Interesting facts

• 264

  The oldest Olympic medalist was Oscar Swahn of Sweden. In 1908 and 1912 he won three gold and two bronze medals, respectively, in shooting competitions. In the 1920 Games in Antwerp, he received a silver medal at age 72.

• 240

  The 2008 Paralympic Games in Beijing became the most representative in the history of the Paralympic Movement: Almost 4,000 athletes from 146 countries competed in these Games.

• 237

  Alpine skiing for people with disabilities began to develop after World War II, when wounded soldiers returning from the front wanted to be able to continue their favorite sport. Slalom and giant slalom competitions were included in the first Paralympic Winter Games in 1976. Downhill competitions were held for the first time at the Paralympic Games in Innsbruck in 1984 and super giant was added in 1994 in Lillehammer.

• 154

  The ancient Greek philosopher Plato became a two-time Olympic champion in the most severe form of competition - pankration.

• 132

  The Paralympic Games are the second largest sports competition after the Olympic Games. With each edition, the number of those wishing to compete in the Games gets larger and larger. For example, in 1960 400 athletes from 23 countries participated in the Games. For the 2012 Paralympic Games in London, however, these figures have substantially increased to 4200 athletes from 160 countries. Over the years, the number of Paralympic sport disciplines has grown from 57 to 471.

• 121

  The tradition of the Olympic Games was revived by Baron Pierre de Coubertin (1863-1937) of France. In 1894, he proposed the Olympic motto “Citius, Altius, Fortius” (“Faster, higher, stronger”), a creation of his friend, Dominican priest Henri Dido. However, this motto only received official status in 1924.

• 109

  Since 1924, the Winter Games have been held separately from the Summer Games. Until 1992 they were both held in the same year.

• 102

  The first modern Olympic Games were held in Athens in 1896. A Greek athlete who took third place in the marathon was deprived of his award after it turned out that he had ridden in a cart for part of the way.

• 101

  The Italian marathon runner Dorando Pietri was the first to cross the finish line on that occasion. At the very end of the race, exhausted from the sweltering heat, he was forced to seek medical help. After much debate, the panel of judges disqualified him for taking outside assistance and American Johnny Hayes was declared Olympic champion. However, at the suggestion of celebrated novelist Arthur Conan Doyle, Queen Alexandra awarded Pietri an honorary gold-plated cup.

• 97

  The modern marathon distance of 42,195 km was established at the 1908 Olympic Games in London. At the request of the British royal family, arrangements for the marathon were changed several times in order for it to start from the Royal Palace.

• 93

  The first Paralympic Winter Games took place in 1976 in ?rnsk?ldsvik, Sweden. Track and field competitions were organized for athletes with limb amputations and visual impairments. Additionally, the first showing of ice-sled racing took place during these Games.

• 92

  A year before the Melbourne Olympic Games in 1956, it was found that it would be impossible to hold equestrian sport competitions in Australia because the country had a ban on animal imports. As a result, equestrian events were held in Sweden. This is the only instance where the Olympic Games have been held in two different countries.

• 89

  During the 1912 Olympic Games in Stockholm, Japanese marathon runner Sitso Kanaguri suffered an unbearable thirst at 30 km. He ran to the nearest house and asked the owner for some water. The Swedish farmer invited the runner into a room, but when he returned, he found his guest sound asleep. Kanaguri slept for more than a day. In 1967, the 76-year-old runner was given the opportunity to run the remaining distance - his total time was 54 years 8 months 6 days 8 hours 32 minutes and 20.3 seconds.

• 85

  Spectators at the events could normally only be free, law-abiding Greek males. The threat of death forbade women to attend the competitions. The only exception was given to the priestesses of the goddess Demeter, for whom a marble throne was built as a place of honour at the stadium.

• 79

  There are six official disability groups that make up the Paralympic Movement: athletes with amputations, cerebral palsy, intellectual disabilities, visual impairments and spinal cord injuries, as well as a group including other types of disabilities not covered in the previous five groups.

• 78

  The word "Olympics" originally meant not the Games themselves, but the four-year gap between them. The ancient Greeks measured time by each Olympiad starting from 776 B.C. (e.g. "the third year of the 146th Olympiad"). In honour of the Olympic Games, a month-long vow of peace would be proclaimed throughout Greece.

• 75

  At the III Olympiad in 1904 in St. Louis, after having run about 14 km, American marathon runner Fred Lorts got into a car that was waiting for him. Two km from the finish, he re-entered onto the track and finished first. His cheating was discovered only after he received a gold medal.

• 66

  There is no age limit for Paralympic Games participants. For example, American cyclist Barbara Buken won gold at the Games in Beijing at age 52. Previously, she was a professional athlete and member of the US national team. After an accident on the track, Buken suffered serious injuries and underwent a total of five brain operations. Despite this, the cyclist found the inner strength to return to major sports and compete in the Paralympic Games.

• 64

  In the 2004 Athens group synchronized swimming final, the music was switched off twice during the Russian team’s performance. Despite this, the duo of Anastasia Davydova and Anastasia Ermakova still won the gold medal.

• 62

  Winners of the ancient Olympic Games known as the “Olympians” were bestowed with olive wreaths and starting from the 6th century B.C., a three-time champion of the Games could put his statue in the sacred grove of Altis.

• 60

  The first Paralympic Games were held in 1960 in Rome. At that time, Italy had the largest delegation of athletes. The Games program in Rome consisted of eight sports, including light athletics, swimming, fencing, basketball, archery and table tennis. Participants in these events were athletes with spinal cord injuries.

• 58

  In the summer of 1913, Emperor Nicholas II appointed Vladimir Voeikov, Commander of Hussar Regiment, Major-General of the Suite, to oversee the physical development of the population of the Russian Empire. This took place after failed performances by Russian athletes at the 1912 Olympic Games in Stockholm. To develop athleticism amongst the population, the Emperor created Russia's first Olympic Games in the spring of 1913. That same year, the Olympic Games were announced in Kiev. About half of the participants were officers. At the games, only 10 records in light athletics were set in Russia.

• 55

  In Sydney in 2000, Eric Moussambani, a swimmer from Equatorial Guinea almost drowned in the 50-meter pool, having learned how to swim only nine months before the Games. Moussambani, however won his qualifying heat in the 100m freestyle because the other two participants were disqualified for a false start.

• 50

  The Olympic flame was first lit at the 1928 Games in Amsterdam, and the tradition of the Olympic torch relay was born in Berlin in 1936.

• 46

  The competitions were held in the town of Olympia in the north-west region of the Peloponnese. The Games began on the day of the first full moon after the summer solstice, and lasted for five days.

• 45

  The Olympic Games originated in Ancient Greece. According to tradition, the date of the first competitions considered to be the prototype of the Olympic Games was 776 B.C.

• 39

  The Olympic Winter Games were first held in 1924 in France. At that time, under the patronage of the IOC, an "International Sports Week on the Occasion of the VIII Olympic Games” was held in the town of Chamonix, which was supposed to host that year’s Olympic Summer Games. The winter sports competitions created so much interest that it was then decided to hold a Winter Games as well. However, this status was only assigned to them later.

• 39

  During the field hockey tournament at the 1908 Olympic Games in London, Great Britain was simultaneously represented by four teams, who shared all the medals amongst each other. "Gold" went to England, "silver" went to Ireland and "bronze" to Scotland and Wales.

• 32

  The idea behind the Paralympic Games is credited to German neurologist Ludwig Guttmann. In 1948, Guttmann organized a sports competition for World War II veterans at the Center for rehabilitation of patients with spinal cord injuries Stoke-Mandeville Hospital in the UK. By 1953, the number of competitors in the Stoke-Mandeville Games had grown to 130, which attracted the attention of representatives from the Olympic Movement.

• 19

  Soviet athletes first performed at the 1952 Olympic Summer Games in Helsinki. They won 38 gold, 53 silver and 15 bronze medals.

• 12

  The famous Olympic slogan, "The most important thing is not to win but to take part” is credited to an American, Bishop Albert Talbot of Pennsylvania. He uttered these words during the IV Games while preaching in London’s St. Paul’s Cathedral on July 19, 1908.

• 4

  At the 1924 Olympic Games in Paris, during the first football match between Uruguay and Yugoslavia, the organizers mistakenly hung the national flag of Uruguay upside down, and instead of the country’s anthem, the musicians performed a dance tune. However, this did not prevent Uruguay from victory and from becoming Olympic champions.

• -9

  At the Olympic Games in Paris in 1900, the first three places in the marathon were taken by the French, even though the American athletes were considered to be the favourites. At the finish, one of the Americans noticed that unlike the rest of the runners, the winners were not dirty at all even though there were large puddles along the way. The French were duly accused of taking advantage of their knowledge of the Paris streets and cutting the route.

• -18

  Members of royal families also participated in the ancient Olympic Games. One of the champions was an Armenian prince, Varazdat, who won the boxing competition.

• -19

  On March 16, 1911 in St. Petersburg, representatives of 34 sports associations of Moscow and St. Petersburg established the Russian Olympic Committee. It was headquartered in a former mansion on Sadovaya, which was home to the Imperial Russia Humane Society. Earlier, General Alexei Butovskii made attempts to establish a national Olympic committee. In 1892, during a trip to France, he met a young scholar and sports enthusiast, Baron Pierre de Coubertin. The Baron offered the General an opportunity to become an IOC Member from Russia and received a written agreement two years later.

• -20

  A few athletes with disabilities enter Olympic competitions. They include 28 year-old South African swimmer Natalie Du Toit, who lost her leg in a car crash and Polish tennis player Natalia Partyka, who has a congenital defect of the right hand. Both participated at the Beijing Olympics. Subsequently, they went on to compete at the Paralympic Games, where each won a gold medal.

• -21

  The official title of “Paralympic Games” was adopted during the II Paralympiad in 1964 in Tokyo, which included the participation of 390 athletes from 22 countries. Additionally, more sports disciplines were included in the program, particularly wheelchair, weightlifting and discus. These competitions also witnessed the first-ever use of Paralympic attributes: the flag, anthem and symbol of the Games.

• -23

  In the late 1970s, the monoski was invented for Paralympic skiers, which enabled athletes with locomotor apparatus injuries to take part in alpine skiing. Prior to this invention, only the visually impaired Paralympic athletes could take part in skiing. Monoski competitions among athletes with locomotor apparatus injuries first entered the program during the Nagano Paralympic Games in 1998.

• -23

  The ancient Olympic Games consisted of only a few types of sports: running, boxing, wrestling, pankration (a blend of boxing and wrestling), pentathlon (running, discus, javelin, long jump, wrestling); and chariot races, including synoris (two horses in harness) and tethrippon (four horses in harness). The ancient athletes competed in the nude in all competitions, with the exception of for chariot races.

• -27

  The organizers of the 1896 Games staged heats in Piraeus, the marine harbour of Athens. One participant from America, Gardner Williams, got out of the water immediately after the start. He refused to swim because of the coldness of the water.

• -34

  Russia's athletes took part in the 1908 Olympic Games in London. Of the five athletes, three became Olympic medalists: Nikolai Panin-Kolomenkin won the gold in figure skating and Nikolai Orlov and Andrei Petrov both won the silver medal in Greco-Roman wrestling, in the light and heavyweight divisions, respectively.

• -40

  There are people among the Paralympic athletes, who were already heavily involved in sport prior to becoming disabled. One such person is Oleg Kretsul, a professional judoka. In the midst of preparing for the Games in Atlanta, he lost his vision in a car accident. Two years later, Kretsul returned to the tatami mat and competed among athletes with visual impairments. He became world champion, champion of Europe, and a medalist at the Paralympic Games in Athens. At the Paralympic Games in Beijing, Oleg Kretsul won the first gold medal in the history of Russian Paralympic judo.

• -45

  Adaptive snowboarding, created by the Canadian Snowboard Federation, is a sport discipline in which the equipment, rules and technical standards are adapted for people with disabilities. The inclusion of adaptive snowboarding in the Paralympic Winter Games program is currently under consideration.

• -59

  The head of the IOC medical commission, Prince Alexandre de M?rode called the 1980 Games in Moscow the "most honest". At that time, 9,292 doping tests were administered and none of them showed a positive result.