Olympic Games
The Olympic Games programme 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 programme includes 26 sports, while the Winter Olympics programme features 15 sports. Athletics, swimming, fencing, and artistic gymnastics are the only summer sports that have never been absent from the Olympic programme. Cross-country skiing, figure skating, ice hockey, Nordic combined, ski jumping, and speed skating have been featured at every Winter Olympics programme since its inception in 1924. Current Olympic sports, like badminton, basketball, and volleyball, first appeared on the programme as demonstration sports, and were later promoted to full Olympic sports. Some sports that were featured in earlier Games were later dropped from the programme.
List of 2008 Summer Olympics medal winners
Nine new events were held, including two from the new cycling discipline of BMX. Women competed in the 3000 metre steeplechase for the first time. Marathon open water swimming events for men and women, over the distance of 10 kilometres, were added to the swimming discipline. Team events (men and women) in table tennis replaced the doubles events. In fencing, women's team foil and women's team sabre replaced men's team foil and women's team épée. Two sports were open only to men, baseball and boxing, while one sport and one discipline were open only to women, softball and synchronized swimming. Equestrian is the only sport in which men and women compete together in the same events. Baseball and softball may have made their last appearances in Olympics history during these Games, as the International Olympic Committee voted to remove them from the programme of the 2012 Olympics. A total of 958 medals for events (302 gold, 303 silver and 353 bronze) were awarded. In boxing, judo, taekwondo and wrestling, two bronze medals are awarded in each weight class. Therefore, the total number of bronze medals is greater than the total number of gold or silver medals. Additionally there were ties for a silver medal and two bronze medals.