14 Curious Facts about The Olympics
With the Rio Olympics Games 2016 now underway, we’re taking a look at some interesting facts that Christopher would love…
- The first record of the Olympic Games was in 776 BC in Olympia, Greece. The games were held every four years for over a millennium until 396 AD.
- The first modern Olympics were held in 1896 in Athens, Greece, with a total of 14 participating nations, 43 events in 9 sports and 241 male athletes.
- Modern Games have been cancelled three times due to World Wars – 1916 (World War I) and 1940 and 1944 (World War II).
- Other contenders to host the 2016 Olympics were Madrid, Tokyo and Chicago. In the final round of voting Rio de Janeiro won with 66 votes to Madrid’s 32.
- Rio 2016 is the first Olympics to be held in South America.
- Using his 100m Olympic Record of 9.63 seconds, it would take Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt 29 hours 16 minutes and 34 seconds to run the circumference of the moon.
- The number of countries taking part in the Olympics has seen an incredible rise of the past 120 years. This year, 207 nations are participating, a 1,379% increase since 1896!
- In Beijing 2008, 10,942 athletes competed, a 4,440% increase from 1896. This year, 10,500 competitors are expected to go for gold.
- In the 1900 Paris Olympics, 22 women participated out of a total of 997 athletes (2%). In Rio 2016, around 4,700 women are expected to compete, which is around 45% of all competitors.
- Athletics is the most popular sport in the Games and has 47 events (15.4% of all events in 2016) – more than any other Olympic sport.
- Norwegian Olympic Record holder Andreas Thorkildsen would have to throw his javelin 1.7 million times further than his record for it to reach the sun! He set his record in Beijing 2008 at 90.57m and the sun in 149.6 billion metres away from Earth.
- It would take the liquid of nearly 7 million average sized fizzy drink cans to fill a single Olympic swimming pool.
- The Olympic rings symbol represents the 5 major areas of the world; Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe and the Americas. Every national flag in the world contains at least one of the 5 colours of the rings (blue, black, green, yellow and red).
- Great Britain is the only country to have won at least one gold medal at every single Summer Olympics
From everyone at The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, we wish Team GB the best of luck in Rio!
