OLYMPICS AUTOGRAPHED QUESTIONNAIRE Nadia Comăneci GYMNASTICS LEGEND RARE

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Seller: memorabilia111 ✉️ (808) 100%, Location: Ann Arbor, Michigan, US, Ships to: US & many other countries, Item: 176277810466 OLYMPICS AUTOGRAPHED QUESTIONNAIRE Nadia Comăneci GYMNASTICS LEGEND RARE. A RARE AUTOGRAPHED QUESTIONNAIRE CARD SIGNED BY LEGENDARY GYMNAST Nadia Comăneci MEASURING APPROXIMATELY 3 3 /4 X 5 1/2 INCHES WITH VARIOUS QUESTION THAT SHE HAS ANSWERED AND SIGNED AT THE END OF THE CARD.  Nadia Elena Comăneci is a Romanian retired gymnast and a five-time Olympic gold medalist, all in individual events. In 1976 at the age of 14, Comăneci was the first gymnast to be awarded a perfect score of 10.0 at the Olympic Games
Nadia Elena Comăneci (UK: /ˌkɒməˈnɛtʃ(i)/,[3][4] US: /ˈkoʊməniːtʃ/,[4] Romanian: [ˈnadi.a koməˈnetʃʲ] (About this soundlisten); born November 12, 1961) is a Romanian retired gymnast and a five-time Olympic gold medalist, all in individual events. In 1976 at the age of 14, Comăneci was the first gymnast to be awarded a perfect score of 10.0 at the Olympic Games.[5] At the same Games (1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal), she received six more perfect 10s for events en route to winning three gold medals. At the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow, Comăneci won two more gold medals and attained two more perfect 10s. During her career, Comăneci won nine Olympic medals and four World Artistic Gymnastics Championship medals. Comăneci is one of the world's best-known gymnasts and is credited with popularizing the sport around the globe.[6] In 2000, she was named as one of the Athletes of the 20th Century by the Laureus World Sports Academy.[7] She has lived in the United States since 1989, when she defected from then-Communist Romania before its revolution in December that year. She later worked with and married American Olympic gold medal gymnast Bart Conner, who set up his own school. In 2001 she became a naturalized United States citizen, and has dual citizenship, also maintaining her Romanian citizenship. Contents 1 Early life 2 Early gymnastics career 3 1976 3.1 American Cup 3.2 Summer Olympics in Montreal 3.3 "Nadia's Theme" 4 1977–1979 5 1980–1984 5.1 1980 Summer Olympics 5.2 "Nadia '81" 5.3 1984 Summer Olympics 6 1984–1990 7 1990–present 8 Leadership roles 9 Honors and awards 10 Special skills 11 Book and films 12 See also 13 References 13.1 Citations 13.2 Cited sources 14 Further reading 15 External links Early life Onești (Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej between 1965 and 1989), the town where Comăneci was born Nadia Elena Comăneci was born on November 12, 1961, in Onești, a small town in the Carpathian Mountains, in Bacău County, Romania, in the historical region of Western Moldavia.[8][9] She was born to Gheorghe (1936–2012) and Ștefania Comăneci, and has a younger brother.[10] Her parents separated in the 1970s, and her father later moved to Bucharest, the capital.[11] She and her younger brother Adrian were raised in the Romanian Orthodox Church.[12] In a 2011 interview, Nadia's mother Ștefania said that she enrolled her daughter into gymnastics classes because she was a child who was so full of energy and active that she was difficult to manage.[13] After years of top-level athletic competition, Comăneci graduated from Politehnica University of Bucharest with a degree in sports education, which gave her the qualifications to coach gymnastics.[14] Early gymnastics career Comăneci in the 1970s Comăneci began gymnastics in kindergarten with a local team called Flacăra ("The Flame"), with coaches Duncan and Munteanu.[15][16] At age 6, she was chosen to attend Béla Károlyi's experimental gymnastics school after Károlyi spotted her and a friend turning cartwheels in a schoolyard.[17][18] Károlyi was looking for gymnasts he could train from a young age. When recess ended, the girls quickly went inside and Károlyi went around the classrooms trying to find them; he eventually spotted Comăneci. (The other girl, Viorica Dumitru, developed in a different direction and became one of Romania's top ballerinas.) By 1968, when she was seven, Comăneci had started training with Károlyi. She was one of the first students at the gymnastics school established in Onești by Béla and his wife, Márta. As a resident of the town, Comăneci was able to live at home for many years; most of the other students boarded at the school. In 1970, Comăneci began competing as a member of her hometown team and, at age nine, became the youngest gymnast ever to win the Romanian Nationals. In 1971, she participated in her first international competition, a dual junior meet between Romania and Yugoslavia, winning her first all-around title, and contributing to the team gold. For the next few years, she competed as a junior in numerous national contests in Romania and dual meets with countries such as Hungary, Italy, and Poland.[19] At the age of 11, in 1973, she won the all-around gold, as well as the vault and uneven bars titles, at the Junior Friendship Tournament (Druzhba), an important international meet for junior gymnasts.[19][20] Comăneci's first major international success came at the age of 13, when she nearly swept the 1975 European Women's Artistic Gymnastics Championships in Skien, Norway. She won the all-around and gold medals in every event but the floor exercise, in which she placed second. She continued to enjoy success that year, winning the all-around at the "Champions All" competition, and placing first in the all-around, vault, beam, and bars at the Romanian National Championships. In the pre-Olympic test event in Montreal, Comăneci won the all-around and the balance beam golds, as well as silvers in the vault, floor, and bars. Accomplished Soviet gymnast Nellie Kim won the golds in those events and was one of Comăneci's greatest rivals during the next five years.[19] 1976 American Cup Comăneci wearing her medals In March 1976, Comăneci competed in the inaugural edition of the American Cup at Madison Square Garden in Manhattan. She received rare scores of 10, which signified a perfect routine without any deductions, for her vault in the preliminary stage and for her floor exercise routine in the final of the all-around competition, which she won.[21] During this competition, Comăneci met American gymnast Bart Conner for the first time. While he remembered this meeting, Comăneci noted in her memoirs that she had to be reminded of it later in life. She was 14 and Conner was celebrating his 18th birthday.[22] They both won a silver cup and were photographed together. A few months later, they participated in the 1976 Summer Olympics that Comăneci dominated, while Conner was a marginal figure. Conner later said, "Nobody knew me, and [Comăneci] certainly didn't pay attention to me."[23] Summer Olympics in Montreal Comăneci at the 1976 Olympics Nadia Comăneci in Montreal. Stamp of Romania, 1976 At Montreal [Comăneci] received four of her seven 10s on the uneven bars. The apparatus demands such a spectacular burst of energy in such a short time—only 23 seconds—that it attracts the most fanfare. But it is on the beam that her work seems more representative of her unbelievable skill. She scored three of her seven 10s on the beam. Her hands speak there as much as her body. Her pace magnifies her balance. Her command and distance hush the crowd. — Sports Illustrated, 1976[18] On July 18, 1976, Comăneci made history at the Montreal Olympics. During the team compulsory portion of the competition, she was awarded the first perfect 10 in Olympic gymnastics for her routine on the uneven bars.[24][25][26] But Omega SA, the traditional Olympics scoreboard manufacturer, had been led to believe that competitors could not receive a perfect ten, and had not programmed the scoreboard to display that score.[27] Comăneci's perfect 10 thus appeared as "1.00," the only means by which the judges could indicate that she had received a 10.[28][26] During the remainder of the Montreal Games, Comăneci earned six additional "10s". She won gold medals for the individual all-around, the balance beam and uneven bars. She also won a bronze for the floor exercise and a silver as part of the team all-around.[29] Soviet gymnast Nellie Kim was her main rival during the Montreal Olympics; Kim became the second gymnast to receive a perfect ten, in her case for her performance on the vault.[30] Comăneci took over the media spotlight from gymnast Olga Korbut, who had been the darling of the 1972 Munich Games. Comăneci's achievements are pictured in the entrance area of Madison Square Garden in Manhattan, where she is shown presenting her perfect beam exercise. Comăneci was the first Romanian gymnast to win the Olympic all-around title. She also holds the record as the youngest ever Olympic gymnastics all-around champion. The sport has revised its age-eligibility requirements. Gymnasts must be at least 16 in the same calendar year of the Olympics in order to compete during the Games. When Comăneci competed in 1976, gymnasts had only to be 14 by the first day of the competition.[31] As a result of changes to age eligibility, Comăneci's record cannot be broken. She was ranked as the BBC Overseas Sports Personality of the Year for 1976[32] and the Associated Press's 1976 "Female Athlete of the Year".[33] Back home in Romania, Comăneci was awarded the Sickle and Hammer Gold Medal for her success,[34] and she was named a Hero of Socialist Labor. She was the youngest Romanian to receive such recognition during the administration of Nicolae Ceaușescu.[15] "Nadia's Theme" "Nadia's Theme" refers to an instrumental piece that became linked to Comăneci shortly after the 1976 Olympics. It was part of the musical score of the 1971 film Bless the Beasts and Children, and originally titled "Cotton's Dream". It was also used as the title theme music for the American soap opera The Young and the Restless. Robert Riger used it in association with slow-motion montages of Comăneci on the television program ABC's Wide World Of Sports. The song became a top-10 single in the fall of 1976, and composers Barry De Vorzon and Perry Botkin, Jr. renamed it as "Nadia's Theme" in Comăneci's honor.[35] Comăneci never performed to "Nadia's Theme", however. Her floor exercise music was a medley of the songs "Yes Sir, That's My Baby" and "Jump in the Line," arranged for piano.[18] 1977–1979 Comăneci successfully defended her European all-around title at the championship competition in 1977. When questions were raised at the competition about the scoring, Ceaușescu ordered the Romanian gymnasts to return home. The team followed orders amid controversy and walked out of the competition during the event finals.[15][36] Following the 1977 Europeans, the Romanian Gymnastics Federation removed Comăneci from her longtime coaches, the Károlyis, and sent her to Bucharest on August 23 to train at the sports complex. She did not find this change positive, and was struggling with bodily changes as she grew older. Her gymnastics skills suffered, and she was unhappy to the point of losing the desire to live.[15][37] After surviving a suicide attempt,[38] Comăneci competed in the 1978 World Championships in Strasbourg "seven inches taller and a stone and a half [21 pounds] heavier" than she was in the 1976 Olympics.[27] A fall from the uneven bars resulted in a fourth-place finish in the all-around behind Soviets Elena Mukhina, Nellie Kim, and Natalia Shaposhnikova. Comăneci did win the world title on beam, and a silver on vault.[27] After the 1978 "Worlds", Comăneci was permitted to return to Deva and the Károlyis' school.[39] In 1979, Comăneci won her third consecutive European all-around title, becoming the first gymnast, male or female, to achieve this feat. At the World Championships in Fort Worth that December, Comăneci led the field after the compulsory competition. She was hospitalized before the optional portion of the team competition for blood poisoning, which had resulted from a cut in her wrist from her metal grip buckle. Against doctors' orders, she left the hospital and competed on the beam, where she scored a 9.95. Her performance helped give the Romanians their first team gold medal. After her performance, Comăneci spent several days recovering in All Saints Hospital. She had to undergo a minor surgical procedure for the infected hand, which had developed an abscess.[40][41][42] 1980–1984 1980 Summer Olympics Comăneci in Moscow, 1980 Comăneci was chosen to participate in the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow, then the capital of the Soviet Union. As a result of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, President Jimmy Carter declared that the United States would boycott the Olympics (several other countries also participated in the boycott, though their reasons varied). According to Comăneci, the Romanian government "touted the 1980 Olympic games as the first all-Communist Games." However, she also noted in her memoir, "in Moscow, we walked into the mouth of a lion's den; it was the Russians' home turf."[43] She won two gold medals, one for the balance beam and one for the floor exercise (in which she tied with Soviet gymnast Nellie Kim, against whom she had also competed in the 1976 Montreal Olympics) and other events. She also won two silver medals, one for the team all-around and one for individual all-around. Controversies arose concerning the scoring in the all-around and floor exercise competitions.[27] Her coach, Bela Károlyi, protested that she was scored unfairly. His protests were captured on television. According to Comăneci's memoir, the Romanian government was upset about Károlyi's public behavior, feeling that he had humiliated them. Life became very difficult for Károlyi from that point forward.[44] "Nadia '81" Comăneci on the balance beam, 1980 In 1981, the Gymnastics Federation contacted Comăneci and informed her that she would be part of an official tour of the United States named "Nadia '81" and her coaches Béla and Márta Károlyi would lead the group.[45] During this tour, Comăneci's team shared a bus trip with American gymnasts; it was the third time she had encountered Bart Conner. They had earlier met in 1976. She later remembered thinking, "Conner was cute. He bounced around the bus talking to everyone—he was incredibly friendly and fun."[46] Her coaches Béla and Márta Károlyi defected on the last day of the tour, along with the Romanian team choreographer Géza Pozsár. Prior to defecting, Károlyi hinted a few times to Comăneci that he might attempt to do so and indirectly asked if she wanted to join him. At that time, she had no interest in defecting, and said she wanted to go home to Romania.[47][48] After the defection of the Károlyis, life changed drastically for Comăneci in Romania, as she could not have predicted. Officials feared that she would also defect. Feeling she was a national asset, they strictly monitored her actions, refusing to allow her to travel outside the country.[49] 1984 Summer Olympics The government did allow Comăneci to participate in the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles as part of the Romanian delegation. Although a number of Communist nations boycotted the 1984 Summer Olympics in a tit-for-tat against the U.S.-led boycott of the Olympics in Moscow four years before, Romania chose to participate. Comăneci later wrote in her memoir that many believed Romania went to the Olympics because an agreement had been made with the United States not to accept defectors. But Comăneci did not participate in the Games as a member of the Romanian team; she served as an observer (not a judge). She was able to see Károlyi's new protégé, American gymnast Mary Lou Retton, who dominated the Olympics. The Romanian delegation did not allow her to talk with Károlyi and closely watched her the entire time.[50] 1984–1990 A 2016 Romanian postage stamp showing Comăneci on the balance beam at the 1976 Olympics The Romanian government continued to restrict Comăneci from leaving Romania, aside from a few select trips to Moscow and Cuba. She had started thinking about retiring a few years earlier, but her official retirement ceremony took place in Bucharest in 1984. It was attended by the chairman of the International Olympic Committee.[28] She later wrote in her memoir: Life took on a new bleakness. I was cut off from making the small amount of extra money that had really made a difference in my family's life. It was also insulting that a normal person in Romania had the chance to travel, whereas I could not…. when my gymnastics career was over, there was no longer any need to keep me happy. I was to do as I was instructed, just as I'd done my entire life…. If Bela hadn't defected, I would still have been watched, but his defection brought a spotlight on my life, and it was blinding. I started to feel like a prisoner.[51] On the night of November 27, 1989, a few weeks before the Romanian Revolution, Comăneci defected with a group of other Romanians. They were guided by Constantin Panait, a Romanian who later became an American citizen after defecting. Their journey was mostly on foot and at night. They traveled through Communist Hungary and Austria and finally were able to take a plane to the United States.[15][29][52] 1990–present Comăneci and her husband Bart Conner meeting First Lady Michelle Obama, 2009 Comăneci moved to Oklahoma in 1991 to help her friend Bart Conner, another Olympic gold medalist, with his gymnastics school. She lived with the family of Paul Ziert and eventually hired him as her manager.[53] Comăneci and Conner initially were just friends. They were together for four years before they became engaged.[54] She returned to Romania for their 1996 wedding, which was held in Bucharest. This was after the fall of the Soviet Union and the establishment of an independent Romania; the government welcomed her as a national hero. The wedding was televised live throughout Romania, and the couple's reception was held in the former presidential palace.[29][55] In 2006, the couple's son Dylan was born.[56][57] Comăneci became a naturalized US citizen in 2001, and is a dual citizen of Romania and the United States.[58] She was the featured speaker at the 50th annual Independence Day Naturalization Ceremony on July 4, 2012 at Monticello, the first athlete invited to speak in the history of the ceremony.[59] In October 2017, an area in the Olympic Park in Montreal was renamed "Place Nadia Comaneci" in her honor.[60][61] Leadership roles Comăneci at the BRD Năstase Țiriac Trophy, April 2012 Comăneci is a well-known figure in the world of gymnastics; she serves as the honorary president of the Romanian Gymnastics Federation, the honorary president of the Romanian Olympic Committee, the sports ambassador of Romania, and as a member of the International Gymnastics Federation Foundation. She and Conner own the Bart Conner Gymnastics Academy, the Perfect 10 Production Company, and several sports equipment shops, and are the editors of International Gymnast Magazine.[citation needed] She is also still involved with the Olympic Games. During the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, one of her perfect-10 Montreal uneven bars routines was featured in a commercial for Adidas.[62] In addition, both Comăneci and her husband Bart Conner provided television commentary for the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing.[63] A few years later, on July 21, 2012, Comăneci, along with former basketball star John Amaechi, carried the Olympic torch to the roof of the O2 Arena as part of the torch relay for the 2012 Summer Olympics in London.[64] Prior to the 2016 Summer Olympics, in Rio de Janeiro (featuring gymnast Simone Biles), Comăneci appeared in a TIDE advertisement called "The Evolution of Power" with Biles and three-time Olympic gymnast Dominique Dawes.[65][66] She also offered daily analysis of the 2016 games (along with other Olympic champions such as Mark Spitz, Carl Lewis, and Conner), for the late-night show É Campeão, broadcast on Brazil's SporTV.[67] In addition, Comăneci is highly involved in fundraising for a number of charities. She personally funded the construction and operation of the Nadia Comăneci Children's Clinic in Bucharest that provides low-cost and free medical and social support to Romanian children.[28] In 2003, the Romanian government appointed her as an honorary consul general of Romania to the United States to deal with bilateral relations between the two nations.[68] In addition, both Comăneci and Conner are involved with the Special Olympics.[69][70] To raise money for charity, Comăneci participated in Donald Trump's reality show, The Celebrity Apprentice, season seven. Comăneci was a member of "The Empresario" team (all women), which lost to "The Hydra" team (all men) in the second episode. Trump responded to this loss by firing Comăneci,[71] thwarting her plan for raising money.[72] Comăneci later commented on her participation in the show, saying, "[she] had great fun. I only did it because it was all for charity."[73] Honors and awards 1975 and 1976: The United Press International Athlete of the Year Award[74] 1976: Hero of Socialist Labour[75] 1976: Associated Press Athlete of the Year[76] 1976: BBC Overseas Sports Personality of the Year[77] 1983: The Olympic Order[78] 1990: International Women's Sports Hall of Fame[79] 1993: International Gymnastics Hall of Fame[80] 1998: Marca Leyenda[81] 1998: Flo Hyman Award[82] 2004: The Olympic Order[83] 2016: 2016 Great Immigrant Honoree: Carnegie Corporation of New York[84] Special skills Comăneci was known for her clean technique, innovative and difficult original skills, and her stoic, cool demeanor in competition.[18][85][86] On the balance beam, she was the first gymnast to successfully perform an aerial walkover and an aerial cartwheel-back handspring flight series. She is also credited as being the first gymnast to perform a double-twist dismount.[18][85] Her skills on the floor exercise included a tucked double back salto and a double twist.[85] Comăneci salto[87] Comăneci dismount[88] Book and films Comăneci's 2004 memoir, Letters to a Young Gymnast, is part of the Art of Mentoring series by Basic Books.[89][90] Katie Holmes directed a short 2015 documentary for ESPN about Comăneci entitled Eternal Princess that premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival.[91][92] In 2016 Arte France produced a Pola Rapaport documentary about Comăneci entitled Nadia Comăneci, la gymnaste et le dictateur (Nadia Comăneci: The Gymnast and the Dictator).[93] In 1984, Comăneci was the subject of an unauthorized biopic television film, Nadia.[94] The film was developed without her involvement or permission (although the content was described to her by others). She later stated publicly that the producers "never made contact with me ... I sincerely don't even want to see it, I feel so badly about it. It distorts my life so totally."[94] In 2012, Universal Pictures chose Nadia to dub Granny Norma in Romanian in the animated movie The Lorax.[95] Nadia Comaneci says she's going home whenever she heads to Romania. She says the same when she returns to Oklahoma. “I don't think many people consider in their heart that they have two places that are home,” she said. But after living in Norman for more than two decades, the international gymnastics star feels as at home in Oklahoma as she does in her homeland of Romania. She jokes that she's lived here so long that maybe she's earned some sort of honorary status as an Oklahoman. Safe to say, she has. Comaneci will be inducted into the Oklahoma Sports Hall of Fame on Monday night. She won't be the first member born outside the state, but never before has the hall welcomed someone whose athletic success came as a representative of another country. But frankly, no one else in the hall is as big a star as Nadia. She is known by more people than any other hall of famer. When the 14-year-old with the bouncy brunette ponytail became the first gymnast to score a perfect 10 at the Olympics, she became an international darling. Thirty-seven years later, she's still loved worldwide. One of the YouTube videos of her historic routine has been viewed 2 million times in the past year alone. But for as much as Nadia is linked to Romania, she feels every bit as tied to Oklahoma. This is where she and husband, Bart Conner, have made their home. This is where they are raising their son, Dylan. This is where she feels the most at peace. The story of how she came to the United States is a remarkable one. While it's been told before, it's still an amazing but harrowing tale. She retired from competitive gymnastics in 1981 after winning nine Olympic medals, including three golds at the 1976 Games in Montreal and two golds at the 1980 Games in Moscow. As the most famous Romanian ever, she lived a pampered life. She lived in a villa, had servants and wore expensive jewelry. FROM THE HOMEPAGE Skaters hit the ice at Edmond's Mitch Park NEWSUpdated: 8 hours ago But she was in a country governed by a Communist dictator — and a brutal one at that. Nicolae Ceausescu was said to have combined the brute oppression of Stalin's Soviet Union with the maniacal terrorism of Papa Doc Duvalier's Haiti. Even with her favored status, Comaneci dreamed of escaping Romania for years, but she was so well-known that defecting would be no easy task. Comaneci reached a breaking point, however, in late 1989. On the night of Nov. 27, she and six others were driven in a rented Audi to a deserted road near the Romanian border with Hungary. Around midnight, they began walking. About 10 miles of open countryside separated them from the border and freedom. They trudged through mud and water and ice. Most of the time, they walked, but sometimes, they crawled. Six hour later, they reached a barbed-wire fence and passed through an opening into Hungary. There were no border guards in sight, but they heard guard dogs in the distance. FROM THE HOMEPAGE Skaters hit the ice at Edmond's Mitch Park NEWSUpdated: 8 hours ago Two weeks later, she was in the United States. Two weeks after that, the Ceausescu regime fell. He was captured, hastily tried, then publicly executed on Christmas Day 1989. It ushered in democracy and freedom and a new era in Romania. When Comaneci decided to defect from Romania, she had no way of knowing that revolution was right around the corner. “Probably if I would have known, I would have thought deeper about doing that,” she admitted. But at the same time, she doesn't allow herself to dwell in what-ifs. “I cannot change anything,” she said, “so I don't want to think about what I would have done.” And besides, her life has turned out just fine. A few months after leaving Romania, Comaneci joined a tour of former Olympic gymnasts and met Bart Conner. They eventually started dating. A little over two years later, she moved part-time to Norman, where he had a gymnastics academy. Then in 1996, they married. Now, she travels the world making appearances, attending charity events and doing speaking engagements. She is on the board of Special Olympics International, the Muscular Dystrophy Association and the Laureus Sports For Good Foundation among others. But no matter where she goes, Comaneci always returns to Oklahoma. “It feels good when you come to a place like Oklahoma to charge up the batteries,” she said. “I need that.” As she talked, she was only a few hours from getting on a plane and jetting off to Los Angeles for a few days of work with the Muscular Dystrophy Association “I don't think I would be able to connect to so many things without touching a base where it's gotta be just me in my warm-ups and my flip-flops.” This is where she's comfortable. This is home. GYMNAST NADIA COMANECI BECAME THE QUEEN OF THE 1976 MONTREAL GAMES WHEN SHE WAS AWARDED THE FIRST PERFECT SCORE. Early promise Nadia Comaneci took up the sport of gymnastics aged six, becoming one of the first students at a school founded by coach Béla Károlyi. In 1975, 13-year-old Comaneci won gold in every event at the European Championships except the floor exercise. Perfection A year later in Montreal, she became the first gymnast in Olympic history to be awarded the perfect score of 10.0 for her performance on the uneven bars. She went on to record the perfect 10.0 six more times and became the youngest all-around Olympic gold medallist ever. MORE OLYMPIC SUCCESS Comaneci’s career over the next four years was slightly less spectacular, judged against her own high standards. At the 1980 Olympic Games, she won her fourth and fifth golds but finished second in the all-around competition behind Yelena Davydova.  Comaneci retired a year later, leaving her with a career haul of nine Olympic medals. RETIREMENT After her retirement, Comaneci was rarely allowed to travel outside her country. She defected to the United States in 1989. She has since married 1984 Olympic gold medallist Bart Conner, a gymnast she first met in the 1970s. The Artistic Gymnastics World Championships[1][2] are the world championships for artistic gymnastics governed by the Fédération Internationale de Gymnastique (FIG). The first edition of the championships was held in 1903, exclusively for male gymnasts. Since the tenth edition of the tournament, in 1934, women's events are held together with men's events. The FIG was founded in 1881 and was originally entitled FEG (Fédération Européenne de Gymnastique), but changed its name in 1921, becoming the Fédération Internationale de Gymnastique (FIG)[3]; this name change roughly correlates with the actual naming of the World Championships. Although the first such games were held in 1903, they were not initially entitled the 'World Championships'. The first competition actually referred to at the time as a 'World Championships' was not until the 1930s, although sources differ on whether the first Worlds were those held in 1930 or those held in 1934.[3][4] The championships prior to the 1930s, beginning back in 1903, would eventually be recognized, retroactively, as the World Championships.[3] Although the FIG had changed its name from the FEG back in 1921, the true transcontinental nature of the sport would not start to change at the World Championship level until Egypt sent athletes (a full male team) to the 1950 World Championships. By the time of these World Championships, a total of 60 male athletes from 6 different countries and 53 female athletes from 7 different countries comprised the competitive field.[5] By the 2013 World Championships, the competition had grown to include 264 men from 71 different countries and 134 women from 57 different countries.[5] As of 2019, over sixty different editions of the championships have been staged, and over forty different countries have earned medals in both men's and women's artistic gymnastics events. The most successful nation, both in gold medal results and total number of medals, is the former Soviet Union. China is the second most successful country in total medals earned, and Japan is the third. Since the fall of the Soviet block, the traditional powerhouses in men's and women's individual and team events have been Russia, Ukraine, China, United States, Japan, and Romania with increasing results from Great Britain and Brazil and a recent decrease in results from the delegation from Romania. Currently, the championships are held annually in non-Olympic years, and all individual events (event and all-around) are held at every championships. However, the team event is omitted in the year after an Olympic Games. Contents 1 Editions 2 All-time medal table 2.1 Men's events 2.2 Women's events 2.3 Overall 3 Statistics 3.1 Multiple gold medalists 3.1.1 Men 3.1.1.1 All events 3.1.1.2 Individual events 3.2 Women 3.2.1 All events 3.2.2 Individual events 4 Best results of top nations by event 4.1 Men's results 4.2 Women's results 5 See also 6 References 7 External links Editions See also: Artistic Gymnastics Junior World Championships Year Edition Host City Country Events (men/women) First in the Medal Table Second in the Medal Table Third in the Medal Table 1903 1 Antwerp Belgium 6 / 0 France Luxembourg Netherlands 1905 2 Bordeaux France 5 / 0 France Netherlands Belgium 1907 3 Prague Austria-Hungary 5 / 0 Bohemia France Belgium 1909 4 Luxembourg Luxembourg 5 / 0 France Italy Bohemia 1911 5 Turin Italy 6 / 0 Bohemia Italy France 1913 6 Paris France 6 / 0 Italy France Bohemia 1922 7 Ljubljana Yugoslavia 6 / 0 Yugoslavia Czechoslovakia France 1926 8 Lyon France 6 / 0 Czechoslovakia Yugoslavia France 1930 9 Luxembourg Luxembourg 7 / 0 Yugoslavia Czechoslovakia Hungary 1931 FIG 50th Anniversary Paris France n/a n/a n/a n/a 1934 10 Budapest Hungary 8 / 2   Switzerland Czechoslovakia Germany 1938 11 Prague Czechoslovakia 8 / 6 Czechoslovakia   Switzerland Yugoslavia 1950 12 Basel   Switzerland 8 / 6   Switzerland Poland Sweden 1954 13 Rome Italy 8 / 6 Soviet Union Japan Czechoslovakia 1958 14 Moscow Soviet Union 8 / 6 Soviet Union Japan Czechoslovakia 1962 15 Prague Czechoslovakia 8 / 6 Soviet Union Japan Czechoslovakia 1966 16 Dortmund West Germany 8 / 6 Soviet Union Japan Czechoslovakia 1970 17 Ljubljana SFR Yugoslavia 8 / 6 Japan Soviet Union East Germany 1974 18 Varna Bulgaria 8 / 6 Soviet Union Japan East Germany 1978 19 Strasbourg France 8 / 6 Soviet Union Japan United States 1979 20 Fort Worth United States 8 / 6 Soviet Union United States Romania 1981 21 Moscow Soviet Union 8 / 6 Soviet Union East Germany China 1983 22 Budapest Hungary 8 / 6 Soviet Union China Romania 1985 23 Montreal Canada 8 / 6 Soviet Union China East Germany 1987 24 Rotterdam Netherlands 8 / 6 Soviet Union Romania China 1989 25 Stuttgart West Germany 8 / 6 Soviet Union Romania China 1991 26 Indianapolis United States 8 / 6 Soviet Union China Romania 1992 27 Paris France 6 / 4 CIS China United States 1993 28 Birmingham Great Britain 7 / 5 Belarus United States Romania 1994 29 Brisbane Australia 7 / 5 Belarus Romania China  United States 1994 30 Dortmund Germany 1 / 1 China  Romania N/A Russia 1995 31 Sabae Japan 8 / 6 China Ukraine Romania 1996 32 San Juan Puerto Rico 6 / 4 Russia Romania Belarus 1997 33 Lausanne   Switzerland 8 / 6 Romania Russia China 1999 34 Tianjin China 8 / 6 Russia China Romania 2001 35 Ghent Belgium 8 / 6 Romania Russia Bulgaria 2002 36 Debrecen Hungary 6 / 4 Romania China United States 2003 37 Anaheim United States 8 / 6 China United States Japan 2005 38 Melbourne Australia 7 / 5 United States China Slovenia 2006 39 Aarhus Denmark 8 / 6 China Romania Australia 2007 40 Stuttgart Germany 8 / 6 China United States Germany 2009 41 London Great Britain 7 / 5 China United States Romania 2010 42 Rotterdam Netherlands 8 / 6 China Russia United States 2011 43 Tokyo Japan 8 / 6 China United States Russia 2013 44 Antwerp Belgium 7 / 5 Japan United States China 2014 45 Nanning China 8 / 6 United States China North Korea 2015 46 Glasgow Great Britain 8 / 6 United States Japan Russia 2017 47 Montreal Canada 7 / 5 China Japan Russia 2018 48 Doha Qatar 8 / 6 United States China Russia 2019 49 Stuttgart Germany 8 / 6 United States Russia Great Britain 2021 50 Kitakyushu Japan 7 / 5 Future event[6] 2022 51 Liverpool Great Britain 8 / 6 Future event[7] 2023 52 Antwerp Belgium 8 / 6 Future event[8] Note In 1931, an unofficial edition of the World Championships took place in Paris, France, with the participation of 10 different national federations.[9] All-time medal table Last updated after the 2019 World Championships. Men's events Rank Nation Gold Silver Bronze Total Women's events Rank Nation Gold Silver Bronze Total Overall Rank Nation Gold Silver Bronze Total 1 Soviet Union 111 86 59 256 2 China 82 54 44 180 3 United States 58 47 39 144 4 Japan 48 50 67 165 5 Romania 48 45 42 135 6 Russia 36 43 36 115 7 Czechoslovakia 34 29 20 83 8 France 25 30 25 80 9   Switzerland 19 16 15 50 10 East Germany 17 13 29 59 11 Yugoslavia 17 11 8 36 12 Italy 14 10 28 52 13 Belarus 14 7 11 32 14 Hungary 11 15 8 34 15 Bohemia [a] 10 8 10 28 16 North Korea 8 3 3 14 17 Ukraine 7 12 16 35 18 Great Britain 7 11 9 27 19 Greece 7 2 2 11 20 Germany 6 9 16 31 21 South Korea 6 2 3 11 22 Netherlands 5 8 3 16 23 Bulgaria 5 6 13 24 24 Brazil Brazil 5 5 4 14 25 CIS [c] 5 3 5 13 26 Poland 5 2 9 16 27 Slovenia 3 4 0 7 28 Spain 3 3 2 8 29 Sweden 3 1 2 6 30 Finland 2 5 1 8  West Germany 2 5 1 8 32 Belgium 2 4 5 11 33 Australia 2 4 4 10 34 Uzbekistan 1 2 3 6 35 Croatia 1 2 1 4 36 Austria 1 1 1 3 37 Turkey 1 1 0 2 38 Luxembourg 1 0 4 5 39 Philippines 1 0 1 2 40 Kazakhstan 1 0 0 1 41 Canada 0 6 5 11 42 Cuba 0 2 3 5 43 Israel 0 2 2 4 44 Chinese Taipei 0 2 1 3  Latvia 0 2 1 3 46 Austria-Hungary [b] 0 1 1 2  Mexico 0 1 1 2 48 Armenia 0 0 1 1  Azerbaijan 0 0 1 1  Ireland 0 0 1 1  Puerto Rico 0 0 1 1  Vietnam 0 0 1 1 – Unattached athlete [d] 0 0 1 1 Totals (52 nations) 634 575 569 1778 Notes ^[a] Official FIG documents credit medals earned by athletes from Bohemia as medals for Czechoslovakia. ^[b] Official FIG documents credit medals earned by athletes from Austria-Hungary as medals for Yugoslavia. ^[c] Official documents from the International Gymnastics Federation credit medals earned by athletes from former Soviet Union at the 1992 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships in Paris, France as medals for CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States).[10][11] ^[d] At the 1993 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships in Birmingham, Great Britain, Azerbaijani-born gymnast Valery Belenky earned a bronze medal competing as an unattached athlete (UNA) because Azerbaijan did not have a gymnastics federation for him to compete. Later, official documents from the International Gymnastics Federation credit his medal as a medal for Germany.[10][11] Statistics Multiple gold medalists Boldface denotes active artistic gymnasts and highest medal count among all artistic gymnasts (including those not included in these tables) per type. Men All events Rank Artistic gymnast Country From To Gold Silver Bronze Total 1 Vitaly Scherbo Soviet Union  CIS  Belarus 1991 1996 12 7 4 23 2 Kōhei Uchimura Japan 2009 2018 10 6 5 21 3 Joseph Martinez France 1903 1909 10 1 – 11 4 Yuri Korolyov Soviet Union 1981 1987 9 3 1 13 5 Dmitry Bilozerchev Soviet Union 1983 1987 8 4 – 12 6 Li Xiaopeng China 1997 2005 8 2 1 11 7 Marian Drăgulescu Romania 2001 2015 8 2 – 10 8 Chen Yibing China 2006 2011 8 – – 8 9 Eizō Kenmotsu Japan 1970 1979 7 5 3 15 10 Alexander Dityatin Soviet Union 1978 1981 7 2 3 12 Akinori Nakayama Japan 1966 1970 7 2 3 12 Individual events Rank Artistic gymnast Country From To Gold Silver Bronze Total 1 Vitaly Scherbo Soviet Union  CIS  Belarus 1991 1996 11 7 4 22 2 Kōhei Uchimura Japan 2009 2015 9 3 4 16 3 Marian Drăgulescu Romania 2001 2015 8 2 – 10 4 Dmitry Bilozerchev Soviet Union 1983 1987 7 3 – 10 5 Joseph Martinez France 1903 1909 7 1 – 8 6 Yuri Korolyov Soviet Union 1981 1987 6 2 1 9 7 Eugen Mack   Switzerland 1934 1938 5 3 1 9 8 Marco Torrès France 1909 1913 5 3 – 8 9 Akinori Nakayama Japan 1966 1970 5 2 3 10 Alexei Nemov Russia 1995 2003 5 2 3 10 Women Main article: List of top female medalists at major artistic gymnastics events All events Rank Artistic gymnast Country From To Gold Silver Bronze Total 1 Simone Biles United States 2013 2019 19 3 3 25 2 Svetlana Khorkina Russia 1994 2003 9 8 3 20 3 Larisa Latynina (Diriy) Soviet Union 1954 1966 9 4 1 14 4 Gina Gogean Romania 1993 1997 9 2 4 15 5 Ludmilla Tourischeva Soviet Union 1970 1974 7 2 2 11 6 Daniela Silivaș Romania 1985 1989 7 2 1 10 7 Simona Amânar Romania 1994 1999 6 4 – 10 8 Nellie Kim Soviet Union 1974 1979 5 4 2 11 Yelena Shushunova Soviet Union 1985 1987 5 4 2 11 10 Lavinia Miloșovici Romania 1991 1996 5 3 5 13 Individual events Rank Artistic gymnast Country From To Gold Silver Bronze Total 1 Simone Biles United States 2013 2019 15 3 3 21 2 Svetlana Khorkina Russia 1994 2003 9 5 2 16 3 Larisa Latynina Soviet Union 1958 1962 6 3 1 10 4 Gina Gogean Romania 1993 1997 6 2 4 12 5 Daniela Silivaș Romania 1985 1989 6 – 1 7 6 Ludmilla Tourischeva Soviet Union 1970 1974 5 2 2 9 7 Maxi Gnauck East Germany 1979 1983 5 1 – 6 Shannon Miller United States 1991 1994 5 1 – 6 9 Yelena Shushunova Soviet Union 1985 1987 4 3 2 9 10 Helena Rakoczy Poland 1950 1954 4 – 3 7 Note Few non-primary sources state that at the 1938 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships, in Prague, Vlasta Děkanová of Czechoslovakia won 2 or 3 golds on multiple apparatuses. According to some sources, Děkanová and her compatriot Matylda Pálfyová shared gold medals in parallel bars (this event was replaced with uneven bars in the women's program at all subsequent world championships), while others state that Pálfyová shared this victory with Polish gymnast Marta Majowska, not Děkanová. The only primary source on the subject, a book officially released by the International Gymnastics Federation containing the results of the World Championships from 1903 to 2005, informs that medals were distributed only in the team all-around event and in the individual all-around event. Therefore, according to official reports, Děkanová's official number of gold medals is four, two in individual all-round (1934 and 1938) and two in team events (1934 and 1938) - not six or seven.[10] Best results of top nations by event Men's results Only nations with medals in five or more events are listed. Positions below third place are not taken into account. Results for Germany and West Germany have been combined. Event Belgium BEL Belarus BLR Bohemia BOH Bulgaria BUL China CHN Commonwealth of Independent States CIS Finland FIN France FRA United Kingdom GBR East Germany GDR Germany GER Italy ITA Japan JPN Romania ROU Russia RUS Switzerland SUI Czechoslovakia TCH Ukraine UKR Soviet Union URS United States USA Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia YUG Team 2nd place, silver medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) – 1st place, gold medalist(s) – 2nd place, silver medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 2nd place, silver medalist(s) 2nd place, silver medalist(s) 3rd place, bronze medalist(s) 3rd place, bronze medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 3rd place, bronze medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 3rd place, bronze medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 2nd place, silver medalist(s) 2nd place, silver medalist(s) Individual all-around 2nd place, silver medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 3rd place, bronze medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) – 3rd place, bronze medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 2nd place, silver medalist(s) 3rd place, bronze medalist(s) 2nd place, silver medalist(s) 2nd place, silver medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) – 1st place, gold medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 3rd place, bronze medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) Floor exercise – 1st place, gold medalist(s) – 1st place, gold medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) – 2nd place, silver medalist(s) 2nd place, silver medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 3rd place, bronze medalist(s) 3rd place, bronze medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) Pommel horse – – 1st place, gold medalist(s) 3rd place, bronze medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) – 1st place, gold medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 3rd place, bronze medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 2nd place, silver medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) Still rings 2nd place, silver medalist(s) 3rd place, bronze medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 2nd place, silver medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) – 2nd place, silver medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 2nd place, silver medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 3rd place, bronze medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 2nd place, silver medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) Vault – 1st place, gold medalist(s) – 3rd place, bronze medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 2nd place, silver medalist(s) 2nd place, silver medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 3rd place, bronze medalist(s) 3rd place, bronze medalist(s) 2nd place, silver medalist(s) 2nd place, silver medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 2nd place, silver medalist(s) – Parallel bars 3rd place, bronze medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 2nd place, silver medalist(s) – 1st place, gold medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 2nd place, silver medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 3rd place, bronze medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) – 2nd place, silver medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) Horizontal bar 2nd place, silver medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 2nd place, silver medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) – 2nd place, silver medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 2nd place, silver medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 2nd place, silver medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 2nd place, silver medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) Women's results Only nations with medals in three or more events are listed. Positions below eight place are not taken into account. Results for Germany and West Germany have been combined. Event Australia AUS Austria AUT Brazil BRA Canada CAN China CHN France FRA United Kingdom GBR East Germany GDR Germany GER Hungary HUN Italy ITA Japan JPN Netherlands NED Poland POL Romania ROU Russia RUS Sweden SWE Czechoslovakia TCH Ukraine UKR Soviet Union URS United States USA Team 3rd place, bronze medalist(s) 6 5 4 1st place, gold medalist(s) 2nd place, silver medalist(s) 3rd place, bronze medalist(s) 2nd place, silver medalist(s) 6 2nd place, silver medalist(s) 3rd place, bronze medalist(s) 3rd place, bronze medalist(s) 5 3rd place, bronze medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 3rd place, bronze medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) Individual all-around 3rd place, bronze medalist(s) 3rd place, bronze medalist(s) 3rd place, bronze medalist(s) 2nd place, silver medalist(s) 2nd place, silver medalist(s) 5 4 2nd place, silver medalist(s) 6 2nd place, silver medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 2nd place, silver medalist(s) – 1st place, gold medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 2nd place, silver medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) Vault – 2nd place, silver medalist(s) 3rd place, bronze medalist(s) 2nd place, silver medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 3rd place, bronze medalist(s) 3rd place, bronze medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 2nd place, silver medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) – 6 6 1st place, gold medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) Uneven bars 6 1st place, gold medalist(s) – – 1st place, gold medalist(s) 3rd place, bronze medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 3rd place, bronze medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 3rd place, bronze medalist(s) 2nd place, silver medalist(s) 2nd place, silver medalist(s) 3rd place, bronze medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 2nd place, silver medalist(s) 2nd place, silver medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) Balance beam 2nd place, silver medalist(s) – 6 2nd place, silver medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 5 – 1st place, gold medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 3rd place, bronze medalist(s) 2nd place, silver medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 2nd place, silver medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) – 1st place, gold medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) Floor exercise 1st place, gold medalist(s) – 1st place, gold medalist(s) 5 1st place, gold medalist(s) 3rd place, bronze medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 3rd place, bronze medalist(s) – 2nd place, silver medalist(s) 2nd place, silver medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 2nd place, silver medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) – 1st place, gold medalist(s) 3rd place, bronze medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) 1st place, gold medalist(s) See also The Summer Olympic Games (French: Jeux olympiques d'été), also known as the Games of the Olympiad, are a major international multi-sport event normally held once every four years. The inaugural Games took place in 1896 in Athens, Greece, and most recently in 2021 in Tokyo, Japan. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) organises the Games and oversees the host city's preparations. In each Olympic event, gold medals are awarded for first place, silver medals are awarded for second place, and bronze medals are awarded for third place; this tradition began in 1904. The Winter Olympic Games were created out of the success of the Summer Olympics. It is regarded as the largest and most prestigious multi-sport international event in the world. The Olympics have increased in scope from a 42-event competition programme with fewer than 250 male competitors from 14 nations in 1896 to 306 events with 11,238 competitors (6,179 men, 5,059 women) from 206 nations in 2016. The Summer Olympics have been hosted on five continents by a total of nineteen countries. The Games have been held four times in the United States (1904, 1932, 1984, and 1996), three times in Great Britain (1908, 1948, and 2012), twice each in Greece (1896 and 2004), France (1900 and 1924), Germany (1936 and 1972), Australia (1956 and 2000) and Japan (1964 and 2020), and once each in Sweden (1912), Belgium (1920), the Netherlands (1928), Finland (1952), Italy (1960), Mexico (1968), Canada (1976), the Soviet Union (1980), South Korea (1988), Spain (1992), China (2008) and Brazil (2016). London was the first city to host the Summer Olympic Games three times, followed by Paris, Los Angeles, Athens and Tokyo, where the Games have each been held twice. Paris will join London by hosting the Olympics for the third time in 2024, followed by Los Angeles which will hold the 2028 Games.[1] Only five countries have participated in every Summer Olympic Games: Australia, France, Great Britain, Greece, and Switzerland. Great Britain is the only country to have won a gold medal at each edition of the Games. The United States leads the all-time medal count at the Summer Olympics, and has topped the medal table on 18 separate occasions — followed by the USSR (six times), and France, Great Britain, Germany, China, and the ex-Soviet 'Unified Team' (once each). Contents 1 Hosting 2 History 2.1 Early years 2.2 Interwar era 2.3 After World War II 2.4 End of the 20th century 2.5 Start of the 21st century 2.6 Recent Games 3 Sports 3.1 Qualification 3.2 Popularity of Olympic sports 4 All-time medal table 4.1 Medal leaders by year 5 List of Summer Olympic Games 6 See also 7 References 8 External links Hosting Map of Summer Olympic Games locations – countries that have hosted one Summer Olympics are shaded green, while countries that have hosted two or more are shaded blue The United States hosted the Summer Olympic Games four times: the 1904 Games were held in St. Louis, Missouri; the 1932 and 1984 Games were both held in Los Angeles, California, and the 1996 Games were held in Atlanta, Georgia. The 2028 Games in Los Angeles will mark the fifth occasion on which the Summer Games have been hosted by the U.S. In 2012, Great Britain hosted its third Summer Olympic Games in London, which became the first city ever to have hosted the Summer Olympic Games three times. The cities of Los Angeles, Paris, and Athens (excluding 1906) have each hosted two Summer Olympic Games. In 2024, France will host its third Summer Olympic Games in its capital, making Paris the second city ever to have hosted three Summer Olympics. And in 2028, Los Angeles will in turn become the third city ever to have hosted the Games three times. Australia, France, Germany, Greece and Japan all hosted the Summer Olympic Games twice (with France and Australia planned to host in 2024 and 2032, respectively, taking both countries to three each). Tokyo, Japan, hosted 2020 Summer Olympics, and became the first city outside the predominantly English-speaking and European nations to have hosted the Summer Olympics twice, having already hosted the Games in 1964;[2] it is also the largest city ever to have hosted, having grown considerably since 1964. The other countries to have hosted the Summer Olympics are Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, Finland, Italy, Mexico, Netherlands, South Korea, Soviet Union, Spain, and Sweden, with each of these countries having hosted the Summer Games on one occasion. Asia has hosted the Summer Olympics four times: in Tokyo (1964 and 2020), Seoul (1988), and Beijing (2008). The 2016 Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, were the first Summer Olympics to be held in South America and the first that was held completely during the local "winter" season. The only two countries in the Southern Hemisphere to have hosted the Summer Olympics have been Australia (1956, 2000, and upcoming 2032) and Brazil (2016), with Africa having yet to host any Summer Olympics. Stockholm, Sweden, has hosted events at two Summer Olympics, having been sole host of the 1912 Games, and hosting the equestrian events at the 1956 Summer Olympics (which they are credited as jointly hosting with Melbourne, Australia).[3] Amsterdam, Netherlands, has also hosted events at two Summer Olympic Games, having been sole host of the 1928 Games and previously hosting two of the sailing races at the 1920 Summer Olympics. At the 2008 Summer Olympics, Hong Kong provided the venues for the equestrian events, which took place in Sha Tin and Kwu Tung. History Early years The opening ceremony of the first modern Olympic Games in the Panathenaic Stadium, Athens The International Olympic Committee was founded in 1894 when Pierre de Coubertin, a French pedagogue and historian, sought to promote international understanding through sporting competition. The first edition of The Olympic Games was held in Athens in 1896 and attracted just 245 competitors, of whom more than 200 were Greek, and only 14 countries were represented. Nevertheless, no international events of this magnitude had been organised before. Female athletes were not allowed to compete, though one woman, Stamata Revithi, ran the marathon course on her own, saying "If the committee doesn't let me compete I will go after them regardless".[4] The 1896 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the Olympiad, was an international multi-sport event which was celebrated in Athens, Greece, from 6 to 15 April 1896. It was the first Olympic Games held in the Modern era. About 100,000 people attended for the opening of the games. The athletes came from 14 nations, with most coming from Greece. Although Greece had the most athletes, the U.S. finished with the most champions. 11 Americans placed first in their events vs. the 10 from Greece.[5] Ancient Greece was the birthplace of the Olympic Games, consequently Athens was perceived to be an appropriate choice to stage the inaugural modern Games. It was unanimously chosen as the host city during a congress organised by Pierre de Coubertin in Paris, on 23 June 1894. The IOC was also established during this congress. Despite many obstacles and setbacks, the 1896 Olympics were regarded as a great success. The Games had the largest international participation of any sporting event to that date. Panathinaiko Stadium, the first big stadium in the modern world, overflowed with the largest crowd ever to watch a sporting event.[6] The highlight for the Greeks was the marathon victory by their compatriot Spiridon Louis, a water carrier. He won in 2 hours 58 minutes and 50 seconds, setting off wild celebrations at the stadium. The most successful competitor was German wrestler and gymnast Carl Schuhmann, who won four gold medals. Greek officials and the public were enthusiastic about the experience of hosting an Olympic Games. This feeling was shared by many of the athletes, who even demanded that Athens be the permanent Olympic host city. The IOC intended for subsequent Games to be rotated to various host cities around the world. The second Olympics was held in Paris.[7] Four years later the 1900 Summer Olympics in Paris attracted more than four times as many athletes, including 20 women, who were allowed to officially compete for the first time, in croquet, golf, sailing, and tennis. The Games were integrated with the Paris World's Fair and lasted over 5 months. It is still disputed which events exactly were Olympic, since few or maybe even none of the events were advertised as such at the time. Francis Field of Washington University in St. Louis during the 1904 Summer Olympics Dorando Pietri finishes the modern marathon at the current distance Tensions caused by the Russo–Japanese War and the difficulty of getting to St. Louis may have contributed to the fact that very few top-ranked athletes from outside the US and Canada took part in the 1904 Games.[8] The "Second International Olympic Games in Athens", as they were called at the time, were held in 1906.[9] The IOC does not currently recognise these games as being official Olympic Games, although many historians do and credit the 1906 games with preventing the demise of the Olympics. The 1906 Athens games were the first of an alternating series of games to be held in Athens in even non-Olympic years, but the series failed to materialise. The games were more successful than the 1900 and 1904 games, with over 850 athletes competing, and contributed positively to the success of future games. The 1908 London Games saw numbers rise again, as well as the first running of the marathon over its now-standard distance of 42.195  km (26 miles 385 yards). The first Olympic Marathon in 1896 (a male-only race) was raced at a distance of 40  km (24 miles 85 yards). The new marathon distance was chosen to ensure that the race finished in front of the box occupied by the British royal family. Thus the marathon had been 40 km (24.9 mi) for the first games in 1896, but was subsequently varied by up to 2 km (1.2 mi) due to local conditions such as street and stadium layout. At the six Olympic games between 1900 and 1920, the marathon was raced over six distances. The Games saw Great Britain winning 146 medals, 99 more than second-placed Americans, its best result to this day. At the end of the 1908 marathon, the Italian runner Dorando Pietri was first to enter the stadium, but he was clearly in distress and collapsed of exhaustion before he could complete the event. He was helped over the finish line by concerned race officials and later disqualified for that. As compensation for the missing medal, Queen Alexandra gave Pietri a gilded silver cup. Arthur Conan Doyle wrote a special report about the race in the Daily Mail.[10] The Games continued to grow, attracting 2,504 competitors, to Stockholm in 1912, including the great all-rounder Jim Thorpe, who won both the decathlon and pentathlon. Thorpe had previously played a few games of baseball for a fee, and saw his medals stripped for this 'breach' of amateurism after complaints from Avery Brundage. They were reinstated in 1983, 30 years after his death. The Games at Stockholm were the first to fulfil Pierre de Coubertin's original idea. For the first time since the Games started in 1896, all five inhabited continents were represented with athletes competing in the same stadium. The scheduled 1916 Summer Olympics were cancelled following the onset of World War I. Interwar era The 1920 Antwerp games in war-ravaged Belgium were a subdued affair, but again drew a record number of competitors. This record only stood until 1924, when the Paris Games involved 3,000 competitors, the greatest of whom was Finnish runner Paavo Nurmi. The "Flying Finn" won three team gold medals and the individual 1,500 and 5,000 meter runs, the latter two on the same day.[11] The 1928 Amsterdam games was notable for being the first games which allowed females to compete at track & field athletics, and benefited greatly from the general prosperity of the times alongside the first appearance of sponsorship of the games, from the Coca-Cola Company. The 1928 games saw the introduction of a standard medal design with the IOC choosing Giuseppe Cassioli's depiction of Greek goddess Nike and a winner being carried by a crowd of people. This design was used up until 1972.[citation needed] The 1932 Los Angeles games were affected by the Great Depression, which contributed to the low number of competitors. Olympiastadion in Berlin, during the 1936 Games The 1936 Berlin Games were seen by the German government as a golden opportunity to promote their ideology. The ruling Nazi Party commissioned film-maker Leni Riefenstahl to film the games. The result, Olympia, was widely considered to be a masterpiece, despite Hitler's theories of Aryan racial superiority being repeatedly shown up by "non-Aryan" athletes. In particular, African-American sprinter and long jumper Jesse Owens won four gold medals. The 1936 Berlin Games also saw the introduction of the Torch Relay.[12] Due to World War II, the 1940 Games (due to be held in Tokyo and temporarily relocated to Helsinki upon the outbreak of war) were cancelled. The 1944 Games were due to be held in London but were also cancelled; instead, London hosted the first games after the end of the war, in 1948. After World War II The first post-war Games were held in 1948 in London, with both Germany and Japan excluded. Dutch sprinter Fanny Blankers-Koen won four gold medals on the track, emulating Owens' achievement in Berlin. At the 1952 Games in Helsinki the USSR team competed for the first time and immediately became one of the dominant teams (finishing second both in the number of gold and overall medals won). Soviet immediate success might be explained by the advent of the state-sponsored "full-time amateur athlete". The USSR entered teams of athletes who were all nominally students, soldiers, or working in a profession, but many of whom were in reality paid by the state to train on a full-time basis, hence violating amateur rules.[13][14] Finland made a legend of an amiable Czechoslovak army lieutenant named Emil Zátopek, who was intent on improving on his single gold and silver medals from 1948. Having first won both the 10,000 and 5,000-meter races, he also entered the marathon, despite having never previously raced at that distance. Pacing himself by chatting with the other leaders, Zátopek led from about halfway, slowly dropping the remaining contenders to win by two and a half minutes, and completed a trio of wins. The 1956 Melbourne Games were largely successful, barring a water polo match between Hungary and the Soviet Union, which the Soviet invasion of Hungary caused to end as a pitched battle between the teams. Due to a foot-and-mouth disease outbreak in Britain at the time and the strict quarantine laws of Australia, the equestrian events were held in Stockholm. At the 1960 Rome Games a young light-heavyweight boxer named Cassius Clay, later known as Muhammad Ali, arrived on the scene. Ali would later throw his gold medal away in disgust after being refused service in a whites-only restaurant in his home town of Louisville, Kentucky.[15] He was awarded a new medal 36 years later at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. Other performers of note in 1960 included Wilma Rudolph, a gold medallist in the 100 meters, 200 meters and 4 × 100 meters relay events. The 1964 Games held in Tokyo are notable for heralding the modern age of telecommunications. These games were the first to be broadcast worldwide on television, enabled by the recent advent of communication satellites. The 1964 Games were thus a turning point in the global visibility and popularity of the Olympics. Judo debuted as an official sport, and Dutch judoka Anton Geesink created quite a stir when he won the final of the open weight division, defeating Akio Kaminaga in front of his home crowd. The opening ceremony for the Games of 1968, in Mexico City, the first held in Latin America Performances at the 1968 Mexico City games were affected by the altitude of the host city.[16] The 1968 Games also introduced the now-universal Fosbury flop, a technique which won American high jumper Dick Fosbury the gold medal. In the medal award ceremony for the men's 200 meter race, black American athletes Tommie Smith (gold) and John Carlos (bronze) took a stand for civil rights by raising their black-gloved fists and wearing black socks in lieu of shoes. They were banned by the IOC. Věra Čáslavská, in protest to the 1968 Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia and the controversial decision by the judges on the Balance Beam and Floor, turned her head down and away from the Soviet flag whilst the anthem played during the medal ceremony. She returned home as a heroine of the Czechoslovak people but was made an outcast by the Soviet-dominated government. The Olympic flag in Kiel, host city of the sailing events at halfmast, after the Munich massacre, at 1972 Games . Politics again intervened at Munich in 1972, with lethal consequences. A Palestinian terrorist group named Black September invaded the Olympic village and broke into the apartment of the Israeli delegation. They killed two Israelis and held 9 others as hostages. The terrorists demanded that Israel release numerous prisoners. When the Israeli government refused their demand, a tense stand-off ensued while negotiations continued. Eventually, the captors, still holding their hostages, were offered safe passage and taken to an airport, where they were ambushed by German security forces. In the firefight that followed, 15 people, including the nine Israeli athletes and five of the terrorists, were killed. After much debate, it was decided that the Games would continue, but proceedings were obviously dominated by these events.[17] Some memorable athletic achievements did occur during these Games, notably the winning of a then-record seven gold medals by United States swimmer Mark Spitz, Lasse Virén (of Finland)'s back-to-back gold in the 5,000 meters and 10,000 meters, and the winning of three gold medals by Soviet gymnastic star Olga Korbut - who achieved a historic backflip off the high bar. Korbut, however, failed to win the all-around, losing to her teammate Ludmilla Tourischeva. There was no such tragedy in Montreal in 1976, but bad planning and fraud led to the Games' cost far exceeding the budget. The Montreal Games were the most expensive in Olympic history, until the 2014 Winter Olympics, costing over $5 billion (equivalent to $22.03 billion in 2020). For a time, it seemed that the Olympics might no longer be a viable financial proposition. In retrospect, the belief that contractors (suspected of being members of the Montreal Mafia) skimmed large sums of money from all levels of contracts while also profiting from the substitution of cheaper building materials of lesser quality, may have contributed to the delays, poor construction, and excessive costs. In 1988, one such contractor, Giuseppe Zappia "was cleared of fraud charges that resulted from his work on Olympic facilities after two key witnesses died before testifying at his trial".[18] There was also a boycott by many African nations to protest against a recent tour of apartheid-run South Africa by the New Zealand national rugby union team. The Romanian gymnast Nadia Comăneci won the women's individual all-around gold medal with two of four possible perfect scores, this giving birth to a gymnastics dynasty in Romania. She also won two other individual events, with two perfect scores in the balance beam and all perfect scores in the uneven bars. Lasse Virén repeated his double gold in the 5,000 meters and 10,000 meters, making him the first athlete to ever win the distance double twice. End of the 20th century Following the Soviet Union's 1979 invasion of Afghanistan, 66 nations, including the United States, Canada, West Germany, and Japan, boycotted the 1980 games held in Moscow. Eighty nations were represented at the Moscow Games – the smallest number since 1956. The boycott contributed to the 1980 Games being a less publicised and less competitive affair, which was dominated by the host country. In 1984 the Soviet Union and 13 Soviet allies reciprocated by boycotting the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. Romania and Yugoslavia, notably are the only two countries from the Eastern Bloc that did attend the 1984 Olympics. These games were perhaps the first games of a new era to make a profit. Although a boycott led by the Soviet Union depleted the field in certain sports, 140 National Olympic Committees took part, which was a record at the time.[19] The Games were also the first time mainland China (People's Republic) participated. According to British journalist Andrew Jennings, a KGB colonel stated that the agency's officers had posed as anti-doping authorities from the IOC to undermine doping tests and that Soviet athletes were "rescued with [these] tremendous efforts".[20] On the topic of the 1980 Summer Olympics, a 1989 Australian study said "There is hardly a medal winner at the Moscow Games, certainly not a gold medal winner, who is not on one sort of drug or another: usually several kinds. The Moscow Games might as well have been called the Chemists' Games."[20] Documents obtained in 2016 revealed the Soviet Union's plans for a statewide doping system in track and field in preparation for the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. Dated prior to the country's decision to boycott the Games, the document detailed the existing steroids operations of the programme, along with suggestions for further enhancements.[21] The communication, directed to the Soviet Union's head of track and field, was prepared by Dr. Sergei Portugalov of the Institute for Physical Culture. Portugalov was also one of the main figures involved in the implementation of the Russian doping programme prior to the 2016 Summer Olympics.[21] The 1988 games, in Seoul, was very well planned but the games were tainted when many of the athletes, most notably men's 100 metres winner Ben Johnson, failed mandatory drug tests. Despite splendid drug-free performances by many individuals, the number of people who failed screenings for performance-enhancing chemicals overshadowed the games. The 1992 Barcelona Games featured the admittance of players from one of the North American top leagues, the NBA, exemplified by but not limited to US basketball's "Dream Team". The 1992 games also saw the reintroduction to the Games of several smaller European states which had been incorporated into the Soviet Union since World War II. At these games, gymnast Vitaly Scherbo set an inaugural medal record of five individual gold medals at a Summer Olympics, and equaled the inaugural record set by Eric Heiden at the 1980 Winter Olympics. By then the process of choosing a location for the Games had become a commercial concern; there were widespread allegations of corruption potentially affecting the IOC's decision process. At the Atlanta 1996 Summer Olympics, the highlight was 200 meters runner Michael Johnson annihilating the world record in front of a home crowd. Canadians savoured Donovan Bailey's recording gold medal run in the 100-meter dash. This was popularly felt to be an appropriate recompense for the previous national disgrace involving Ben Johnson. There were also emotional scenes, such as when Muhammad Ali, clearly affected by Parkinson's disease, lit the Olympic torch and received a replacement medal for the one he had discarded in 1960. The latter event took place in the basketball arena. The atmosphere at the Games was marred, however, when a bomb exploded during the celebration in Centennial Olympic Park. In June 2003, the principal suspect in this bombing, Eric Robert Rudolph, was arrested. The 2000 Summer Olympics held in Sydney, Australia, known as the "Games of the New Millennium". The 2000 Summer Olympics was held in Sydney, Australia, and showcased individual performances by locals favorites Ian Thorpe in the pool and Cathy Freeman, an Indigenous Australian whose triumph in the 400 meters united a packed stadium., Briton Steve Redgrave who won a rowing gold medal in an unprecedented fifth consecutive Olympics, and Eric "the Eel" Moussambani, a swimmer from Equatorial Guinea, received wide media coverage when he completed the 100 meter freestyle swim in by far the slowest time in Olympic history. He nevertheless won the heat as both his opponents had been disqualified for false starts. His female compatriot Paula Barila Bolopa also received media attention for her record-slow and struggling but courageous performance. The Sydney Games also saw the first appearance of a joint North and South Korean contingent at the opening ceremonies, though they competed in all events as different teams. Controversy occurred in the Women's Artistic Gymnastics when the vaulting horse was set to the wrong height during the All-Around Competition. Start of the 21st century In 2004, the Olympic Games returned to their birthplace in Athens, Greece. At least $7.2 billion was spent on the 2004 Games, including $1.5 billion on security. Michael Phelps won his first Olympic medals, tallying six gold and two bronze medals. Pyrros Dimas, winning a bronze medal, became the most decorated weightlifter of all time with four Olympic medals, three gold and one bronze. Although unfounded reports of potential terrorism drove crowds away from the preliminary competitions at the first weekend of the Olympics (14–15 August 2004), attendance picked up as the Games progressed. A third of the tickets failed to sell,[22] but ticket sales still topped figures from the Seoul and Barcelona Olympics (1988 and 1992).[citation needed] IOC President Jacques Rogge characterised Greece's organisation as outstanding and its security precautions as flawless.[23] All 202 NOCs participated at the Athens Games with over 11,000 participants. The 2008 Summer Olympics was held in Beijing, People's Republic of China. Several new events were held, including the new discipline of BMX for both men and women. Women competed in the steeplechase for the first time. The fencing programme was expanded to include all six events for both men and women; previously, women had not been able to compete in team foil or sabre events, although women's team épée and men's team foil were dropped for these Games. Marathon swimming events were added, over the distance of 10 km (6.2 mi). Also, the doubles events in table tennis were replaced by team events.[24] American swimmer Michael Phelps set a record for gold medals at a single Games with eight, and tied the record of most gold medals by a single competitor previously held by both Eric Heiden and Vitaly Scherbo. Another notable star of the Games was Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt, who became the first male athlete ever to set world records in the finals of both the 100 and 200 metres in the same Games. Equestrian events were held in Hong Kong. London held the 2012 Summer Olympics, becoming the first city to host the Olympic Games three times. In his closing address, Jacques Rogge described the Games as "Happy and glorious". The host nation won 29 gold medals, the best haul for Great Britain since the 1908 Games in London. The United States returned to the top of the medal table after China dominated in 2008. The IOC had removed baseball and softball from the 2012 programme. The London Games were successful on a commercial level because they were the first in history to completely sell out every ticket, with as many as 1 million applications for 40,000 tickets for both the Opening Ceremony and the 100m Men's Sprint Final. Such was the demand for tickets to all levels of each event that there was controversy over seats being set aside for sponsors and National Delegations which went unused in the early days. A system of reallocation was put in place so the empty seats were filled throughout the Games. Recent Games The 2020 Summer Olympics were held in Tokyo, Japan, with few attendees amid the -19 pandemic, as a result of excluding public spectators. Rio de Janeiro in Brazil hosted the 2016 Summer Olympics, becoming the first South American city to host the Olympics, the second Olympic host city in Latin America, after Mexico City in 1968, as well as the third city in the Southern Hemisphere to host the Olympics after Melbourne, Australia, in 1956 and Sydney, Australia, in 2000. The preparation for these Games was overshadowed by controversies, including political instability and an economic crisis in the host country, health and safety concerns surrounding the Zika virus, and significant pollution in the Guanabara Bay. However, these concerns were superseded by a state-sponsored doping scandal involving Russian athletes at the Winter Olympics held two years earlier, which affected the participation of its athletes in these Games.[25] The 2020 Summer Olympics were originally scheduled to take place from 24 July to 9 August 2020 in Tokyo, Japan. The city was the fifth in history to host the Games twice and the first Asian city to have this title. Due to the -19 pandemic, the then-Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, the IOC and the Tokyo Organising Committee announced that the 2020 Games were to be delayed until 2021, marking the first time that the Olympic Games have been postponed. Unlike previous Olympics, these Games took place without spectators due to concerns over -19 and a state of emergency imposed in the host city.[26][27][28] Nevertheless, the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games featured many memorable moments and feats of technical excellence. One star of the games, the US gymnast Simone Biles, gracefully bowed out to focus on her mental health, but later returned to claim a individual bronze medal. Norway's Karsten Warholm smashed his own world record in the 400m hurdles. Sports Main article: Olympic sports There has been a total of 42 sports, spanning 55 disciplines, included in the Olympic programme at one point or another in the history of the Games. The schedule has comprised 33 sports for recent Summer Olympics (2020); the 2012 Games featured 26 sports because of the removal of baseball and softball.[29] The various Olympic Sports federations are grouped under a common umbrella association, called the Association of Summer Olympic International Federations (ASOIF).   Current sport     No longer included Sport Years Archery 1900–1908, 1920, since 1972 Artistic swimming Since 1984 Athletics All Badminton Since 1992 Baseball 1992–2008, 2020, 2028 Basketball Since 1936 Basque pelota 1900 Breaking To begin 2024 Boxing 1904, 1908, since 1920 Canoeing Since 1936 Cricket 1900 Croquet 1900 Cycling All Diving Since 1904 Equestrian 1900, since 1912 Fencing All Field hockey 1908, 1920, since 1928 Football 1900–1928, since 1936 Golf 1900, 1904, since 2016 Gymnastics All Handball 1936, since 1972 Jeu de paume 1908 Judo 1964, since 1972 Karate 2020 Lacrosse 1904, 1908 Modern pentathlon Since 1912 Polo 1900, 1908, 1920, 1924, 1936 Rackets 1908 Roque 1904 Rowing Since 1900 Rugby union 1900, 1908, 1920, 1924 Rugby sevens Since 2016 Sailing 1900, since 1908 Shooting 1896, 1900, 1908–1924, since 1932 Skateboarding Since 2020 Softball 1996–2008, 2020, 2028 Sport climbing Since 2020 Surfing Since 2020 Swimming All Table tennis Since 1988 Taekwondo Since 2000 Tennis 1896–1924, since 1988 Triathlon Since 2000 Tug of war 1900–1920 Volleyball Since 1964 Water motorsports 1908 Water polo Since 1900 Weightlifting 1896, 1904, since 1920 Wrestling 1896, since 1904 Qualification Qualification rules for each of the Olympic sports are set by the International Sports Federation (IF) that governs that sport's international competition.[30] For individual sports, competitors typically qualify by attaining a certain place in a major international event or on the IF's ranking list. There is a general rule that a maximum of three individual athletes may represent each nation per competition. National Olympic Committees (NOCs) may enter a limited number of qualified competitors in each event, and the NOC decides which qualified competitors to select as representatives in each event if more have attained the benchmark than can be entered.[31] Nations most often qualify teams for team sports through continental qualifying tournaments, in which each continental association is given a certain number of spots in the Olympic tournament. Each nation may be represented by no more than one team per competition; a team consists of just two people in some sports. Popularity of Olympic sports The IOC divides Summer Olympic sports into five categories (A – E) based on popularity, gauged by six criteria: television viewing figures (40%), internet popularity (20%), public surveys (15%), ticket requests (10%), press coverage (10%), and number of national federations (5%). The category of a sport determines the share of Olympic revenue received by that sport's International Federation.[32][33] Sports that were new to the 2016 Olympics (rugby and golf) have been placed in Category E. The current categories are: Cat. No. Sport A 3 athletics, aquatics,[a] gymnastics B 5 basketball, cycling, football, tennis, volleyball C 8 archery, badminton, boxing, judo, rowing, shooting, table tennis, weightlifting D 9 canoe/kayaking, equestrian, fencing, handball, field hockey, sailing, taekwondo, triathlon, wrestling E 3 modern pentathlon, golf, rugby F 6 baseball/softball, karate, skateboarding, sport climbing, surfing a Aquatics encompasses artistic swimming, diving, swimming, and water polo. All-time medal table Main article: All-time Olympic Games medal table The table below uses official data provided by the IOC.    Defunct nation No. Nation Gold Silver Bronze Total Games 1 United States 1060 831 738 2629 28 2 Soviet Union 395 319 296 1010 9 3 Great Britain 285 319 314 918 29 4 China 262 199 173 634 11 5 France 223 251 277 751 29 6 Italy 217 188 213 618 28 7 Germany 201 207 247 655 17 8 Hungary 181 154 176 511 27 9 Japan 169 150 178 497 23 10 Australia 164 173 210 547 27 11 East Germany 153 129 127 409 5 12 Russia 149 126 151 426 6 13 Sweden 148 176 179 503 28 14 Finland 101 85 119 305 26 15 South Korea 96 91 100 287 18 16 Netherlands 95 105 122 322 27 17 Romania 90 97 121 308 22 18 Cuba 84 69 82 235 21 19 Poland 72 89 137 298 22 20 Canada 71 109 146 326 27 Medal leaders by year vte Olympic rings.svg Summer Olympics medal table leaders by year Number of occurrences  United States — 18 times  Soviet Union — 6 times  France — 1 time  Great Britain — 1 time  Germany — 1 time  China — 1 time  Unified Team — 1 time List of Summer Olympic Games The IOC has never decided which events of the early Games were "Olympic" and which were not.[34] The founder of the modern Olympics, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, ceded that determination to the organisers of those Games. Olympiad No. Host Games dates / Opened by Sports (Disciplines) Competitors Events Nations Top nation Total Men Women 1896[35] I Kingdom of Greece Athens 6–15 April 1896 King George I 9 (10) 241 241 0 43 14+1[A] United States 1900[36] II France Paris 14 May – 28 October 1900 N/A 19 (20) 1226 N/A N/A 95[B] 26+4[C]+1[A] France 1904[37] III United States St. Louis 1 July – 23 November 1904 Former Mayor David R. Francis 16 (17) 651 645 6 95[D] 12+1[A] United States 1908[38] IV United Kingdom London 27 April – 31 October 1908 King Edward VII 22 (25) 2008 1971 37 110 22 Great Britain 1912[39] V Sweden Stockholm 6–22 July 1912 King Gustaf V 14 (18) 2407 2359 48 102 28 United States 1916 VI[E] Awarded to Germany (Berlin). Cancelled due to World War I 1920[40] VII Belgium Antwerp 14 August – 12 September 1920 King Albert I 22 (29) 2626 2561 65 156[F] 29 United States 1924[41] VIII France Paris 5–27 July 1924 President Gaston Doumergue 17 (23) 3089 2954 135 126 44 United States 1928[42] IX Netherlands Amsterdam 28 July – 12 August 1928 Duke Henry of Mecklenburg-Schwerin 14 (20) 2883 2606 277 109 46 United States 1932[43] X United States Los Angeles 30 July – 14 August 1932 Vice President Charles Curtis 1332 1206 126 117 37 United States 1936[44] XI Nazi Germany Berlin 1–16 August 1936 Chancellor Adolf Hitler[G] 19 (25) 3963 3632 331 129 49 Germany 1940 XII[E] Originally awarded to Japan (Tokyo), then awarded to Finland (Helsinki). Cancelled due to World War II 1944 XIII[E] Awarded to United Kingdom (London). Cancelled due to World War II 1948[45] XIV United Kingdom London 29 July – 14 August 1948 King George VI 17 (23) 4104 3714 390 136 59 United States 1952[46] XV Finland Helsinki 19 July – 3 August 1952 President Juho Kusti Paasikivi 4955 4436 519 149 69 United States 1956[3] XVI Australia Melbourne 22 November – 8 December 1956 Philip, Duke of Edinburgh 3314 2938 376 151[H] 72[I] Soviet Union 1960[47] XVII Italy Rome 25 August – 11 September 1960 President Giovanni Gronchi 5338 4727 611 150 83 Soviet Union 1964[48] XVIII Japan Tokyo 10–24 October 1964 Emperor Hirohito 19 (25) 5151 4473 678 163 93 United States 1968[16] XIX Mexico Mexico City 12–27 October 1968 President Gustavo Díaz Ordaz 18 (24) 5516 4735 781 172 112 United States 1972[17] XX West Germany Munich 26 August – 11 September 1972[J] President Gustav Heinemann 21 (28) 7134 6075 1059 195 121 Soviet Union 1976[49] XXI Canada Montreal 17 July – 1 August 1976 Queen Elizabeth II 21 (27) 6084 4824 1260 198 92 Soviet Union 1980[50] XXII Soviet Union Moscow 19 July – 3 August 1980 Communist Party General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev[K] 5179 4064 1115 203 80 Soviet Union 1984[19] XXIII United States Los Angeles 28 July – 12 August 1984 President Ronald Reagan 21 (29) 6829 5263 1566 221 140 United States 1988[51] XXIV South Korea Seoul 17 September – 2 October 1988 President Roh Tae-woo 23 (31) 8391 6197 2194 237 159 Soviet Union 1992[52] XXV Spain Barcelona 25 July – 9 August 1992 King Juan Carlos I 25 (34) 9356 6652 2704 257 169 Unified Team 1996[53] XXVI United States Atlanta 19 July – 4 August 1996 President Bill Clinton 26 (37) 10318 6806 3512 271 197 United States 2000[54] XXVII Australia Sydney 15 September – 1 October 2000 Governor-General Sir William Deane 28 (40) 10651 6582 4069 300 199 United States 2004[55] XXVIII Greece Athens 13–29 August 2004 President Konstantinos Stephanopoulos 10625 6296 4329 301 201 United States 2008[56] XXIX China Beijing 8–24 August 2008 President Hu Jintao[L] 28 (41) 10942 6305 4637 302 204 China 2012[57] XXX United Kingdom London 27 July – 12 August 2012 Queen Elizabeth II 26 (39) 10768 5992 4776 302 204 United States 2016[58] XXXI Brazil Rio de Janeiro 5–21 August 2016 Acting President Michel Temer 28 (41) 11238 6179 5059 306 207 United States 2020[59] XXXII Japan Tokyo 23 July – 8 August 2021[M] Emperor Naruhito 33 (50) 11656 5982 5494 339 206 United States 2024[60] XXXIII France Paris 26 July – 11 August 2024 President Emmanuel Macron (expected) 32 (48) 10500[N] TBA TBA 329 TBA TBA 2028[61] XXXIV United States Los Angeles 14–30 July 2028 TBA TBA TBA TBA TBA TBA TBA TBA 2032[62] XXXV Australia Brisbane 23 July – 8 August 2032 TBA TBA TBA TBA TBA TBA TBA TBA MixedTeam1896 MixedTeam1900 MixedTeam1904 The IOC site for the 1896, 1900 and 1904 Summer Olympic Games does not include Mixed teams (teams of athletes from different nations) as separate "nation" when counting participating nations. At the same time the IOC shows Mixed team in the results of competitions where these teams competed. Thus, specified number of national teams plus Mixed teams participated in the Games. Events1900 At an earlier time the IOC database for the 1900 Summer Olympics listed 85 medal events, 24 participating countries and 997 athletes (22 women, 975 men).[63] The Olympic historian and author, Bill Mallon,[64] whose studies have shed light on the topic, suggested the number 95 events satisfying all four retrospective selection criteria (restricted to amateurs, international participation, open to all competitors and without handicapping) and now should be considered as Olympic events. In July 2021, the IOC upgraded its complete online database of all Olympic results explicitly to incorporate the data of the Olympic historians website, Olympedia.org, thus accepting Mallon's recommendation (based on four applied criteria) for events of the 1900 Olympic Games. The eleven events, the results of which had nevertheless been shown within the earlier IOC database, have been added over the former total of 85. Оne shooting event (20 metre military pistol, which was an event for professionals) have been removed. Acceptance of Mallon's recommendation increased the number of events to 95, and also entailed increasing the number of participation countries up to 26 and athletes up to 1226. After upgrading of the IOC online database the IOC web site results section contains 95 events.[65] However the IOC webpage for the 1900 Summer Olympics shows a total of 96 (not 95) medal events, 26 participating countries and 1226 athletes.[36] The reason for the discrepancy in the number of events on the IOC webpage is unknown. Furthermore, the IOC factsheet "The Games of the Olympiad" of November 2021 refers to 95 events, but still refers to old numbers of participating countries (24) and athletes (997).[8] Nations1900 According to the International Olympic Committee, 26 nations sent competitors to this edition.[36] The concept of "national teams" chosen by National Olympic Committees did not exist at this point in time. When counting the number of participating countries in the early Olympic Games, the IOC does not take into account otherwise unrepresented countries whose citizens competed for other countries. Modern research shows[64] that at the 1900 Olympics, the athletes of at least four otherwise unrepresented countries (Canada, Luxembourg, Colombia, New Zealand) competed for other countries in both individual and team sports. The IOC website lists all of them in the results section under their nationalities,[65] but does not include their countries among the 26 participating countries.[36] Events1904 The IOC webpage for the 1904 Summer Olympics[37] sets the number at 95 events, while at one time the IOC webpage[66] listed 91. The figure of 91 is sourced to a work by Olympic historian and author, Bill Mallon,[67] whose studies have shed light on the topic. Events satisfying all four of these retrospective selection criteria — restricted to amateurs, allowing international participation, open to all competitors and without handicapping — are now regarded as Olympic events. No1916 No1940 No1944 Although the Games of 1916, 1940, and 1944 were cancelled, the Roman numerals for those Games were still applied because the official titles of the Summer Games count the Olympiads, not the Games themselves, per the Olympic Charter.[68] This contrasts with the Winter Olympics, which ignore the cancelled Winter Games of 1940 and 1944 in their numeric count. Events1920 The IOC webpage for the 1920 Summer Olympics[40] gives the figure of 156 events, while at one time the IOC webpage[69] listed 154 (difference was two sailing events in Amsterdam). OpenedBy1936 IOC records state Hitler opened these Games as "Chancellor" (Head of Government), but in 1934 that office was consolidated with "President" (Head of State) into "Führer und Reichskanzler", or "Führer".[70] Events1956 The IOC webpage for the 1956 Summer Olympics[3] gives a total of 151 events (145 events in Melbourne and 6 equestrian events in Stockholm). Nations1956 Owing to Australian quarantine laws, six equestrian events were held in Stockholm for the 1956 Summer Olympics several months before the other events in Melbourne; five of the 72 nations competed in the equestrian events in Stockholm, but did not attend the main Games in Melbourne. Dates1972 The 1972 Summer Olympics was originally scheduled to end on 10 September 1972, but was postponed to a day on 11 September after events had been suspended for 34 hours due to the Munich massacre, which happened after day 9. OpenedBy1980 IOC records state Brezhnev opened the Moscow Games as "President", a title used at that time by the Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, or de jure head of state. (The office of President of the Soviet Union was not created until 1990, a year before the nation broke up.) Though Brezhnev was also de facto ruler as General Secretary of the Communist Party, that title is not reflected in IOC records.[70] OpenedBy2008 IOC records state Hu Jintao opened the Beijing Games as "President", de jure head of state. Though Hu was also de facto ruler as General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, that title is not reflected in IOC records.[70] Dates2020 Originally scheduled for 24 July – 9 August 2020, the Games were postponed by one year due to the -19 pandemic. However, the event was still referred to as the 2020 Summer Olympics (marking the 32nd Olympiad) to preserve the 4-year Olympiad cycle.[26] Competitors2024 Number of athletes will be in limited quota into an equal number of gender participants.[71]
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