Olympics History
By Blake Svedeen
Have you ever wondered how the Olympics started? Well we didn’t know either. While attending the University of Utah most students know that we had our own olympics in Utah, knowing this students should gain more knowledge on the history of the olympics and why it is so important. Our group will recognize the key points in history where, why, and who helped start the Olympics and where the Olympics progressed from the beginning.
The creation of the olympics were inspired by Olympia, Greece and was from the 8th century BC to the 4th century AD. Baron Pierre de Coblertin founded the international Olympic Committee in 1894, leading to the first modern games in Athens in 1896. The winter olympics was founded by Pierre de Coubertin and tried to get winter sports, specifically figure skating, to get added to the olympic program and was unsuccessful until the 1908 summer olympics in London, United kingdom. More than 90 countries send roughly 2900 athletes to compete in 15 different disciplines. The olympics includes a record of 102 events in total of summer and winter, 49 for men, and 44 for women. The winter olympics started in Chamonix, France in 1924 which only had 6 sports and 12 different events and would continue to increase the amount of events and sports. This would lead to having 22 more winter olympics till the one coming up in 2022 which will be the Beijing winter olympics and in 2026 it will be held at Milan-Cortina d’Ampezzo. The winter olympics will have 15 different sports broken into 3 categories, Ice sports, Alpine, skiing and snowboarding events, and Nordic events. Ice sports consist of Figure skating, Ice hockey, Curling, and Speed skating. These Ice sports such as ice hockey and Figure skating were originally part of the summer olympics. Alpine skiing and snowboarding events consist of men and women halfpipe, men’s and women’s parallel giant slalom, and men’s and women’s snowboard cross. The Nordic events consist of ski-jumping and cross-country. The summer olympics used to take place at the same time with the winter olympics, then in 1992 they changed this for the athletes to be able to stay in shape. Back in 1976 we could have had another Winter olympics in the United States in Denver because they won, then rejected the offer because of the projected costs and environmental impacts. The 1932 Winter Olympics was the first olympics in the United states and took place in Lake Placid, NY, In 1960 California had a winter olympics and 1980 back in NY, than the last one being in 2002 Salt lake City, Utah.
The Winter Olympics have changed a lot over the history of starting all the way back from the8th century BC all the way to present day. From the clothes they wear all the way to how manysports are in each category, and which sports had been added and taken away. These sportsalso have had rule changes throughout history either splitting it into two different events orletting guys and girls compete together in events. The Winter Olympics will continue to change, we will just have to see these upcoming events.
Sources
History of the Winter Olympics games, https://www.pinterest.ch/pin/233905774380613947/
Olympic Games Host Cities Map
https://www.mapsofworld.com/world-olympic-map.htm
Memorable moments in Winter Olympics History Daily News
https://www.nydailynews.com/sports/top-winter-olympics-moments-gallery-1.4883
Bio
Hey, I'm Blake, I joined the UGS The great outdoors class because of freshmen orientation because they said we just got to go on hikes and other fun stuff so I decided to try it and it was way better than I ever expected. I like to skateboard, hike, and play video games. But I also used to wrestle so it was good to have a class to make me go on hikes. I want to study Computer science with an EAE emphasis and if plans change I'm thinking of doing a Marketing major.