Time Line Project

Ancient Games

824 BC The earliest documentation of the ancient Games traces the efforts of King Iphitos Elis, to establish a "sacred truce" through the conduct of Games "dear to the gods."

776 BC First Ancient Games, only one athletic event was held in the ancient Olympics - a foot race of about 183m (200 yards), or the length of the stadium. A cook, Coroibus of Elis, was the first recorded winner.

XIV Olympic Games, around 720 BC. A second race was added to the Games. Participants had to run two times the length of the stadium.

XVIII Olympic Games, around 704 BC. Games now included wrestling and a pentathlon

XXIII Olympic Games, around 684 BC, Olympiad boxing was added.

632 BC Format of the Olympics was extended to five days

394 AD End of the Ancient Games. The Games were officially ended by the Roman Emperor Theodosius, who felt they had pagan connotations.

Modern Games

1894 International Athletic Congress - International Olympic Committee (IOC) founded

1896 First modern Olympics, Athens, Greece

1900 United States Olympic Committee - USOC - founded, Head Quarters located in Colorado Springs, Colorado

1904 First Olympic Games where women were participants

1912 Most notable case of an athlete losing Olympic eligibility for violation the amateur code is that of the 1912 gold medalist Jim Thorpe of the United States. Thorpe was stripped of his Olympic medals because he has earned a small amount of money playing semi-professional baseball two years before the 1912 Stockholm Games. Jim Thorpe was an American Indian, who won both the decathlon and pentathlon in Stockholm; Thorpe was eventually honored as the greatest athlete of the first half of the 20th century.

1913 Baron Pierre de Coubertin designed the Olympic emblem in 1913. In his words, "These 5 rings represent the union of the five continents and the meeting of athletes from throughout the world at the Olympic Games. The colors were chosen because at least one of these colors is found in the flag of every nation.

1916 Olympic Games canceled due to WWI

1922 IOC recognizes Chinese National Olympic Committee

1924 First Winter Games, Chamonix, France

1936 - "Hitler's Olympics" The ideology of nationalism, which swept the world during the early 20th century, left its mark on the Olympics. Athletic nationalism was brought to a peak by Nazi Germany, which staged the 1936 Games in Berlin and used the Olympics to propagandize its cause. The Germans built a powerful team through nationalized training and scientific advances and dominated the Games in terms of medals won. During the Games, Adolf Hitler refused to recognize the achievements of Jesse Owens, an African-American who won four gold medals.

- The 1936 Berlin Games were the first sports competitions televised live. More than two dozen viewing halls were built in Berlin for people to watch the Games. Although the picture quality of these early broadcasts was poor, the link between television and the Olympic games was made.

1940 Olympic Games canceled due to WWII

1944 Olympic Games canceled due to WWII

1945 Division of Korea

1948 Establishment of North and South Korea

1950 IOC grants provisional recognition to West German National Olympic team

1951 National Olympic Committee of the USSR recognized

1952 USSR and West Germany participate in Helsinki Games. People's Republic of China permitted to compete at Helsinki, although its' NOC has not yet been recognized. Taiwan withdraws in protest.

1954 NOC of People's Republic of China recognized as "Olympic Committee of the Chinese Republic." Taiwan's NOC still recognized as Chinese Olympic Committee.

1955 East Germany is fully recognized

1956/1960/1964 Joint East and West German teams compete at Melbourne, Rome and Tokyo Games

1956 - People's Republic of China withdraws from Melbourne Games in protest of continuing recognition of separate NOC in Taiwan

- Egypt, Iraq, and Lebanon boycotted the Melbourne Games to protest the Anglo-French seizure of the Suez Canal. The Netherlands, Spain and Switzerland boycotted the Games also, to protest the USSR's invasion of Hungary.

- The first international broadcasts of The Olympic competition came at the Cortina Winter Games in 1956. Viewers in eight European countries watched the Games.

- Melbourne Games, nearly 40% of the Hungarian Olympic Contingent defected rather than return home to a country recently invaded by armed forces from the Soviet Union

1957 Designation of NOC of People's Republic of China changed to 'Olympic Committee of People's Democratic Republic of China.'

1958 People's Republic of China withdraws from Olympic movement and from all international federations.

1959 International Olympic Committee decides the NOC may not continue as the Chinese Olympic Committee

1960

First Olympic television rights are sold
South Africa's last participation at Games until 1992

1963 Full recognition of North Korean NOC

1964 The IOC voted to expel the Republic of S. Africa from the Games. African-American athletes visibly protested the discrimination against Blacks in the U.S. The image of American sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos standing on the medal stand with clenched gloved fists, symbolizing Black Power, remains etched in Olympic History.

1968 - East German NOC recognized as NOC of German Democratic Republic and competes separately at Mexico City Games - Confirmation of designation of Taiwan Olympic Committee as 'Olympic Committee of the Republic of China.'

1970 IOC withdraws recognition of South African National Olympic Committee

1971 - Expulsion of Taiwan from UN admission of People's Republic of China - IOC resolves to reinstate People's Republic of China

1972 Munich Olympic massacre. The 1972 Games were marked by the tragedy growing out of political conditions in the Middle East. Members of an Arab guerrilla organization killed two Israeli athletes and took nine hostages, who were later killed, along with five of the guerrillas and a West German policeman, in a gun battle with police at a Munich airport. Olympic activities were suspended for a day to hold memorial services for the murdered Israeli athletes.

1976 - Canadian government refuses to admit Taiwanese team if 'China' appears in it's title. The Canadian government refused to allow the Taiwanese team to carry its' flag or have its' national anthem played at the Games. The Taiwanese there upon withdrew.

1976 introduced the "Age of the Olympic boycott." Seventeen African and Arab nations boycotted the Montreal Games protesting New Zealand's violation of the international sports ban on South Africa.
Black African nations demanded that New Zealand be excluded from the Olympics because one of its rugby teams had recently played in S. Africa whose racial policies these Black African nations opposed. When their demand was refused 31 nations withdrew their teams from the competition in support of the black African nations.

1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan

1980 In 1980 the U.S. government led a boycott of the Summer Games in Moscow to protest the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Under strong pressure form the Carter administration, the U.S. Olympic Committee voted to boycott the Games, thus depriving the Russians of their chief athletic competition. Although a total of 81 nations were represented in Moscow, about 40 nations followed the U.S. lead (among them West Germany, China, and Japan), depriving the Soviets of their chief athletic competition and raising doubts about the future of the Olympic movement. such fears were well founded.

1984 The Summer games, held in Los Angeles, were undercut by an Eastern-bloc boycott led by the USSR. Fear of an openly hostile environment in Los Angeles was cited by the Soviet Olympic Committee as the reason for the USSR's nonparticipation, but most commentators believed the reasons to be political: a reflection of the poor state of recent U.S. - Soviet relations, simple revenge for the U.S. boycott of the Moscow Games, and possible embarrassment to the Soviets on worldwide television caused by planned anti-Soviet demonstrations and possible defections of Eastern-bloc athletes.

1992 Both the Winter and Summer Games (in Albertville, France, and Barcelona, Spain, respectively) were notable as the first Olympics without the Eastern-bloc sports machine, the last for the "Unified Teams" from the former USSR, and for the return of South Africa.

1988 Seoul, South Korea, Summer Olympics East met West in Olympic competition for the first time since 1976, with only six nations (including Cuba and North Korea) boycotting, and the focus returned to the athletes. There was suspicion that the use of performance enhancing drugs was widespread after Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson tested positive and was stripped of his gold medal.

1996 Summer Games to be held in Atlanta, Georgia

1998 Nagano Games

2000 Sydney Games

2002 Salt Lake City Games