the Netherlands or Aruba. 

Economic and social impact on host cities and countries

Many economists are skeptical about the economic benefits of hosting the Olympic Games, emphasizing that such "mega-events" often have large costs while yielding relatively few tangible benefits in the long run. Conversely hosting (or even bidding for) the Olympics appears to increase the host country's exports, as the host or candidate country sends a signal about trade openness when bidding to host the Games.  Moreover, research suggests that hosting the Summer Olympics has a strong positive effect on the philanthropic contributions of corporations headquartered in the host city, which seems to benefit the local nonprofit sector. This positive effect begins in the years leading up to the Games and might persist for several years afterwards, although not permanently. This finding suggests that hosting the Olympics might create opportunities for cities to influence local corporations in ways that benefit the local nonprofit sector and civil society. 

The Games have also had significant negative effects on host communities; for example, the Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions reports that the Olympics displaced more than two million people over two decades, often disproportionately affecting disadvantaged groups.  The 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi were the most expensive Olympic Games in history, costing in excess of US$50 billion. According to a report by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development that was released at the time of the games, this cost will not boost Russia's national economy, but may attract business to Sochi and the southern Krasnodar region of Russia in the future as a result of improved services.  But by December 2014, The Guardian stated that Sochi "now feels like a ghost town", citing the spread-out nature of the stadiums and arenas, the still-unfinished construction, and the overall effects Russia's political and economic turmoil.  Furthermore, at least four cities withdrew their bids for the 2022 Winter Olympics, citing the high costs or the lack of local support,  resulting in only a two-city race between Almaty, Kazakhstan and Beijing, China. Thus in July 2016, The Guardian stated that the biggest threat to the future of the Olympics is that very few cities want to host them. 

International Olympic Committee

The Olympic Movement encompasses a large number of national and international sporting organizations and federations, recognized media partners, as well as athletes, officials, judges, and every other person and institution that agrees to abide by the rules of the Olympic Charter. As the umbrella organization of the Olympic Movement, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) is responsible for selecting the host city, overseeing the planning of the Olympic Games, updating and approving the sports program, and negotiating sponsorship and broadcasting rights.

The Olympic Movement is made of three major elements:
* International Federations (IFs) are the governing bodies that supervise a sport at an international level. For example, the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA) is the IF for association football, and the Fédération Internationale de Volleyball is the international governing body for volleyball. There are currently 35 IFs in the Olympic Movement, representing each of the Olympic sports. 
* National Olympic Committees (NOCs) represent and regulate the Olympic Movement within each country. For example, the United States Olympic Committee (USOC) is the NOC of the United States. There are currently 205 NOCs recognized by the IOC.
* Organizing Committees for the Olympic Games (OCOGs) are temporary committees responsible for the organization of each Olympic Games. OCOGs are dissolved after each Games once the final report is delivered to the IOC. 

French and English are the official languages of the Olympic Movement. The other language used at each Olympic Games is the language of the host country (or languages, if a country has more than one official language apart from French or English). Every proclamation (such as the announcement of each country during the parade of nations in the opening ceremony) is spoken in these three (or more) languages, or the main two depending on whether the host country is an English or French speaking country.

Criticism

The IOC has often been criticized for being an intractable organization, with several members on the committee for life. The presidential terms of Avery Brundage and Juan Antonio Samaranch were especially controversial. Brundage was president for over 20 years, and during his tenure he protected the Olympics from political involvement and the influence of advertising. He was accused of both racism, for his handling of the apartheid issue with the South African delegation, and antisemitism. Under the Samaranch presidency, the office was accused of both nepotism and corruption.  Samaranch's ties with the Franco regime in Spain were also a source of criticism. 

In 1998, it was uncovered that several IOC members had taken bribes from members of the Salt Lake City bid committee for the hosting of the 2002 Winter Olympics. The IOC pursued an investigation which led to the resignation of four members and expulsion of six others. The scandal set off further reforms that changed the way host cities were selected, to avoid similar cases in the future. 

A BBC documentary entitled Panorama: Buying the Games, aired in August 2004, investigated the taking of bribes in the bidding process for the 2012 Summer Olympics. The documentary claimed it was possible to bribe IOC members into voting for a particular candidate city. After being narrowly defeated in their bid for the 2012 Summer Games,  Parisian mayor Bertrand Delanoë specifically accused the British prime minister Tony Blair and the London Bid Committee (headed by former Olympic champion Sebastian Coe) of breaking the bid rules. He cited French president Jacques Chirac as a witness; Chirac gave guarded interviews regarding his involvement.  The allegation was never fully explored. The Turin bid for the 2006 Winter Olympics was also shrouded in controversy. A prominent IOC member, Marc Hodler, strongly connected with the rival bid of Sion, Switzerland, alleged bribery of IOC officials by members of the Turin Organizing Committee. These accusations led to a wide-ranging investigation. The allegations also served to sour many IOC members against Sion's bid and potentially helped Turin to capture the host city nomination. 

In July 2012, the Anti-Defamation League called the continued refusal by the International Olympic Committee to hold a moment of silence at the opening ceremony for the eleven Israeli athletes killed by Palestinian terrorists at the 1972 Munich Olympics, "a continuing stubborn insensitivity and callousness to the memory of the murdered Israeli athletes." 

Commercialization

Under national organizing committees 

The Olympics have been commercialized to various degrees since the initial 1896 Summer Olympics in Athens, when a number of companies paid for advertizing,  including Kodak.   In 1908, Oxo, Odol mouthwash and Indian Foot Powder became official sponsors of the London Olympic Games.    Coca Cola sponsored the 1928 Summer Olympics, and has subsequently remained a sponsor to the current time. Before the IOC took control of sponsorship, national organizing committees were responsible for negotiating their own contracts for sponsorship and the use of the Olympic symbols.

Under IOC control 

The IOC originally resisted funding by corporate sponsors. It was not until the retirement of IOC president Avery Brundage, in 1972, that the IOC began to explore the potential of the television medium and the lucrative advertising markets available to them. Under the leadership of Juan Antonio Samaranch the Games began to shift toward international sponsors who sought to link their products to the Olympic brand.

Budget

During the first half of the 20th century the IOC ran on a small budget. As president of the IOC from 1952 to 1972, Avery Brundage rejected all attempts to link the Olympics with commercial interest. Brundage believed the lobby of corporate interests would unduly impact the IOC's decision-making. Brundage's resistance to this revenue stream meant the IOC left organizing committees to negotiate their own sponsorship contracts and use the Olympic symbols. When Brundage retired the IOC had US$2 million in assets; eight years later the IOC coffers had swelled to US$45 million. This was primarily due to a shift in ideology toward expansion of the Games through corporate sponsorship and the sale of television rights. When Juan Antonio Samaranch was elected IOC president in 1980 his desire was to make the IOC financially independent.

The 1984 Summer Olympics became a watershed moment in Olympic history. The Los Angeles-based organizing committee, led by Peter Ueberroth, was able to generate a surplus of US$225 million, which was an unprecedented amount at that time. The organizing committee had been able to create such a surplus in part by selling exclusive sponsorship rights to select companies. The IOC sought to gain control of these sponsorship rights. Samaranch helped to establish The Olympic Program (TOP) in 1985, in order to create an Olympic brand. Membership in TOP was, and is, very exclusive and expensive. Fees cost US$50 million for a four-year membership. Members of TOP received exclusive global advertising rights for their product category, and use of the Olympic symbol, the interlocking rings, in their publications and advertisements.

Effect of television

The 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin were the first Games to be broadcast on television, though only to local audiences.  The 1956 Winter Olympics were the first internationally televised Olympic Games,  and the following Winter Games had their broadcasting rights sold for the first time to specialized television broadcasting networks—CBS paid US$394,000 for the American rights, and the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) allocated US$660,000. In the following decades the Olympics became one of the ideological fronts of the Cold War. Superpowers jockeyed for political supremacy, and the IOC wanted to take advantage of this heightened interest via the broadcast medium. The sale of broadcast rights enabled the IOC to increase the exposure of the Olympic Games, thereby generating more interest, which in turn created more appeal to advertisers time on television. This cycle allowed the IOC to charge ever-increasing fees for those rights. For example, CBS paid US$375 million for the rights of the 1998 Nagano Games, while NBC spent US$3.5 billion for the broadcast rights of all the Olympic Games from 2000 to 2012.

Viewership increased exponentially from the 1960s until the end of the century. This was due to the use of satellites to broadcast live television worldwide in 1964, and the introduction of color television in 1968.  Global audience estimates for the 1968 Mexico City Games was 600 million, whereas at the Los Angeles Games of 1984, the audience numbers had increased to 900 million; that number swelled to 3.5 billion by the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona. However, at the 2000 Summer Games in Sydney, NBC drew the lowest ratings for any Summer or Winter Olympics since 1968.  This was attributed to two factors: one was the increased competition from cable channels, the second was the internet, which was able to display results and video in real time. Television companies were still relying on tape-delayed content, which was becoming outdated in the information era.  A drop in ratings meant that television studios had to give away free advertising time. With such high costs charged to broadcast the Games, the added pressure of the internet, and increased competition from cable, the television lobby demanded concessions from the IOC to boost ratings. The IOC responded by making a number of changes to the Olympic program. At the Summer Games, the gymnastics competition was expanded from seven to nine nights, and a Champions Gala was added to draw greater interest. The IOC also expanded the swimming and diving programs, both popular sports with a broad base of television viewers. Finally, the American television lobby, namely NBC, was able to dictate when certain events were held so that they could be broadcast live during prime time in the United States. The results of these efforts were mixed: ratings for the 2006 Winter Games were significantly lower than those for the 2002 Games, while there was a sharp increase in viewership for the 2008 Summer Olympics, and the 2012 Summer Games became the most watched event in US television history. 

The sale of the Olympic brand has been controversial. The argument is that the Games have become indistinguishable from any other commercialized sporting spectacle. Specific criticism was levelled at the IOC for market saturation during the 1996 Atlanta and 2000 Sydney Games. The cities were awash in corporations and merchants attempting to sell Olympic-related wares. The IOC indicated that they would address this to prevent spectacles of over-marketing at future Games. 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. Host cities continue to compete ardently for the right to host the Games, even though there is no certainty that they will earn back their investments. Research has shown that trade is around 30 percent higher for countries that have hosted the Olympics. 

Symbols

The Olympic Movement uses symbols to represent the ideals embodied in the Olympic Charter. The Olympic symbol, better known as the Olympic rings, consists of five intertwined rings and represents the unity of the five inhabited continents (Africa, America, Asia, Oceania, Europe). The colored version of the rings—blue, yellow, black, green, and red—over a white field forms the Olympic flag. These colors were chosen because every nation had at least one of them on its national flag. The flag was adopted in 1914 but flown for the first time only at the 1920 Summer Olympics in Antwerp, Belgium. It has since been hoisted during each celebration of the Games.

The Olympic motto, Citius, Altius, Fortius, a Latin expression meaning "Faster, Higher, Stronger" was proposed by Pierre de Coubertin in 1894 and has been official since 1924. The motto was coined by Coubertin's friend, the Dominican priest Henri Didon OP, for a Paris youth gathering of 1891. 

Coubertin's Olympic ideals are expressed in the Olympic creed:

Months before each Games, the Olympic Flame is lit in Olympia in a ceremony that reflects ancient Greek rituals. A female performer, acting as a priestess, ignites a torch by placing it inside a parabolic mirror which focuses the sun's rays; she then lights the torch of the first relay bearer, thus initiating the Olympic torch relay that will carry the flame to the host city's Olympic stadium, where it plays an important role in the opening ceremony. Though the flame has been an Olympic symbol since 1928, the torch relay was only introduced at the 1936 Summer Games.

The Olympic mascot, an animal or human figure representing the cultural heritage of the host country, was introduced in 1968. It has played an important part of the Games' identity promotion since the 1980 Summer Olympics, when the Russian bear cub Misha reached international stardom.  The mascot of the Summer Olympics in London was named Wenlock after the town of Much Wenlock in Shropshire. Much Wenlock still hosts the Wenlock Olympian Games, which were an inspiration to Pierre de Coubertin for the Olympic Games. 

Ceremonies

Opening

As mandated by the Olympic Charter, various elements frame the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games. This ceremony takes place before the events have occurred. Most of these rituals were established at the 1920 Summer Olympics in Antwerp. The ceremony typically starts with the hoisting of the host country's flag and a performance of its national anthem. The host nation then presents artistic displays of music, singing, dance, and theater representative of its culture. The artistic presentations have grown in scale and complexity as successive hosts attempt to provide a ceremony that outlasts its predecessor's in terms of memorability. The opening ceremony of the Beijing Games reportedly cost $100 million, with much of the cost incurred in the artistic segment. 

After the artistic portion of the ceremony, the athletes parade into the stadium grouped by nation. Greece is traditionally the first nation to enter in order to honor the origins of the Olympics. Nations then enter the stadium alphabetically according to the host country's chosen language, with the host country's athletes being the last to enter. During the 2004 Summer Olympics, which was hosted in Athens, Greece, the Greek flag entered the stadium first, while the Greek delegation entered last. Speeches are given, formally opening the Games. Finally, the Olympic torch is brought into the stadium and passed on until it reaches the final torch carrier, often a successful Olympic athlete from the host nation, who lights the Olympic flame in the stadium's cauldron.

Closing

The closing ceremony of the Olympic Games takes place after all sporting events have concluded. Flag-bearers from each participating country enter the stadium, followed by the athletes who enter together, without any national distinction.  Three national flags are hoisted while the corresponding national anthems are played: the flag of the current host country; the flag of Greece, to honor the birthplace of the Olympic Games; and the flag of the country hosting the next Summer or Winter Olympic Games. The president of the organizing committee and the IOC president make their closing speeches, the Games are officially closed, and the Olympic flame is extinguished.  In what is known as the Antwerp Ceremony, the mayor of the city that organized the Games transfers a special Olympic flag to the president of the IOC, who then passes it on to the mayor of the city hosting the next Olympic Games.  The next host nation then also briefly introduces itself with artistic displays of dance and theater representative of its culture.

As is customary, the men's marathon medals (at the Summer Olympics) or the men's 50 km cross-country skiing freestyle mass start medals (at the Winter Olympics) are presented as part of the Closing Ceremony, which take place later that day, in the Olympic Stadium, and are thus the last medal presentation of the Games.

Medal presentation

A medal ceremony is held after each Olympic event is concluded. The winner, second and third-place competitors or teams stand on top of a three-tiered rostrum to be awarded their respective medals.  After the medals are given out by an IOC member, the national flags of the three medalists are raised while the national anthem of the gold medalist's country plays. Volunteering citizens of the host country also act as hosts during the medal ceremonies, as they aid the officials who present the medals and act as flag-bearers. 

Sports

The Olympic Games program consists of 35 sports, 30 disciplines and 408 events. For example, wrestling is a Summer Olympic sport, comprising two disciplines: Greco-Roman and Freestyle. It is further broken down into fourteen events for men and four events for women, each representing a different weight class.  The Summer Olympics program includes 26 sports, while the Winter Olympics program features 15 sports. Athletics, swimming, fencing, and artistic gymnastics are the only summer sports that have never been absent from the Olympic program. Cross-country skiing, figure skating, ice hockey, Nordic combined, ski jumping, and speed skating have been featured at every Winter Olympics program since its inception in 1924. Current Olympic sports, like badminton, basketball, and volleyball, first appeared on the program as demonstration sports, and were later promoted to full Olympic sports. Some sports that were featured in earlier Games were later dropped from the program. 

Olympic sports are governed by international sports federations (IFs) recognized by the IOC as the global supervisors of those sports. There are 35 federations represented at the IOC. There are sports recognized by the IOC that are not included on the Olympic program. These sports are not considered Olympic sports, but they can be promoted to this status during a program revision that occurs in the first IOC session following a celebration of the Olympic Games.  During such revisions, sports can be excluded or included in the program on the basis of a two-thirds majority vote of the members of the IOC.  There are recognized sports that have never been on an Olympic program in any capacity, including chess and surfing.

In October and November 2004, the IOC established an Olympic Programme Commission, which was tasked with reviewing the sports on the Olympic program and all non-Olympic recognized sports. The goal was to apply a systematic approach to establishing the Olympic program for each celebration of the Games. The commission formulated seven criteria to judge whether a sport should be included on the Olympic program. These criteria are history and tradition of the sport, universality, popularity of the sport, image, athletes' health, development of the International Federation that governs the sport, and costs of holding the sport. From this study five recognized sports emerged as candidates for inclusion at the 2012 Summer Olympics: golf, karate, rugby union, roller sports and squash. These sports were reviewed by the IOC Executive Board and then referred to the General Session in Singapore in July 2005. Of the five sports recommended for inclusion only two were selected as finalists: karate and squash. Neither sport attained the required two-thirds vote and consequently they were not promoted to the Olympic program. In October 2009 the IOC voted to instate golf and rugby union as Olympic sports for the 2016 and 2020 Summer Olympic Games.

The 114th IOC Session, in 2002, limited the Summer Games program to a maximum of 28 sports, 301 events, and 10,500 athletes. Three years later, at the 117th IOC Session, the first major program revision was performed, which resulted in the exclusion of baseball and softball from the official program of the 2012 London Games. Since there was no agreement in the promotion of two other sports, the 2012 program featured just 26 sports. The 2016 and 2020 Games will return to the maximum of 28 sports given the addition of rugby and golf.

Amateurism and professionalism

The ethos of the aristocracy as exemplified in the English public school greatly influenced Pierre de Coubertin. The public schools subscribed to the belief that sport formed an important part of education, an attitude summed up in the saying mens sana in corpore sano, a sound mind in a sound body. In this ethos, a gentleman was one who became an all-rounder, not the best at one specific thing. There was also a prevailing concept of fairness, in which practicing or training was considered tantamount to cheating. Those who practiced a sport professionally were considered to have an unfair advantage over those who practiced it merely as a hobby.

The exclusion of professionals caused several controversies throughout the history of the modern Olympics. The 1912 Olympic pentathlon and decathlon champion Jim Thorpe was stripped of his medals when it was discovered that he had played semi-professional baseball before the Olympics. His medals were posthumously restored by the IOC in 1983 on compassionate grounds.  Swiss and Austrian skiers boycotted the 1936 Winter Olympics in support of their skiing teachers, who were not allowed to compete because they earned money with their sport and were thus considered professionals. 

As class structure evolved through the 20th century, the definition of the amateur athlete as an aristocratic gentleman became outdated. The advent of the state-sponsored "full-time amateur athlete" of the Eastern Bloc countries further eroded the ideology of the pure amateur, as it put the self-financed amateurs of the Western countries at a disadvantage. Nevertheless, the IOC held to the traditional rules regarding amateurism.  Beginning in the 1970s, amateurism requirements were gradually phased out of the Olympic Charter. After the 1988 Games, the IOC decided to make all professional athletes eligible for the Olympics, subject to the approval of the IFs. As of 2012, the only sports in which no professionals compete is boxing and wrestling, although even this requires a definition of amateurism based on fight rules rather than on payment, as some boxers and wrestlers receive cash prizes from their National Olympic Committees.

Controversies

Boycotts

Greece, Australia, France, Great Britain, and Switzerland are the only countries to be represented at every Olympic Games since their inception in 1896. While countries sometimes miss an Olympics due to a lack of qualified athletes, some choose to boycott a celebration of the Games for various reasons. The Olympic Council of Ireland boycotted the 1936 Berlin Games, because the IOC insisted its team needed to be restricted to the Irish Free State rather than representing the entire island of Ireland.

There were three boycotts of the 1956 Melbourne Olympics: the Netherlands, Spain, and Switzerland refused to attend because of the repression of the Hungarian uprising by the Soviet Union, but did send an equestrian delegation to Stockholm; Cambodia, Egypt, Iraq, and Lebanon boycotted the Games because of the Suez Crisis; and China (the "People's Republic of China") boycotted the Games because Taiwan was allowed to compete in the Games as the "Republic of China".

In 1972 and 1976 a large number of African countries threatened the IOC with a boycott to force them to ban South Africa and Rhodesia, because of their segregationist regimes. New Zealand was also one of the African boycott targets, because its national rugby union team had toured apartheid-ruled South Africa. The IOC conceded in the first two cases, but refused to ban New Zealand on the grounds that rugby was not an Olympic sport. Fulfilling their threat, twenty African countries were joined by Guyana and Iraq in a withdrawal from the Montreal Games, after a few of their athletes had already competed. 

Taiwan also decided to boycott these Games because the People's Republic of China (PRC) exerted pressure on the Montreal organizing committee to keep the delegation from the Republic of China (ROC) from competing under that name. The ROC refused a proposed compromise that would have still allowed them to use the ROC flag and anthem as long as the name was changed.  Taiwan did not participate again until 1984, when it returned under the name of Chinese Taipei and with a special flag and anthem.

In 1980 and 1984, the Cold War opponents boycotted each other's Games. The United States and sixty-four other countries boycotted the Moscow Olympics in 1980 because of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. This boycott reduced the number of nations participating to 81, the lowest number since 1956.  The Soviet Union and 15 other nations countered by boycotting the Los Angeles Olympics of 1984, contending that they could not guarantee the safety of their athletes. Soviet officials defended their decision to withdraw from the Games by saying that "chauvinistic sentiments and an anti-Soviet hysteria are being whipped up in the United States".  The boycotting nations of the Eastern Bloc staged their own alternate event, the Friendship Games, in July and August.

There had been growing calls for boycotts of Chinese goods and the 2008 Olympics in Beijing in protest of China's human rights record, and in response to Tibetan disturbances. Ultimately, no nation supported a boycott.  In August 2008, the government of Georgia called for a boycott of the 2014 Winter Olympics, set to be held in Sochi, Russia, in response to Russia's participation in the 2008 South Ossetia war.  

Politics

The Olympic Games have been used as a platform to promote political ideologies almost from its inception. Nazi Germany wished to portray the National Socialist Party as benevolent and peace-loving when they hosted the 1936 Games, though they used the Games to display Aryan superiority. Germany was the most successful nation at the Games, which did much to support their allegations of Aryan supremacy, but notable victories by African American Jesse Owens, who won four gold medals, and Hungarian Jew Ibolya Csák, blunted the message. The Soviet Union did not participate until the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki. Instead, starting in 1928, the Soviets organized an international sports event called Spartakiads. During the interwar period of the 1920s and 1930s, communist and socialist organizations in several countries, including the United States, attempted to counter what they called the "bourgeois" Olympics with the Workers Olympics. It was not until the 1956 Summer Games that the Soviets emerged as a sporting superpower and, in doing so, took full advantage of the publicity that came with winning at the Olympics. 

Individual athletes have also used the Olympic stage to promote their own political agenda. At the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City, two American track and field athletes, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, who finished first and third in the 200 meters, performed the Black Power salute on the victory stand. The second-place finisher, Peter Norman of Australia, wore an Olympic Project for Human Rights badge in support of Smith and Carlos. In response to the protest, IOC president Avery Brundage told the United States Olympic Committee (USOC) to either send the two athletes home or withdraw the track and field team. The USOC opted for the former. During the same Olympics, Czechoslovakian gymnast Věra Čáslavská announced her protest to the Soviet-led invasion of her home country after controversially receiving Silver on the Beam and a shared Gold on the Floor. During the Soviet anthem, Čáslavská turned her head down and to the right of the Soviet flag in order to make a statement over the invasion and the Soviet influence of the sport of Gymnastics. Returning home, Čáslavská was made an outcast by the Soviet government and was banned from competition and travelling.

Currently, the government of Iran has taken steps to avoid any competition between its athletes and those from Israel. An Iranian judoka, Arash Miresmaeili, did not compete in a match against an Israeli during the 2004 Summer Olympics. Although he was officially disqualified for being overweight, Miresmaeli was awarded US$125,000 in prize money by the Iranian government, an amount paid to all Iranian gold medal winners. He was officially cleared of intentionally avoiding the bout, but his receipt of the prize money raised suspicion. 

Use of performance-enhancing drugs

In the early 20th century, many Olympic athletes began using drugs to improve their athletic abilities. For example, in 1904, Thomas Hicks, a gold medalist in the marathon, was given strychnine by his coach.  The only Olympic death linked to performance enhancing occurred at the 1960 Rome games. A Danish cyclist, Knud Enemark Jensen, fell from his bicycle and later died. A coroner's inquiry found that he was under the influence of amphetamines. By the mid-1960s, sports federations started to ban the use of performance-enhancing drugs; in 1967 the IOC followed suit. 

The first Olympic athlete to test positive for the use of performance-enhancing drugs was Hans-Gunnar Liljenwall, a Swedish pentathlete at the 1968 Summer Olympics, who lost his bronze medal for alcohol use. One of the  most publicized doping-related disqualifications occurred after the  1988 Summer Olympics where Canadian sprinter, Ben Johnson (who won the 100-metre dash) tested  positive for stanozolol. His gold medal was later stripped and awarded to the American runner-up Carl Lewis, who himself had tested positive for banned substances prior to the Olympics. 

In 1999 the IOC formed the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) in an effort to systematize the research and detection of performance-enhancing drugs. There was a sharp increase in positive drug tests at the 2000 Summer Olympics and 2002 Winter Olympics. Several medalists in weightlifting and cross-country skiing were disqualified because of doping offenses. During the 2006 Winter Olympics, only one athlete failed a drug test and had a medal revoked. The IOC-established drug testing regimen (now known as the Olympic Standard) has set the worldwide benchmark that other sporting federations attempt to emulate.  During the Beijing games, 3,667 athletes were tested by the IOC under the auspices of the World Anti-Doping Agency. Both urine and blood tests were used to detect banned substances. Several athletes were barred from competition by their National Olympic Committees prior to the Games; only three athletes failed drug tests while in competition in Beijing.   In London over 6,000 Olympic and Paralympic athletes were tested. Prior to the Games 107 athletes tested positive for banned substances and were not allowed to compete.    During and after the Games eight athletes tested positive for a banned substance and were suspended, including shot putter Nadzeya Ostapchuk, who was stripped of her gold medal. 

Sex discrimination

Women were first allowed to compete at the 1900 Summer Olympics in Paris, but at the 1992 Summer Olympics 35 countries were still fielding all-male delegations. This number dropped rapidly over the following years. In 2000, Bahrain sent two women competitors for the first time: Fatema Hameed Gerashi and Mariam Mohamed Hadi Al Hilli.  In 2004, Robina Muqimyar and Fariba Rezayee became the first women to compete for Afghanistan at the Olympics.  In 2008, the United Arab Emirates sent female athletes (Maitha Al Maktoum competed in taekwondo, and Latifa Al Maktoum in equestrian) to the Olympic Games for the first time. Both athletes were from Dubai's ruling family. 

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 celebrations of the Games, sending 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. 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 London.

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. He noted: "For the last 15 years, many international nongovernmental organizations worldwide have been trying to lobby the IOC for better enforcement of its own laws banning gender discrimination. [...] While their efforts did result in increasing numbers of women Olympians, the IOC has been reluctant to take a strong position and threaten the discriminating countries with suspension or expulsion." 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 Olympic Games in London, Great Britain, for the first time in Olympic history, every country competing included female athletes.  Saudi Arabia included two female athletes in its delegation; Qatar, four; and Brunei, one (Maziah Mahusin, in the 400m hurdles). Qatar made one of its first female Olympians, Bahiya al-Hamad (shooting), its flagbearer at the 2012 Games,  and runner Maryam Yusuf Jamal of Bahrain became the first Gulf female athlete to win a medal when she won a bronze for her showing in the 1500 m race. 

The only sport on the Olympic programme that features men and women competing together is the equestrian disciplines. There is no "Women's Eventing", or 'Men's Dressage'. As of 2008, there were still more medal events for men than women. With the addition of women's boxing to the program in the 2012 Summer Olympics, however, female athletes were able to compete in all the same sports as men.  In the winter Olympics, women are still unable to compete in the Nordic Combined. There are currently two Olympic events in which male athletes may not compete: synchronized swimming and rhythmic gymnastics.

Terrorism and violence

Three Olympiads had to pass without a celebration of the Games because of war: the 1916 Games were cancelled because of World War I, and the summer and winter games of 1940 and 1944 were cancelled because of World War II. The Russo-Georgian War between Georgia and Russia erupted on the opening day of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. Both President Bush and Prime Minister Putin were attending the Olympics at that time and spoke together about the conflict at a luncheon hosted by Chinese president Hu Jintao. When Nino Salukvadze of Georgia won the bronze medal in the 10 metre air pistol competition, she stood on the medal podium with Natalia Paderina, a Russian shooter who had won the silver. In what became a much-publicized event from the Beijing Games, Salukvadze and Paderina embraced on the podium after the ceremony had ended. 

Terrorism most directly affected the Olympic Games in 1972. When the Summer Games were held in Munich, Germany, eleven members of the Israeli Olympic team were taken hostage by the Palestinian terrorist group Black September in what is now known as the Munich massacre. The terrorists killed two of the athletes soon after they had taken them hostage and killed the other nine during a failed liberation attempt. A German police officer and five terrorists also perished. 

Terrorism affected the last two Olympic Games held in the United States. During the Summer Olympics in 1996 in Atlanta, Georgia, a bomb was detonated at the Centennial Olympic Park, which killed two and injured 111 others. The bomb was set by Eric Rudolph, an American domestic terrorist, who is currently serving a life sentence for the bombing.  The 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Utah, took place just five months after the September 11 attacks, which meant a higher level of security than ever before provided for an Olympic Games. The opening ceremonies of the Games featured symbols of the day's events. They included the flag that flew at Ground Zero, NYPD officer Daniel Rodríguez singing "God Bless America", and honor guards of NYPD and FDNY members. The events of that day have made security at the Olympic Games an increasing concern for Olympic planners. 

Colonialism

The Olympic Games have been criticized as upholding (and in some cases increasing) the colonial policies and practices of some host nations and cities either in the name of the Olympics by associated parties or directly by official Olympic bodies, such as the International Olympic Committee, host organizing committees and official sponsors. Critics have argued that the Olympics have engaged in or caused: erroneous anthropological and colonial knowledge production; erasure; commodification  and appropriation of indigenous ceremonies and symbolism; theft and inappropriate display of indigenous objects; further encroachment on and support of the theft of indigenous lands; and neglect and/or intensification of poor social conditions for indigenous peoples. Such practices have been observed at: the 1904 Summer Olympics in St. Louis, Missouri; the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal, Quebec; the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary, Alberta; and the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Citizenship

IOC rules for citizenship

The Olympic Charter requires that an athlete be a national of the country for which they compete. Dual nationals may compete for either country, as long as three years have passed since the competitor competed for the former country. However, if the NOCs and IF involved agree, then the IOC Executive Board may reduce or cancel this period. This waiting period exists only for athletes who previously competed for one nation and want to compete for another. If an athlete gains a new or second nationality, then they do not need to wait any designated amount of time before participating for the new or second nation. The IOC is only concerned with issues of citizenship and nationality after individual nations have granted citizenship to athletes.

Reasons for changing citizenship

Athletes will sometimes become citizens of a different nation so they are able to compete in the Olympics. This is often because they are drawn to sponsorships or training facilities in such places as the United States. It could also be because an athlete is unable to qualify from within their original country. The athlete may not qualify because there are already qualified athletes in the athlete's home country. Between 1992 and 2008, about fifty athletes emigrated to the United States to compete on the US Olympic team after having previously competed for another nation.

Citizenship changes and disputes

One of the most famous cases of changing nationality for the Olympics was Zola Budd, a South African runner who emigrated to the United Kingdom because there was an apartheid-era ban on the Olympics in South Africa. Budd was eligible for British citizenship because her grandfather was born in Britain, but British citizens accused the government of expediting the citizenship process for her. 

Other notable examples include Kenyan runner Bernard Lagat, who became a United States citizen in May 2004. The Kenyan constitution requires that one renounce their Kenyan citizenship when they become a citizen of another nation. Lagat competed for Kenya in the 2004 Athens Olympics even though he had already become a United States citizen. According to Kenya, he was no longer a Kenyan citizen, jeopardizing his silver medal. Lagat said he started the citizenship process in late 2003 and did not expect to become an American citizen until after the Athens games. 

Basketball player Becky Hammon was not being considered for the United States Olympic team but wanted to play in an Olympic Games, so she emigrated to Russia, where she already played in a domestic league during the WNBA offseason. Hammon received criticism from some Americans, including the US national team coach, even being called unpatriotic. 

Champions and medalists

The athletes or teams who place first, second, or third in each event receive medals. The winners receive gold medals, which were solid gold until 1912, then made of gilded silver and now gold-plated silver. Every gold medal however must contain at least six grams of pure gold. The runners-up receive silver medals and the third-place athletes are awarded bronze medals. In events contested by a single-elimination tournament (most notably boxing), third place might not be determined and both semifinal losers receive bronze medals. At the 1896 Olympics only the first two received a medal; silver for first and bronze for second. The current three-medal format was introduced at the 1904 Olympics.  From 1948 onward athletes placing fourth, fifth, and sixth have received certificates, which became officially known as victory diplomas; in 1984 victory diplomas for seventh- and eighth-place finishers were added. At the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, the gold, silver, and bronze medal winners were also given olive wreaths.  The IOC does not keep statistics of medals won, but National Olympic Committees and the media record medal statistics as a measure of success. 

Nations

Nations at the Summer Olympics

As of the 2012 Games in London, all of the current 204 NOCs have participated in at least one edition of the Olympic Summer Olympics, and athletes from Australia, France, Great Britain, Greece, and Switzerland have competed in all twenty-seven Summer Olympic Games.

Nations at the Winter Olympics

119 NOCs (110 of the current 204 NOCs and 9 obsolete NOCs) have participated in at least one Winter Games, and twelve nations (Austria, Canada, Finland, France, Great Britain, Hungary, Italy, Norway, Poland, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United States) have participated in all twenty-two Winter Games to date. Including continuity from Czechoslovakia, the Czech Republic and Slovakia have also been represented in every edition.

Host nations and cities

The host city for an Olympic Games is usually chosen seven to eight years ahead of their celebration. The process of selection is carried out in two phases that span a two-year period. The prospective host city applies to its country's National Olympic Committee; if more than one city from the same country submits a proposal to its NOC, the national committee typically holds an internal selection, since only one city per NOC can be presented to the International Olympic Committee for consideration. Once the deadline for submission of proposals by the NOCs is reached, the first phase (Application) begins with the applicant cities asked to complete a questionnaire regarding several key criteria related to the organization of the Olympic Games. In this form, the applicants must give assurances that they will comply with the Olympic Charter and with any other regulations established by the IOC Executive Committee. The evaluation of the filled questionnaires by a specialized group provides the IOC with an overview of each applicant's project and their potential to host the Games. On the basis of this technical evaluation, the IOC Executive Board selects the applicants that will proceed to the candidature stage.

Once the candidate cities are selected, they must submit to the IOC a bigger and more detailed presentation of their project as part of a candidature file. Each city is thoroughly analyzed by an evaluation commission. This commission will also visit the candidate cities, interviewing local officials and inspecting prospective venue sites, and submit a report on its findings one month prior to the IOC's final decision. During the interview process the candidate city must also guarantee that it will be able to fund the Games. After the work of the evaluation commission, a list of candidates is presented to the General Session of the IOC, which must assemble in a country that does not have a candidate city in the running. The IOC members gathered in the Session have the final vote on the host city. Once elected, the host city bid committee (together with the NOC of the respective country) signs a Host City Contract with the IOC, officially becoming an Olympic host nation and host city.

By 2016, the Olympic Games will have been hosted by 44 cities in 23 countries, but by cities outside Europe and North America on only eight occasions. Since the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, South Korea, the Olympics have been held in Asia or Oceania four times, a sharp increase compared to the previous 92 years of modern Olympic history. The 2016 Games in Rio de Janeiro will be the first Olympics for a South American country. No bids from countries in Africa have succeeded.

The United States has hosted eight Olympic Games, four Summer and four Winter, more than any other nation. The British capital London holds the distinction of hosting three Olympic Games, all Summer, more than any other city. The other nations hosting the Summer Games twice are Germany, Australia, France and Greece. The other cities hosting the Summer Games twice are Los Angeles, Paris and Athens. With the 2020 Summer Olympic Games, Japan and Tokyo, respectively, will hold these statuses.

In addition to the United States, nations hosting multiple Winter Games are France with three, while Switzerland, Austria, Norway, Japan, Canada and Italy have hosted twice. Among host cities, Lake Placid, Innsbruck and St. Moritz have played host to the Winter Olympic Games more than once, each holding that honor twice. The most recent Winter Games were held in Sochi in 2014, Russia's first Winter Olympics and second Olympics overall. The Winter Olympic Games (French: Jeux olympiques d'hiver) is a major international sporting event that occurs once every four years. Unlike the Summer Olympics, the Winter Olympics feature sports practiced on snow and ice. The first Winter Olympics, the 1924 Winter Olympics, was held in Chamonix, France. The original five sports (broken into nine disciplines) were bobsleigh, curling, ice hockey, Nordic skiing (consisting of the disciplines military patrol, cross-country skiing, Nordic combined, and ski jumping), and skating (consisting of the disciplines figure skating  and speed skating). The Games were held every four years from 1924 until 1936, after which they were interrupted by World War II. The Olympics resumed in 1948 and was again held every four years. Until 1992, the Winter and Summer Olympic Games were held in the same years, but in accordance with a 1986 decision by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to place the Summer and Winter Games on separate four-year cycles in alternating even-numbered years, the next Winter Olympics after 1992 was in 1994.

The Winter Games have evolved since its inception. Sports and disciplines have been added and some of them, such as Alpine skiing, luge, short track speed skating, freestyle skiing, skeleton, and snowboarding, have earned a permanent spot on the Olympic program. Others (such as curling and bobsleigh) have been discontinued and later reintroduced, or have been permanently discontinued (such as military patrol, though the modern Winter Olympic sport of biathlon is descended from it). Still others, such as speed skiing, bandy and skijoring, were demonstration sports but never incorporated as Olympic sports. The rise of television as a global medium for communication enhanced the profile of the Games. It created an income stream, via the sale of broadcast rights and advertising, which has become lucrative for the IOC. This allowed outside interests, such as television companies and corporate sponsors, to exert influence. The IOC has had to address several criticisms, internal scandals, the use of performance-enhancing drugs by Winter Olympians, as well as a political boycott of the Winter Olympics. Nations have used the Winter Games to showcase the claimed superiority of their political systems.

The Winter Olympics has been hosted on three continents by eleven different countries. The United States has hosted the Games four times (1932, 1960, 1980, 2002); France has been the host three times (1924, 1968, 1992);  Austria (1964, 1976), Canada (1988, 2010), Japan (1972, 1998), Italy (1956, 2006), Norway (1952, 1994), and Switzerland (1928, 1948) have hosted the Games twice. Germany (1936), Yugoslavia (1984), and Russia (2014) have hosted the Games once. The IOC has selected Pyeongchang, South Korea, to host the 2018 Winter Olympics and Beijing, China, to host the 2022 Winter Olympics. No country in the southern hemisphere has hosted or even been an applicant to host the Winter Olympics; the major challenge preventing one hosting the games is the dependence on winter weather, and the traditional February timing of the games falls in the middle of the southern hemisphere summer.

Twelve countries – Austria, Canada, Finland, France, Great Britain, Hungary, Italy, Norway, Poland, Sweden, Switzerland and the United States – have sent athletes to every Winter Olympic Games. Six of those – Austria, Canada, Finland, Norway, Sweden and the United States – have earned medals at every Winter Olympic Games, and only one – the United States – has earned gold at each Games. Germany and Japan have been banned at times from competing in the Games.

Sports

The Olympic Charter limits winter sports to "those ... which are practised on snow or ice."  Since 1992 a number of new sports have been added to the Olympic programme; which include short track speed skating, snowboarding, freestyle and moguls skiing. The addition of these events has broadened the appeal of the Winter Olympics beyond Europe and North America. While European powers such as Norway and Germany still dominate the traditional Winter Olympic sports, countries such as South Korea, Australia and Canada are finding success in the new sports. The results are more parity in the national medal tables, more interest in the Winter Olympics and higher global television ratings. 

Current sport disciplines

Note 1. Figure skating events were held at the 1908 and 1920 Summer Olympics.
Note 2. A men's ice hockey tournament was held at the 1920 Summer Olympics.
Note 3. The IOC's website now treats Men's Military Patrol at the 1924 games as an event within the sport of Biathlon.

Demonstration events

Demonstration sports have historically provided a venue for host countries to attract publicity to locally popular sports by having a competition without granting medals. Demonstration sports were discontinued after 1992.   Military patrol, a precursor to the biathlon, was a medal sport in 1924 and was demonstrated in 1928, 1936 and 1948, becoming an official sport in 1960.   The special figures figure skating event was only contested at the 1908 Summer Olympics.   Bandy (Russian hockey) is a sport popular in the Nordic countries and Russia. In the latter it's considered a national sport.   It was demonstrated at the Oslo Games. Ice stock sport, a German variant of curling, was demonstrated in 1936 in Germany and 1964 in Austria.  The ski ballet event, later known as ski-acro, was demonstrated in 1988 and 1992.   Skijöring, skiing behind dogs, was a demonstration sport in St. Moritz in 1928.  A sled-dog race was held at Lake Placid in 1932.  Speed skiing was demonstrated in Albertville at the 1992 Winter Olympics.   Winter pentathlon, a variant of the modern pentathlon, was included as a demonstration event at the 1948 Games in Switzerland. It was composed of cross-country skiing, shooting, downhill skiing, fencing and horse riding.

History

Early years

 A predecessor, the Nordic Games, were organized by General Viktor Gustaf Balck in 1901 and were held again in 1903 and 1905 and then every fourth year thereafter until 1926. Balck was a charter member of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and a close friend of Olympic Games founder Pierre de Coubertin. He attempted to have winter sports, specifically figure skating, added to the Olympic program but was unsuccessful until the 1908 Summer Olympics in London, United Kingdom.  Four figure skating events were contested, at which Ulrich Salchow (10-time world champion) and Madge Syers won the individual titles.  

Three years later, Italian count Eugenio Brunetta d'Usseaux proposed that the IOC stage a week of winter sports included as part of the 1912 Summer Olympics in Stockholm, Sweden. The organizers opposed this idea because they desired to protect the integrity of the Nordic Games and were concerned about a lack of facilities for winter sports.   The idea was resurrected for the 1916 Games, which were to be held in Berlin, Germany. A winter sports week with speed skating, figure skating, ice hockey and Nordic skiing was planned, but the 1916 Olympics was cancelled after the outbreak of World War I.

The first Olympics after the war, the 1920 Summer Olympics, were held in Antwerp, Belgium, and featured figure skating and an ice hockey tournament. Germany, Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria and Turkey were banned from competing in the Games. At the IOC Congress held the following year it was decided that the host nation of the 1924 Summer Olympics, France, would host a separate "International Winter Sports Week" under the patronage of the IOC. Chamonix was chosen to host this "week" (actually 11 days) of events.  The Games proved to be a success when more than 250 athletes from 16 nations competed in 16 events. Athletes from Finland and Norway won 28 medals, more than the rest of the participating nations combined.  Germany remained banned until 1925, and instead hosted a series of games called Deutsche Kampfspiele, starting with the Winter edition of 1922 (which predated the first Winter Olympics). In 1925 the IOC decided to create a separate Olympic Winter Games and the 1924 Games in Chamonix was retroactively designated as the first Winter Olympics.

St. Moritz, Switzerland, was appointed by the IOC to host the second Olympic Winter Games in 1928.  Fluctuating weather conditions challenged the hosts. The opening ceremony was held in a blizzard while warm weather conditions plagued sporting events throughout the rest of the Games.  Because of the weather the 10,000 metre speed-skating event had to be abandoned and officially cancelled.  The weather was not the only noteworthy aspect of the 1928 Games: Sonja Henie of Norway made history when she won the figure skating competition at the age of 15. She became the youngest Olympic champion in history, a distinction she would hold for 74 years.

The next Winter Olympics was the first to be hosted outside of Europe. Seventeen nations and 252 athletes participated.  This was less than in 1928 as the journey to Lake Placid, United States, was a long and expensive one for most competitors who had little money in the midst of the Great Depression. The athletes competed in fourteen events in four sports.  Virtually no snow fell for two months before the Games, and it was not until mid-January that there was enough snow to hold all the events.   Sonja Henie defended her Olympic title and Eddie Eagan, who had been an Olympic champion in boxing in 1920, won the gold in the men's bobsleigh event to become the first, and so far only, Olympian to have won gold medals in both the Summer and Winter Olympics.

The German towns of Garmisch and Partenkirchen joined to organise the 1936 edition of the Winter Games, held on 6–16 February.   This would be the last time the Summer and Winter Olympics were held in the same country in the same year. Alpine skiing made its Olympic debut, but skiing teachers were barred from entering because they were considered to be professionals. Because of this decision the Swiss and Austrian skiers refused to compete at the Games.

World War II

World War II interrupted the celebrations of the Winter Olympics. The 1940 Games had been awarded to Sapporo, Japan, but the decision was rescinded in 1938 because of the Japanese invasion of China. The Games were moved to Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, but the German invasion of Poland in 1939 forced the complete cancellation of the 1940 Games.   Due to the ongoing war the 1944 Games, originally scheduled for Cortina D'Ampezzo, Italy, were cancelled. 

1948 to 1960

St. Moritz was selected to host the first post-war Games in 1948. Switzerland's neutrality had protected the town during World War II and most of the venues were in place from the 1928 Games, which made St. Moritz a logical choice. It became the first city to host a Winter Olympics twice.  Twenty-eight countries competed in Switzerland, but athletes from Germany and Japan were not invited. Controversy erupted when two hockey teams from the United States arrived, both claiming to be the legitimate U.S. Olympic hockey representative. The Olympic flag presented at the 1920 Summer Olympics in Antwerp was stolen, as was its replacement. There was unprecedented parity at these Games, during which 10 countries won gold medals—more than any Games to that point. 

The Olympic Flame for the 1952 Games in Oslo, was lit in the fireplace by skiing pioneer Sondre Nordheim and the torch relay was conducted by 94 participants entirely on skis.  Bandy, a popular sport in the Nordic countries, was featured as a demonstration sport, though only Norway, Sweden and Finland fielded teams. Norwegian athletes won 17 medals, which outpaced all the other nations.   They were led by Hjalmar Andersen who won three gold medals in four events in the speed skating competition. 

After not being able to host the Games in 1944, Cortina d'Ampezzo was selected to organise the 1956 Winter Olympics. At the opening ceremonies the final torch bearer, Guido Caroli, entered the Olympic Stadium on ice skates. As he skated around the stadium his skate caught on a cable and he fell, nearly extinguishing the flame. He was able to recover and light the cauldron.  These were the first Winter Games to be televised and the first Olympics ever broadcast nationwide, though no television rights would be sold until the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome.Guttman (1986), p. 135 The Cortina Games were used to test the feasibility of televising large sporting events. The Soviet Union made its Olympic debut and had an immediate impact, winning more medals than any other nation. Chiharu Igaya won the first Winter Olympics medal for Japan and the continent of Asia, when he placed second in the slalom. 

The IOC awarded the 1960 Olympics to Squaw Valley, United States. Since the village was underdeveloped, there was a rush to construct infrastructure and sports facilities like an ice arena, speed-skating track, and a ski-jump hill.Judd (2008), pp. 27–28  The opening and closing ceremonies were produced by Walt Disney.Judd (2008), p. 28 The Squaw Valley Olympics had a number of notable firsts: it was the first Olympics to have a dedicated athletes' village, it was the first to use a computer (courtesy of IBM) to tabulate results, and the first to feature female speed skating events. The bobsleigh events were absent for the only time, because the organising committee found it too expensive to build the bobsleigh run.

1964 to 1980

The Austrian city of Innsbruck was the host in 1964. Although Innsbruck was a traditional winter sports resort, warm weather caused a lack of snow during the Games and the Austrian army was asked to transport snow and ice to the sport venues. Soviet speed-skater Lidia Skoblikova made history by sweeping all four speed-skating events. Her career total of six gold medals set a record for Winter Olympics athletes. Luge was first contested in 1964, although the sport received bad publicity when a competitor was killed in a pre-Olympic training run. 

Held in the French town of Grenoble, the 1968 Winter Olympics were the first Olympic Games to be broadcast in colour. There were 37 nations and 1,158 athletes competing in 35 events.  Frenchman Jean-Claude Killy became only the second person to win all the men's alpine skiing events. The organising committee sold television rights for $2 million, which was more than double the price of the broadcast rights for the Innsbruck Games.Findling and Pelle (2004), p. 277 Venues were spread over long distances requiring three athletes' villages. The organisers claimed this was required to accommodate technological advances. Critics disputed this, alleging that the layout was necessary to provide the best possible venues for television broadcasts at the expense of the athletes.

The 1972 Winter Games, held in Sapporo, Japan, were the first to be hosted outside North America or Europe. The issue of professionalism became contentious during the Sapporo Games. Three days before the Games IOC president Avery Brundage threatened to bar a number of alpine skiers from competing because they participated in a ski camp at Mammoth Mountain in the United States. Brundage reasoned that the skiers had financially benefited from their status as athletes and were therefore no longer amateurs.  Eventually only Austrian Karl Schranz, who earned more than all the other skiers, was not allowed to compete.   Canada did not send teams to the 1972 or 1976 ice hockey tournaments in protest of their inability to use players from professional leagues.  Francisco Fernández Ochoa became the first (and only) Spaniard to win a Winter Olympic gold medal; he triumphed in the slalom.

The 1976 Winter Olympics had been awarded in 1970 to Denver, United States, but in November 1972 the voters of the state of Colorado voted against public funding of the games by a 3 to 2 margin.   The IOC turned to offer the Games to Vancouver-Garibaldi, British Columbia, which had been a candidate for the 1976 Games. However, a change in provincial government brought in an administration which did not support the Olympic bid, so the offer was rejected. Salt Lake City, a candidate for the 1972 Games, offered itself, but the IOC opted to ask Innsbruck, which had maintained most of the infrastructure from the 1964 Games. With half the time to prepare for the Games as intended, Innsbruck accepted the invitation to replace Denver in February 1973. Two Olympic flames were lit because it was the second time the Austrian town had hosted the Games. The 1976 Games featured the first combination bobsleigh and luge track, in neighbouring Igls. The Soviet Union won its fourth consecutive ice hockey gold medal.

In 1980 the Olympics returned to Lake Placid, which had hosted the 1932 Games. The first boycott of a Winter Olympics occurred in 1980 when Taiwan refused to participate after an edict by the IOC mandated that they change their name and national anthem.   The IOC was attempting to accommodate China, who wished to compete using the same name and anthem that had been used by Taiwan. American speed-skater Eric Heiden set either an Olympic or world record in each of the five events he competed in.  Hanni Wenzel won both the slalom and giant slalom and her country, Liechtenstein, became the smallest nation to produce an Olympic gold medallist. In the "Miracle on Ice" the American hockey team beat the favoured Soviets, and then went on to win the gold medal. 

1984 to 1998

Sapporo, Japan, and Gothenburg, Sweden, were front-runners to host the 1984 Winter Olympics. It was therefore a surprise when Sarajevo, Yugoslavia, was selected as host. The Games were well-organised and displayed no indication of the war that would engulf the country eight years later. A total of 49 nations and 1,272 athletes participated in 39 events. Host nation Yugoslavia won its first Olympic medal when alpine skier Jure Franko won a silver in the giant slalom. Another sporting highlight was the free dance performance of British ice dancers Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean. Their performance to Ravel's Boléro earned the pair the gold medal after achieving unanimous perfect scores for artistic impression.

In 1988, the Canadian city of Calgary hosted the first Winter Olympics to span 16 days. New events were added in ski-jumping and speed skating; while future Olympic sports curling, short track speed skating and freestyle skiing made their appearance as demonstration sports. For the first time the speed skating events were held indoors, on the Olympic Oval. Dutch skater Yvonne van Gennip won three gold medals and set two world records, beating skaters from the favoured East German team in every race.  Her medal total was equalled by Finnish ski jumper Matti Nykänen, who won all three events in his sport. Alberto Tomba, an Italian skier, made his Olympic debut by winning both the giant slalom and slalom. East German Christa Rothenburger won the women's 1,000 metre speed skating event. Seven months later she would earn a silver in track cycling at the Summer Games in Seoul, to become the only athlete to win medals in both a Summer and Winter Olympics in the same year.

The 1992 Games were the last to be held in the same year as the Summer Games. They were hosted in the French Savoie region in the city of Albertville, though only 18 events were held in the city. The rest of the events were spread out over the Savoie. Political changes of the time were reflected in the Olympic teams appearing in France: this was the first Games to be held after the fall of Communism and the dismantling of the Berlin Wall, and Germany competed as a single nation for the first time since the 1964 Games; former Yugoslavian republics Croatia and Slovenia made their debuts as independent nations; most of the former Soviet republics still competed as a single team known as the Unified Team, but the Baltic States made independent appearances for the first time since before World War II.  At 16 years old, Finnish ski jumper Toni Nieminen made history by becoming the youngest male Winter Olympic champion.  New Zealand skier Annelise Coberger became the first Winter Olympic medallist from the southern hemisphere when she won a silver medal in the women's slalom.

In 1986 the IOC had voted to separate the Summer and Winter Games and place them in alternating even-numbered years. This change became effective for the 1994 Games, held in Lillehammer, Norway, which became the first Winter Olympics to be held separate from the Summer Games. After the division of Czechoslovakia in 1993 the Czech Republic and Slovakia made their Olympic debuts.  The women's figure skating competition garnered media attention when American skater Nancy Kerrigan was injured on 6 January 1994, in an assault planned by the ex-husband of opponent Tonya Harding.  Both skaters competed in the Games, but the gold medal was won by Oksana Baiul. She became Ukraine's first Olympic champion.    Johann Olav Koss of Norway won three gold medals, coming first in all of the distance speed skating events. 

The 1998 Winter Olympics were held in the Japanese city of Nagano and were the first Games to host more than 2,000 athletes. The men's ice hockey tournament was opened to professionals for the first time.  Canada and the United States, with their many NHL players, were favoured to win the tournament. Neither won any hockey medals however, as the Czech Republic prevailed. Women's ice hockey made its debut and the United States won the gold medal.  Bjørn Dæhlie of Norway won three gold medals in Nordic skiing. He became the most decorated Winter Olympic athlete with eight gold medals and twelve medals overall.  Austrian Hermann Maier survived a crash during the downhill competition and returned to win gold in the super-g and the giant slalom. A wave of new world records were set in speed skating because of the introduction of the clap skate. 

2002 to 2010

The 2002 Winter Olympics were held in Salt Lake City, United States, hosting 77 nations and 2,399 athletes in 78 events in 7 sports. These games were the first to take place since 11 September 2001, which meant a higher degree of security to avoid a terrorist attack. The opening ceremonies of the games saw signs of the aftermath of the events of that day, including the flag that flew at Ground Zero, NYPD officer Daniel Rodríguez singing "God Bless America", and honor guards of NYPD and FDNY members.

German Georg Hackl won a silver in the singles luge, becoming the first athlete in Olympic history to win medals in the same individual event in five consecutive Olympics. Canada achieved an unprecedented double by winning both the men's and women's ice hockey gold medals. Canada became embroiled with Russia in a controversy that involved the judging of the pairs figure skating competition. The Russian pair of Yelena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze competed against the Canadian pair of Jamie Salé and David Pelletier for the gold medal. The Canadians appeared to have skated well enough to win the competition, yet the Russians were awarded the gold. The judging broke along Cold War lines with judges from former Communist countries favouring the Russian pair and judges from Western nations voting for the Canadians. The only exception was the French judge, Marie-Reine Le Gougne, who awarded the gold to the Russians. An investigation revealed that she had been pressured to give the gold to the Russian pair regardless of how they skated; in return the Russian judge would look favourably on the French entrants in the ice dancing competition.  The IOC decided to award both pairs the gold medal in a second medal ceremony held later in the Games.  Australian Steven Bradbury became the first gold medallist from the southern hemisphere when he won the 1,000 metre short-track speed skating event. 

The Italian city of Turin hosted the 2006 Winter Olympics. It was the second time that Italy had hosted the Winter Olympic Games. South Korean athletes won 10 medals, including 6 gold in the short-track speed skating events. Sun-Yu Jin won three gold medals while her teammate Hyun-Soo Ahn won three gold medals and a bronze. In the women's Cross-Country team pursuit Canadian Sara Renner broke one of her poles and, when he saw her dilemma, Norwegian coach Bjørnar Håkensmoen decided to lend her a pole. In so doing she was able to help her team win a silver medal in the event at the expense of the Norwegian team, who finished fourth. Claudia Pechstein of Germany became the first speed skater to earn nine career medals. In February 2009 Pechstein tested positive for "blood manipulation" and received a two-year suspension, which she appealed. The Court of Arbitration for Sport upheld her suspension but a Swiss court ruled that she could compete for a spot on the 2010 German Olympic team.   This ruling was brought to the Swiss Federal Tribunal, which overturned the lower court's ruling and precluded her from competing in Vancouver. 

In 2003 the IOC awarded the 2010 Winter Olympics to Vancouver, thus allowing Canada to host its second Winter Olympics. With a population of more than 2.5 million people Vancouver is the largest metropolitan area to ever host a Winter Olympic Games.   Over 2,500 athletes from 82 countries participated in 86 events.   The death of Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili in a training run on the day of the opening ceremonies resulted in the Whistler Sliding Centre changing the track layout on safety grounds.   Norwegian cross-country skier Marit Bjørgen won five medals in the six cross-country events on the women's programme. She finished the Olympics with three golds, a silver and a bronze.   The Vancouver Games were notable for the poor performance of the Russian athletes. From their first Winter Olympics in 1956 to the 2006 games, a Soviet or Russian delegation had never been outside the top five medal-winning nations. In 2010 they finished sixth in total medals and eleventh in gold medals.  President Dmitry Medvedev called for the resignation of top sports officials immediately after the Games.   The success of Asian countries stood in stark contrast to the under-performing Russian team, with Vancouver marking a high point for medals won by Asian countries. In 1992 the Asian countries had won fifteen medals, three of which were gold. In Vancouver the total number of medals won by athletes from Asia had increased to thirty-one, with eleven of them being gold. The rise of Asian nations in Winter Olympics sports is due in part to the growth of winter sports programmes and the interest in winter sports in nations such as South Korea, Japan and China.  

2014

Sochi, Russia, was selected as the host city of the 2014 Winter Olympics over Salzburg, Austria, and Pyeongchang, South Korea. This was the first time since the breakup of the Soviet Union that Russia hosted a Winter Olympics. Over 2800 athletes from 88 countries participated in 98 events. The Olympic Village and Olympic Stadium were located on the Black Sea coast. All of the mountain venues were 50 km away in the alpine region known as Krasnaya Polyana.

The 2014 Winter Olympics, officially the XXII Olympic Winter Games, or the 22nd Winter Olympics, took place from 7 to 23 February 2014. 

Future

On 6 July 2011, the IOC selected the city of Pyeongchang, South Korea to host the 2018 Winter Olympics.

The host city for the XXIV Olympic Winter Games, also known as the 2022 Winter Olympics, is Beijing, elected on 31 July 2015, at the 128th IOC Session in Kuala Lumpur. Beijing will be the first city to host both the summer and winter olympics.

Controversy

The process for awarding host city honours came under intense scrutiny after Salt Lake City had been awarded the right to host the 2002 Games.  Soon after the host city had been announced it was discovered that the organisers had engaged in an elaborate bribery scheme to curry favour with IOC officials. Gifts and other financial considerations were given to those who would evaluate and vote on Salt Lake City's bid. These gifts included medical treatment for relatives, a college scholarship for one member's son and a land deal in Utah. Even IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch received two rifles valued at $2,000. Samaranch defended the gift as inconsequential since, as president, he was a non-voting member.Cashmore (2005), p. 444  The subsequent investigation uncovered inconsistencies in the bids for every Games (both summer and winter) since 1988.  For example, the gifts received by IOC members from the Japanese Organising Committee for Nagano's bid for the 1998 Winter Olympics were described by the investigation committee as "astronomical".  Although nothing strictly illegal had been done, the IOC feared that corporate sponsors would lose faith in the integrity of the process and that the Olympic brand would be tarnished to such an extent that advertisers would begin to pull their support.   The investigation resulted in the expulsion of 10 IOC members and the sanctioning of another 10. New terms and age limits were established for IOC membership, and 15 former Olympic athletes were added to the committee. Stricter rules for future bids were imposed, with ceilings imposed on the value of gifts IOC members could accept from bid cities.   

Host city legacy

According to the IOC, the host city is responsible for, "...establishing functions and services for all aspects of the Games, such as sports planning, venues, finance, technology, accommodation, catering, media services etc., as well as operations during the Games."   Due to the cost of hosting an Olympic Games, most host cities never realise a profit on their investment.  For example, the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan, cost $12.5 billion. By comparison the Torino Games of 2006 cost $3.6 billion to host.  The organisers claimed that the cost of extending the bullet train service from Tokyo to Nagano was responsible for the large price tag.  The organising committee hoped that the exposure of the Olympic Games, and the expedited access to Nagano from Tokyo, would be a boon to the local economy for years afterward. Nagano's economy did experience a two-year post-Olympic spurt, but the long-term effects have not materialised as planned.  The possibility of heavy debt, coupled with unused sports venues and infrastructure that saddle the local community with upkeep costs and no practical post-Olympic value, is a deterrent to prospective host cities. 

To mitigate these concerns the IOC has enacted several initiatives. First it has agreed to fund part of the host city's budget for staging the Games.  Secondly, the IOC limits the qualifying host countries to those that have the resources and infrastructure to successfully host an Olympic Games without negatively impacting the region or nation. This eliminates a large portion of the developing world.   Finally, cities bidding to host the Games are required to add a "legacy plan" to their proposal. This requires prospective host cities and the IOC, to plan with a view to the long-term economic and environmental impact that hosting the Olympics will have on the region.

Doping 

In 1967 the IOC began enacting drug testing protocols. They started by randomly testing athletes at the 1968 Winter Olympics.  The first Winter Games athlete to test positive for a banned substance was Alois Schloder, a West German hockey player,  but his team was still allowed to compete.  During the 1970s testing outside of competition was escalated because it was found to deter athletes from using performance-enhancing drugs.Mottram (2003), p. 313 The problem with testing during this time was a lack of standardisation of the test procedures, which undermined the credibility of the tests. It was not until the late 1980s that international sporting federations began to coordinate efforts to standardise the drug-testing protocols.  The IOC took the lead in the fight against steroids when it established the independent World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) in November 1999. 

The 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin became notable for a scandal involving the emerging trend of blood doping, the use of blood transfusions or synthetic hormones such as Erythropoietin (EPO) to improve oxygen flow and thus reduce fatigue. The Italian police conducted a raid on the Austrian cross-country ski team's residence during the Games where they seized blood-doping specimens and equipment. This event followed the pre-Olympics suspension of 12 cross-country skiers who tested positive for unusually high levels of hemoglobin, which is evidence of blood doping.

Commercialisation

Avery Brundage, as president of the IOC from 1952 to 1972, rejected all attempts to link the Olympics with commercial interests as he felt that the Olympic movement should be completely separate from financial influence.Cooper-Chen (2005), p. 231 The 1960 Winter Olympics marked the beginning of corporate sponsorship of the Games. Despite Brundage's strenuous resistance the commercialisation of the Games continued during the 1960s, and revenue generated by corporate sponsorship swelled the IOC's coffers.Senn (1999), p. 136 By the Grenoble Games, Brundage had become so concerned about the direction of the Winter Olympic Games towards commercialisation that, if it could not be corrected, he felt the Winter Olympics should be abolished.  Brundage's resistance to this revenue stream meant that the IOC was unable to gain a share of the financial windfall that was coming to host cities, and had no control over the structuring of sponsorship deals. When Brundage retired the IOC had $2 million in assets; eight years later its accounts had swelled to $45 million. This was due to a shift in ideology among IOC members, towards expansion of the Games through corporate sponsorship and the sale of television rights.

Brundage's concerns proved prophetic. The IOC has charged more for television broadcast rights at each successive Games.  At the 1998 Nagano Games American broadcaster CBS paid $375 million, whereas the 2006 Turin Games cost NBC $613 million to broadcast.  The more television companies have paid to televise the Games, the greater their persuasive power has been with the IOC.  For example, the television lobby has influenced the Olympic programme by dictating when event finals are held, so that they appear in prime time for television audiences. They have pressured the IOC to include new events, such as snowboarding, that appeal to broader television audiences. This has been done to boost ratings, which were slowly declining until the 2010 Games.Cooper-Chen (2005), p. 230 

In 1986 the IOC decided to stagger the Summer and Winter Games. Instead of holding both in the same calendar year the committee decided to alternate them every two years, although both Games would still be held on four-year cycles.Whannel (1992), p. 174 It was decided that 1992 would be the last year to have both a Winter and Summer Olympic Games.  There were two underlying reasons for this change: first was the television lobby's desire to maximise advertising revenue as it was difficult to sell advertising time for two Games in the same year;  second was the IOC's desire to gain more control over the revenue generated by the Games. It was decided that staggering the Games would make it easier for corporations to sponsor individual Olympic Games, which would maximise revenue potential. The IOC sought to directly negotiate sponsorship contracts so that they had more control over the Olympic "brand".  The first Winter Olympics to be hosted in this new format were the 1994 Games in Lillehammer.

Politics

Cold War

The Winter Olympics have been an ideological front in the Cold War since the Soviet Union first participated at the 1956 Winter Games. It did not take long for the Cold War combatants to discover what a powerful propaganda tool the Olympic Games could be. Soviet and American politicians used the Olympics as an opportunity to demonstrate the superiority of their respective political systems.Hazan (1982), p. 36 The successful Soviet athlete was feted and honoured. Irina Rodnina, three-time Olympic gold medallist in figure skating, was awarded the Order of Lenin after her victory at the 1976 Winter Olympics in Innsbruck.  Soviet athletes who won gold medals could expect to receive between $4,000 and $8,000 depending on the prestige of the sport. A world record was worth an additional $1,500.  In 1978 the United States Congress responded to these measures by passing legislation that reorganised the United States Olympic Committee. It also approved financial rewards to medal-winning athletes. 

The Cold War created tensions amongst countries allied to the two superpowers. The strained relationship between East and West Germany created a difficult political situation for the IOC. Because of its role in World War II, Germany was not allowed to compete at the 1948 Winter Olympics. In 1950 the IOC recognised the West German Olympic Committee, and invited East and West Germany to compete as a unified team at the 1952 Winter Games.Hill (1992), p. 34  East Germany declined the invitation and instead sought international legitimacy separate from West Germany.  In 1955 the Soviet Union recognised East Germany as a sovereign state, thereby giving more credibility to East Germany's campaign to become an independent participant at the Olympics. The IOC agreed to provisionally accept the East German National Olympic Committee with the condition that East and West Germans compete on one team.  The situation became tenuous when the Berlin Wall was constructed in 1962 and western nations began refusing visas to East German athletes.  The uneasy compromise of a unified team held until the 1968 Grenoble Games when the IOC officially split the teams and threatened to reject the host-city bids of any country that refused entry visas to East German athletes. 

Boycott

The Winter Games have had only one national team boycott when Taiwan decided not to participate in the 1980 Winter Olympics held in Lake Placid. Prior to the Games the IOC agreed to allow China to compete in the Olympics for the first time since 1952. China was given permission to compete as the "People's Republic of China" (PRC) and to use the PRC flag and anthem. Until 1980 the island of Taiwan had been competing under the name "Republic of China" (ROC) and had been using the ROC flag and anthem.  The IOC attempted to have the countries compete together but when this proved to be unacceptable the IOC demanded that Taiwan cease to call itself the "Republic of China".    The IOC renamed the island "Chinese Taipei" and demanded that it adopt a different flag and national anthem, stipulations that Taiwan would not agree to. Despite numerous appeals and court hearings the IOC's decision stood. When the Taiwanese athletes arrived at the Olympic village with their Republic of China identification cards they were not admitted. They subsequently left the Olympics in protest, just before the opening ceremonies.  Taiwan returned to Olympic competition at the 1984 Winter Games in Sarajevo as Chinese Taipei. The country agreed to compete under a flag bearing the emblem of their National Olympic Committee and to play the anthem of their National Olympic Committee should one of their athletes win a gold medal. The agreement remains in place to this day. 

All-time medal table

With reference to the top ten nations and according to official data of the International Olympic Committee.

List of Winter Olympic Games

Unlike the Summer Olympics, the cancelled 1940 Winter Olympics and 1944 Winter Olympics are not included in the official Roman numeral counts for the Winter Games. While the official titles of the Summer Games count Olympiads, the titles of the Winter Games only count the Games themselves.
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