That the Games Start! - Olympic Games

Ah... the Olympics. What to say? The most important sports competition of the world. Uniting the countries for dispute dozens of sports. Trying to search the medal, but also extending the country flag. The Olympic Games are union, emotion, vibration... We’ll see the history of the Olympic Games, the Paralympic Games, that prove that a deficiency isn’t document for sports, the Winter Games, where Winter sports happen, all about this edition on Tokyo, and some curiosities about this competition who makes the world stop in front of the TV.

The creation of the Olympics was inspired by the ancient Olympic Games. They 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, where the winners used to receive crowns of gold or olive-tree leaf. These Games featured mainly athletic but also combat sports such as wrestling and the pankration, horse and chariot racing events. It has been widely written that during the Games, all conflicts among the participating city-states were postponed until the Games were finished. This cessation of hostilities was known as the Olympic peace or truce. The most widely accepted inception date for the Ancient Olympics is 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 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 Olympic Games reached the height of their success 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.

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, the aim of establishing internationally rotating Olympic Games that would occur every four years, as in the Ancient Games. He presented these ideas during the first Olympic Congress of the newly created International Olympic Committee. 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 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. 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, with the second Olympic Games being tooking place in Paris. After the success of the 1896 Games, the Olympics entered a period of stagnation which threatened its survival. The Olympic Games of Paris 1900 and St. Louis 1904 failed to attract much participation or notice. The Games rebounded with the 1906 Intercalated Games (so-called because they were the second Olympics to take place within the third Olympiad), which were held in Athens. These Games attracted a broad international field of participants and generated a great deal of public interest, marking the beginning of a rise in both the popularity and the size of the Olympics. The 1906 Games were officially recognised by the IOC at the time (although not any longer), and no Intercalated Games have been held since.

These are all the Modern Olympic Games that already happened, and the future ones, including the very recent election of Brisbane Games in 2032. The canceled Olympic Games are with strikethrough, Tokyo 2020 is on bold, and the future future Olympic Games (excepting Tokyo 2020) are marked in italics.

The Tokyo metropolitan region hosted the 1964 Summer Olympics. In addition, this will be the fourth edition of the Games to be held in Japan. Along with the 1964 Summer Games, Japan has twice hosted the Winter Olympic Games. The first time was Sapporo 1972 and the second time was Nagano 1998. 

The Games were scheduled to run from the 24th of July to the 9th of August 2020, with the first events scheduled to start on the 22nd of July. However, on March 24, 2020, the games were pushed back to the summer of 2021, as one of the main effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. This postponement also affected the dates of the Paralympic Games, which were also postponed to the summer of 2021 (this will be the first time in history that an Olympic event has been postponed and which will also take place in an odd year, ie outside the Olympic cycle). But even with the postponement, the Games will have its name and brand maintained. On March 30, 2020, the new dates were set: July 23 to August 8, 2021.

46 modalities with 33 sports will be disputed on Tokyo Games. 5 modalities of them, are newcomers, which are marked in bold. Here are the list of them.

The IOC called the election to select the tournament's host city on September 7, 2013, during the 125th Session of the International Olympic Committee in Buenos Aires, Argentina. No city achieved an absolute majority of votes in the first round, ending with Tokyo in first place, reaching 45% of the valid votes, and Madrid and Istanbul tied for second place with 27.5% of the valid votes each. In the tiebreak, Istanbul won with 52% of the valid votes, moving to the second round with Tokyo. In the final vote, Tokyo was selected with 60 votes in favor, accounting for 62% of the votes, while Istanbul got 36 votes.

The Paralympic Games or is the world's largest sporting event involving people with disabilities. They include athletes with physical disabilities (of mobility, amputations, blindness or cerebral palsy), as well as intellectually disabled. First held in 1960 in Rome, Italy, they have their origins in Stoke Mandeville, England, where the first sports competitions for the physically handicapped took place, as a way to rehabilitate soldiers injured in World War II.

27 modalities make up the Paralympic Games programme, twenty-seven of which have already been played and two will debut in the 2020 edition of the Games. In addition to adapted sports, such as athletics, swimming, basketball, table tennis, alpine skiing and curling, there are sports played exclusively by the disabled, such as bocce, goalball and blind soccer.

In 2001, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) signed an agreement that ensures that host cities manage both the Olympic and Paralympic Games. This agreement has been renewed several times and currently remains in effect until the 2032 Summer Paralympic Games. There is also a version of Paralympics to the Winter Games.

The first competition of a worldwide character to bring together winter sports was the International Winter Sports Week, held in 1924 in the French town of Chamonix. Just two years later, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) decided to give the status of Olympic Games to that competition, which would take place regularly.

In the beginning, the Summer and Winter Games were assigned to the same country to be held in the same year. This was the case until the fourth edition, in Germany, in 1936 (the year in which Berlin hosted the Summer Games and Garmisch-Partenkirchen hosted the Winter Games). After two editions canceled because of World War II (Sapporo 1940 and Cortina d'Ampezzo 1944), the Games started to be held by different countries, but continued to take place in the same year. In 1986, the IOC decided to alternate the Summer and Winter Games, always held in even years. Thus, the 1992 Albertville Games were succeeded by the 1994 Lillehammer Games.

This is the list of all the cities that held the Winter Games. In italics the future games, and in strikethrough, the canceled ones.

That’s the Olympics. Magic and peace, uniting the countries in an only feeling. The Olympic Games could happen every year. They dodge all our attentions. Isn’t just a medal, but a fire in our hearts, called happiness. That the Games start!