olympics, n.Trivia

When a Greek Runner won gold at the 2000 Olympics for the 200-metre dash, he was the first Greek athlete to win an Olympic sprint since Dionysius of Alexandria in 269 AD.

In the 1938 Berlin Olympics, two Japanese pole vaulters tied for second place. Refusing to participate in a tie-breaker, they cut their medals in half and fused them to one another.

Detroit holds the record for the city with the most rejected bids to host the Olympics.

Tug-of-war was an Olympic sport in the early 1900's.

The Olympics isn't just a young person's event --- The oldest gold medalist, at the age of 72, won gold in shooting in the 1920 summer games.

A marathon is exactly 26 miles and 385 yards because that happened to be the length of the 1908 London Olympic marathon, not because it is the distance between Marathon and Athens, which is approximately 25 miles.

In the 1904 Summer Olympics, a gymnast with a prosthetic leg won three gold, two silver, and a bronze medal

Croquet was an event at the 1900 Summer Olympics.

Japan made all of the medals for the 2021 Tokyo Olympics out of discarded smartphones and laptops.

Olympic gold medals today only 1.3% gold. Not since 1912 have they been pure gold.

Bronze medal winners are happier than silver medal winners. Bronze medalists are happy they won anything, while silver medalists are disappointed they didn't get gold.

Adidas's founder drove to the Olympics in 1936 and persuaded Jesse Owens to wear his shoes. After Owens won of four medals the company's reputation was locked in.

Gymnastics comes from a Greek word meaning 'athletics' and 'naked' (gumnós), because many Greek athletes would train naked for the Olympic games.

The Olympics was originally conducted with the athletes completely naked.

Michael Phelps has more Summer Olympic gold medals than 80% of countries in history

China didn’t win its first Olympic medal until 1984.

Olympic swimming is only timed to hundredths of a second because the pools aren’t built to the millimeter tolerances necessary to measure thousandths of a second.

The Olympics included competitions in the fine arts from 1912 to 1948 (literature, architecture, sculpture, painting, and music)