Olympic Sports
Below are our 22 articles in the 'olympic sports' category:
Aquatic sports come second only to track and field in terms of the number of Olympic medals up for grabs. The four disciplines - swimming, diving, waterpolo and synchronised swimming - have 46 ...
To the untrained eye, weightlifting can appear a straightforward test of brute strength, but the sport's apparent simplicity is deceptive. Weightlifting is, in fact, an extremely technical sport and ...
Cycling is one of the few sports to have been contested at every Olympics and, although the programme has varied, it now includes track, road, mountain bike and BMX racing. In all, 18 events were ...
Fencing is one of the few sports to have been contested at every Olympic Games and was the first to allow professionals to compete for medals. Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the modern ...
Gymnastics is one of the defining sports of the Olympics and has been present at every Games. The sport can be traced back to ancient Greece and similar disciplines were practised in ancient Rome, ...
For a sport with such ancient roots, badminton has a relatively short Olympic history. It was introduced to the Games as a demonstration sport in 1972 at Munich and made its debut as a full medal ...
Anyone who thought that introducing baseball to the Olympic Games was like giving the USA a licence to produce gold medals was well wide of the mark. Baseball has a long Olympic history as a ...
The phenomenon that is beach volleyball opened the sport up to a completely new market when it made its debut at the Olympic Games at Atlanta in 1996. The sand, sun and skimpy outfits made it an ...
Baseball and softball will become the first Olympic sports to be dropped for 76 years when they are cut from the programme for the London 2012 Games. In recent times, the trend has been to add ...
Table tennis is the world's largest participation sport, with an incredible 40 million competitive players and countless millions more playing recreationally. Leading players hit the ball at speeds ...
Equestrianism is the only Olympic sport to team up athletes with animals and one of the few in which men and women compete on equal terms. Horse and rider work together for years to hone the skills ...
In many ways, track and field athletics epitomises the Olympic Games. It is the original Olympic sport, dating back to the first recorded ancient Games in 776BC, and it is the embodiment of the ...
The recorded modern history of competitive rowing precedes that of most other Olympic sports. The first Oxford-Cambridge race took place in 1828 and in 1852 Yale and Harvard rowed against each other ...
India produced one of the longest winning streaks in the history of the Olympic Games by winning six consecutive hockey gold medals between 1928 and 1956. They won 30 matches in succession and, ...
Wrestling is widely recognised as the oldest competitive sport in the world. Cave drawings have been found from the Sumero-Akkadian civilisation depicting wrestlers from 3000BC and similar wall ...
Few Olympic sports have been dominated by one nation in the way that basketball has been dominated by the USA. The Americans have won the men's tournament 12 times since it was introduced to the ...
Football was the first team sport included in the Olympic Games when introduced for the 2nd Olympiad at Paris in 1900. With the exception of 1932 in Los Angeles, it has been part of every Games ...
The bullseye in Olympic archery measures only 12.2 centimetres in diameter and archers have to hit it from 70 metres away. The accuracy required is staggering and only those with rock-steady hands ...
The noble art of boxing is one of the most illustrious sports at the Olympics and has produced a string of legends, although it is perhaps surprising that a sport introduced to the ancient Games in ...
Judo, a traditional Japanese wrestling sport, means 'the gentle way', yet it is the only Olympic sport that allows choking an opponent in a submission hold or breaking an arm. It is derived in part ...
Triathlon is the youngest of all Olympic sports. It was invented by San Diego Track Club as an alternative workout, with the first known events held in 1974. The club's first triathlon comprised of ...
In a way, sailing made its Games debut at Sydney in 2000, when it became the first Olympic sport to change its name. Up until then it had always been called yachting and it was under that title that ...
