Faster, higher, longer, stronger

Rio 2016 started a week ago and all sports fans follow the events every day. Moreover, those also watch the Olympic Games who are not interested in sports at all since worldwide attention encircles the largest sports competition. It is as much about show, entertainment, and politics as racing neck and neck in the contest.

I like watching sports on TV, so I have been following the Olympics since my childhood. I remember remarkable moments and legendary athletes at the Games in Atlanta, Sydney, Athens, Beijing and London. I have to admit that I am a bit nerd as I love seeing charts and statistics about the medals and participants. Being more excited to look beyond the data where the winners, the medalists and their diverse stories can be unearthed. Recently, I read a couple of tidbits that are worth to share.

Good old times

First of all, we are prone to forget that modern Olympic Games are very different from each other. Not only in terms of the number of featuring sports and disciplines, qualified countries and athletes but also the duration of the competition and the rules were changing along the way. For example, the Olympics last 16 days nowadays but this schedule was introduced only in 1928. Until then, it was not rare to run the competition for more than a month. The longest Olympic Games were held in London in 1908 when athletes competed from 27 April to 31 October.

The length of the marathon the athletes run now was shaped in London, as well. Previously, the race distance was not exact, more an approximate unit. According to the chronicle, the British royal family requested that the competition start at the Windsor Castle, and thus the royal children could watch it. The organizers naturally granted the request. The distance from the Windsor Castle to the Olympic Stadium was 42,195 meters, so that became the standardized length of the marathon from 1924 onwards.

Whereas marathon is an evergreen classic in the Olympics program, other sports disappeared over the decades. Polo, cricket, and baseball were among disciplines which were parts of the program before. This also happened to the tug of war contest. Between 1900 and 1920, two teams of eight members struggled to pull a rope. At the Paris 1900 Olympic Games, thanks to this old-fashioned sport, a journalist won a gold medal. While Edgar Aaybe covered the Games for the Politiken Danish newspaper, he was asked to step in as a team member of the combined Dano-Swedish team. One of the original competitors was injured and Aaybe became the last-minute substitute. With his help, the Dano-Swedish squad defeated the French team and earned the gold medal. Aaybe was himself a sportsman, a national champion in swimming.

A classic clip from the tug of war contest at the Stockholm 1912 Olympics:

Olympics are the imprints of politics

Writing about Olympics is inseparable from writing about politics. Despite the fact that ancient Olympics were peaceful occasions as enemies put down their weapons and stopped fighting for that time, and the founders of modern Olympics also idealized this conception, the Games precisely mirror what is happening in the world. Think about the 1920 Antwerp Olympics, after the end of the World War I, when defeated nations were banned from the competition. Or those cases when a group of countries boycotted the Olympic Games due to political reasons. The US and 65 countries refused to participate in the 1980 Olympic Games of Moscow because the Soviet Union began a war in Afghanistan, then in return, the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc countries skipped the contest in Los Angeles 1984.

There is an Olympic champion who competed under four different flags without changing her nationality. The Serbian shooter, Jasna Sekaric won one gold, three silver, and one bronze medal in the Olympics between 1988 and 2012. She won a gold medal in the 10m Air Rifle competition for Yugoslavia in Seoul 1988, then took home a silver medal from Barcelona in 1992 as an Independent Olympic Participant because Yugoslavia was under UN sanctions on account of Yugoslav Wars. She later stood on the podium as a silver medalist representing Serbia and Montenegro in Sydney and Athens. At last, Sekaric participated in shooting events as a member of the Serbian team in 2008 and 2012.