A visual guide to

The Olympics

Welcome to the Olympic Games, the greatest show on Earth.

Paris 2024, the Games of the XXXIII Olympiad, is about to get under way.

But before it begins, let us take you on a journey through the history of the summer Olympics, and how it became the spectacle that it is today.

History

When were the first Olympics?

The modern Olympic Games were founded in 1894 by French historian Pierre de Coubertin, with the first edition taking place in Athens in 1896.

However, the history of the Olympics actually dates back nearly 3,000 years, to the original Games held on the Peloponnese in Ancient Greece. The actual birth year is not known, but ancient manuscripts suggest the year 776 BC. 

These Games took place every four years, a period which became known as an ‘Olympiad’. 

Participants had to be male, of Greek origin and freeborn, and all athletes competed naked.

Wrestlers competed covered in oil, there were no weight classes in boxing, while anyone false-starting on the track faced corporal punishment. 

Winners were rewarded with a wreath or crown of leaves and became immortalised. 

The ancient Olympic Games ended in 393 AD, more than 1,000 years later. 

The Paris 2024 Olympics will mark the 33rd edition of the modern Games, though three of those did not take place because of World War One and World War Two.

Olympic events through history

Ancient Olympic sports

The ancient Olympics featured more recognisable sports including running, long jump, discus, wrestling and boxing, as well as the likes of chariot racing and a primitive version of combat sport called pankration.

Modern Olympic sports

At the first version of the modern Olympics in 1896, nine sports were contested - athletics, cycling (road and track), fencing, gymnastics, shooting, swimming, tennis, weightlifting and wrestling.

These sports remain on the Olympic programme to this day, but other sports have been and gone.

Obstacle swimming, dumbbell lifts, underwater swim and running deer shooting (no live animals were used) are just four of the forgotten Olympic sports.

The tug of war was contested at five Olympics, with Great Britain twice being crowned Olympic champions, while gold in the plunge for distance - at the 1904 Games - went to the diver who could travel the furthest underwater without moving their body, having jumped in, feet-first, from a standing position.

New Olympic sports

Host cities are able to propose sports they would like added to the Olympic programme when they stage the event. 

At London 2012, women’s boxing was added to the programme, while tennis mixed doubles returned for the first time since 1924.

The only sport making its debut in Paris is breaking, which combines athleticism and urban dance.

Climbing, skateboarding and surfing were retained from the Tokyo 2020 programme.

In total, 329 events will be contested in Paris across 32 sports.

Symbolism

Opening ceremony

If you’re reading this in Great Britain, chances are you can remember where you watched the remarkable opening ceremony of London 2012 - a stunning spectacle that will last long in the memory of the millions who tuned in worldwide.

A feast for the senses, the opening ceremony of the Olympics is always a sight to behold - but certain protocol must be observed.

This includes the revealing of the Olympic rings, the Olympic motto, the athletes’ parade, the Olympic oath and the lighting of the Olympic flame.

The Paris 2024 opening ceremony - set to take place along the River Seine - gets under way at 18:30 BST on Friday, 26 July.

Olympic rings and logo

The Olympic rings are the symbol of the Olympic movement, created in 1913 by De Coubertin.

The logo represents the union of the five inhabited continents (at the time, the Americas were grouped together).

The six colours - when combined with a white background - represented the colours on every competing country's flag at the time of the symbol’s creation.

Each Olympic Games also has its own logo.

Hosts

Olympic host cities

To date, 21 cities across the world have hosted the summer Olympics. Africa is the only continent never to have hosted a Games.

Hosts are usually selected seven years in advance, with the selection process lasting approximately two years.

Any city in the world can apply to become a host city, before the IOC’s executive board decides which cities will become official candidates. After a final shortlisting, the host city is chosen in a vote by IOC members.

The 2024 Olympics come exactly 100 years after Paris last hosted the Games. Having also hosted it in 1900, it becomes only the second city after London to welcome the Olympics three times.

How much does it cost to
host the Olympics?

The total budget of the Paris 2024 Olympics and Paralympics is estimated to be about 8.9bn euros (£7.5bn), according to Statista. Roughly half is spent on infrastructure, with the remaining spent on operating costs.

The Paris 2024 Organising Committee - which looks after competition, security and ticketing - has a budget of 4.38bn euros (£3.7bn), 1.2bn euros (£1bn) of which comes from the International Olympic Committee. The organisation of the Paris Olympics is 100% privately funded.

The last Olympics in Tokyo had a total expenditure of $13bn (£10.1bn), while London 2012 cost £8.77bn.

The IOC predicts the economic benefit of the Paris Olympics and Paralympics will be about $12.2bn (£9.4bn).

How host nations benefit 

One year after the London 2012 Olympics, the British government said the UK economy had seen a £9.9bn boost in trade and investment.

Similarly, an independent study published earlier in 2024 said that the Paris Olympics will generate between 6.7bn and 11.1bn euros (£5.6-9.3bn) in net economic benefits in the Paris region.

In addition to the economic benefit, one of the many upsides to hosting an Olympic Games is the historical trend towards the host nation achieving a greater medal tally than at the previous Games. 

At the Tokyo Olympics three years ago, Japan won its highest number of medals to date (58), while Brazil, Great Britain, China, Greece and Australia all increased their medal hauls when they hosted the summer Games.

However, other factors are at play, including that host nations' teams tend to be larger when competing on home soil. 

Global TV audience

The Beijing 2008 Olympics holds the record for the largest television audience in the history of the Games, drawing in 4.7 billion viewers worldwide.

Four years later, London 2012 had a global reach of 3.6 billion viewers, with 90% of the UK population watching at least 15 minutes of coverage.

The Rio and Tokyo Games had global audiences of 3.2 billion and 3.05 billion respectively.

The decline in TV viewership has been linked to changing viewing habits, with more people turning to social media for highlights of key moments. 

Awards

Medals and prizes

Prizes at the Olympics have moved on from the days of a crown of leaves.

Gold, silver and bronze medals are awarded in every event at the Olympics, a tradition dating back to the St Louis Games in 1904.

The design of the medals varies for each Games, and is the responsibility of the host city’s organising committee.

What are Olympic medals made of?

Each of the medals for the Paris 2024 Olympics features 18g of iron taken from the Eiffel Tower during refurbishments.

The gold medal is made of gold-plated silver, the silver medal is solid silver, while the bronze medal is solid bronze alloy. 

Most successful nation

The United States

The United States has won the most medals at summer Olympic Games, with 2,629 in total, 1,061 of which have been gold. 

Russia and Germany (including their precursor National Olympic Committees) are second and third on the list.

Great Britain at
the summer Olympics

Great Britain is the fourth most successful nation at the summer Olympics with 916 medals (284 gold).

Team GB’s most successful Olympian is Sir Jason Kenny, who won nine medals in track cycling, seven of which were gold.

His wife and fellow track cyclist Dame Laura Kenny is Britain’s most successful female Olympian with five gold medals (six medals in total).

Controversies

The Olympic movement aims to build a “peaceful and better world” and promote a spirit of “friendship, solidarity and fair play”, but that does not mean the Olympics has been without its controversies and scandals.

Olympic boycotts

The Olympics has been boycotted by nations on numerous occasions.

In 1976, 29 countries - mostly from Africa - boycotted the Montreal Games after the IOC allowed New Zealand to compete. Earlier that year, the New Zealand rugby union team had toured South Africa, a country that had been banned from the Olympics since 1964 because of apartheid.

The biggest boycott came four years later at the 1980 Games in Moscow, when more than 60 countries - including West Germany - refused to compete. The boycott was initiated by the United States in protest against the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan. 

Four years later, at Los Angeles 1984, the Soviet Union staged a revenge boycott.

Doping scandals

The biggest doping scandal to hit the Olympics was Russia’s state-sponsored scheme, which operated for four years from 2011 to 2015 across what investigators found was the "vast majority" of summer and winter Olympic sports.

In 2019, Russia was handed a four-year ban from all major sporting events by the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) after Russia's Anti-Doping Agency (Rusada) was declared non-compliant for manipulating laboratory data handed over to investigators.

It had to hand over data to Wada as a condition of its controversial reinstatement in 2018 after a three-year suspension for the doping scandal.

The Court of Arbitration for Sport (Cas) later reduced the ban and ruled that clean Russian athletes could compete at the Olympics and other international events but the team could not use the Russian flag or anthem.

Athletes from Russia competed as Olympic Athletes from Russia (OAR) at the 2018 Winter Olympics, and as the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) at Tokyo 2020. 

Russia has had more than 40 Olympic medals stripped because of doping violations.

It remains under sanctions for Paris 2024 because of its 2022 invasion of Ukraine, and Russians will compete as Individual Neutral Athletes (AIN) at this year's Games.

 Politics at the Olympics

The IOC is against the politicisation of the Olympics but the effects of politics on the Games have often been felt. In 1936, the Berlin Olympics were used by Adolf Hitler as a showcase for Nazi propaganda, which promoted the superiority of the Aryan race.

Ten days before the opening ceremony of the 1968 Games in Mexico City, more than 200 students were killed by the military as they protested against the authoritarian Mexican government.

At that same Games, black Americans Tommie Smith and John Carlos - who had won gold and bronze respectively in the athletics 200m - each raised a black-gloved fist on the podium during the US national anthem. 

Their ‘black power salute’ was a defiant statement against the systemic oppression of black people in the US and marked a defining moment in the history of civil rights activism. Smith and Carlos were later expelled from the Games because of the ban on political statements.

Four years later in 1972, the Munich Olympics were overshadowed by what became known as the ‘Munich Massacre’. Demanding the release of more than 200 Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails, eight members of the Palestinian Black September militant group broke into the Olympic Village and killed two members of the Israeli team, taking a further nine hostage. 

A botched rescue attempt by German police led to the remaining hostages being killed, as well as five of the militants and one police officer.

During the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, a bomb was detonated at the Centennial Olympic Park, directly killing one person and injuring more than 100 others. It was the first of a series of bombings by Eric Rudolph, who later stated his hatred of the federal government and of abortion and gay rights as his motives.

Athletes

Gender representation

At the first modern Olympics in 1896, 241 athletes competed from 14 countries. At Paris 2024, this number is an estimated 10,500 from 206 nations. 

These Olympics will be the first Games to achieve full gender parity, with the same number of male and female athletes competing - 5,250 men and 5,250 women.

When did women first compete
at the Olympics?

Women were first allowed to compete at the Olympics in 1900, despite De Coubertin being “strongly against” their participation, believing it to be “impractical, uninteresting, unaesthetic and improper”.

Until his death in 1937, he believed the Games were “the solemn and periodic exaltation of male sport - with the applause of women as a reward”.

Switzerland’s Helene de Pourtales was the first of 22 women to compete in 1900, and she became the first female Olympic champion when she won sailing gold in that same Games.

It was not until 1996 that the promotion of women became a mission of the IOC, while the 2012 Olympics in London was the first Games where all participating nations sent female athletes.

Key women in Olympic
history timeline

Can transgender athletes
compete in the Olympics?

Since 2004, the IOC has allowed transgender athletes to compete in the Olympics, though it is understood it was not until the Tokyo Games in 2021 that a transgender athlete took part. 

There, Canadian non-binary football player Quinn became the first openly transgender athlete to win a medal as Canada won women's football gold.

At the same Games, Alana Smith, a non-binary skateboarder, represented the United States, while transgender athlete Laurel Hubbard of New Zealand competed in the women’s weightlifting.

The IOC's framework on transgender athletes - released in November 2021 - states that there should be no assumption that a transgender athlete automatically has an unfair advantage in female sporting events, and places responsibility on individual federations to determine eligibility criteria in their sport.

The world governing bodies of some of the key Olympic sports, including athletics, aquatics and cycling, have banned transgender women competing in the female category at international events. Other sports, including tennis and triathlon, require testosterone levels to be suppressed below a certain limit, while others assess on a case-by-case basis.

The IOC's framework also applies to athletes with differences of sex development (DSD).

Great summer Olympians

Michael Phelps (United States)
Swimming (2000-2012)

With 28 Olympic medals, 23 of which are gold, Michael Phelps is the most successful and most decorated Olympian of all time. At Beijing 2008, he won eight gold medals, breaking the previous record of seven first-place finishes at a single Games held by fellow American swimmer Mark Spitz.

Jesse Owens (United States)
Athletics (1936)

While Jesse Owens’ medal tally is lower than others on this list, the American arguably had the greatest impact. Despite being encouraged not to, Owens travelled to Berlin to the Games which Adolf Hitler saw as an ideal showcase for Nazi propaganda and a symbol of Aryan racial supremacy. As Hitler watched from the stands, he won 100m gold before becoming the first American track and field star to win four golds at a single Games.

Larisa Latynina (Soviet Union)
Gymnastics (1956-1964)

Until Phelps surpassed her tally at London 2012, Larisa Latynina held the record for most Olympic medals for 48 years. To this date, she holds the record for the most Olympic medals by a gymnast, and is the only woman to have won nine gold medals.

Nadia Comaneci (Romania)
Gymnastics (1976-1980)

At the age of 14, Nadia Comaneci became the first gymnast to score a perfect score of 10.0 at the Montreal Olympics - a score thought so unlikely the scoreboard had not been programmed to display it. During that Games, she went on to earn a further six 10s as she won three golds at her debut Games. Four years later, not yet out of her teens, she defended her balance beam title - the only gymnast to ever do so - and won floor gold.

Usain Bolt (Jamaica)
Athletics (2004-2016)

Usain Bolt is immortalised in Olympic history as the only athlete to have won both the 100m, the Olympics’ blue riband event, and the 200m three times at consecutive Games. Seen as the saviour of athletics during a time of doping scandals, the charismatic Bolt is the world record holder in the 100m, 200m and 4x100m relay - often after a lunch of chicken nuggets.

Carl Lewis (United States)
Athletics (1984-1996)

Before Bolt there was Carl Lewis, who stole the show at his debut Olympics by winning gold in the 100m, 200m, long jump and 4x100m relay. He defended his 100m title in 1988 and went on to win long jump gold on three further occasions.

Florence Griffith Joyner (United States)
Athletics (1984-1988)

Florence Griffith Joyner - or ‘Flo Jo’ as she became widely known - won triple gold at the Seoul Olympics. Known for her bold fashion choices and nail designs, her 100m (10.49 secs) and 200m (21.34 secs) world records still stand to this day. But her career was tarnished by unsubstantiated allegations that she took banned substances. She died in 1998, aged 38, when she suffocated during a seizure in her sleep.

Closing ceremony

All good things must come to an end, and the Olympics always finishes with huge celebrations.

Olympic protocol states the closing ceremony must take place on the final day of the Games, at the Olympic Stadium.

There are 12 protocol elements that must be included, such as the parade of athletes, the playing of the Greek national anthem, the lowering of the Olympic flag and flag handover to the next host nation, and the extinguishing of the Olympic flame.

The Paris 2024 closing ceremony will take place on 11 August at the Stade de France, bringing an end to 17 days of sporting festivities.

Los Angeles will host the next Olympics in 2028.

Over to you, LA.