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Olypmic Torch 2008
Opening ceremony
The opening ceremony was held at the Beijing National Stadium. It began at 8:00 pm China Standard Time (UTC+8) on 8 August 2008.[128>[129>[130> The number 8 is associated with prosperity and confidence in Chinese culture.[131> The ceremony was co-directed by Chinese filmmaker Zhang Yimou and Chinese choreographer Zhang Jigang.[132> It featured a cast of over 15,000 performers, and was dubbed beforehand as "the most spectacular Olympics Opening Ceremony ever produced".[133>
A rich assembly of ancient Chinese art and culture dominated the ceremony. It opened with the beating of Fou drums for the countdown. Subsequently, a giant scroll was unveiled and became the show's centerpiece. The official song of the 2008 Olympics was performed by Britain's Sarah Brightman and China's Liu Huan, and was titled You and Me.[134> Former Chinese gymnast Li Ning ignited the cauldron.
The entry parade of the competing athletes differed in order from previous Olympic ceremonies, as the national teams did not enter in order by the host nation's alphabet. Since Chinese does not have an alphabet, teams entered the stadium in order (lowest first) of the number of strokes in their Simplified Chinese character transcriptions. As a result, Australia (normally one of the first teams to enter the stadium) became one of the final teams to arrive, as the first character of the Chinese name of Australia (°Ä´óÀûÑÇ) has 16 strokes. The Olympic traditions of Greece entering first and the host nation (China) entering last were still observed.
A review of the opening ceremony from around the world called it "spectacular and devoid of politics"[135> though it was later revealed that the televised fireworks were enhanced with computer animation. Another cosmetic enhancement in China's quest for a perfect Summer Games was using a cute girl to lip-sync over the singing voice of a girl with "chubby face and crooked baby teeth" during the opening ceremony song Ode to the Motherland.[136>
More than 100 sovereigns, heads of state and heads of government as well as 170 Ministers of Sport will be attending the Beijing Olympic Games
Sports
The program for the Beijing 2008 Games is quite similar to that of the Athens Games held in 2004. The 2008 Olympics will see the return of 28 sports, and will hold 302 events (165 men¡¯s events, 127 women¡¯s events, and 10 mixed events), one event more in total than in Athens.
Overall 9 new events will be held, which include 2 from the new cycling discipline of BMX. Women will compete in the 3000 m steeplechase for the first time. In addition, marathon swimming events for men and women, over the distance of 10 kilometres, will be added to the swimming discipline. Team events (men and women) in table tennis will replace the doubles events. In fencing, women's team foil and women's team sabre will replace men's team foil and women's team epee.[162>[163>[164>[165>
The Beijing Organizing Committee have released pictograms of the 35 Olympic disciplines. This set of sport icons is named the beauty of seal characters, due to each pictogram's likeness to Chinese seal script.[166>
The following are the sports to be contested at these Games. The number of events to be contested in each sport is indicated in parentheses.
Aquatics Diving (8) Swimming (34) Synchronized swimming (2) Water polo (2) Archery (4) Athletics (47) Badminton (5) Baseball (1) Basketball (2) Boxing (11) Canoeing (16) Cycling (18) Equestrian (6) Fencing (10) Field hockey (2) Football (2) Gymnastics (18) Handball (2) Judo (14) Modern pentathlon (2) Rowing (14) Sailing (11) Shooting (15) Softball (1) Table tennis (4) Taekwondo (8) Tennis (4) Triathlon (2) Volleyball (4) Weightlifting (15) Wrestling (18)
~Fragi~
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The 2008 Summer Olympic Games, officially known as the Games of the XXIX Olympiad, is a major international multi-sport event which is being held in Beijing, People's Republic of China, from August 8 (except football, which started on August 6) to August 24, 2008, and will be followed by the 2008 Summer Paralympics, from September 6 to September 17. A total of 10,500 athletes are expected to compete in 302 events in 28 sports, one event more than was on the schedule of the 2004 games.[2> The 2008 Beijing Olympics will also mark the third time that Olympic events will have been held in the territories of two different National Olympic Committees (NOC), as the equestrian events are being held in Hong Kong.
The Chinese government has promoted the games to highlight China's emergence on the world stage and has invested heavily in new facilities and transportation systems.[4>[5> A total of 37 venues will be used to host the events including 12 newly constructed venues. Earlier in 2007, former IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch had said that he believes that the Beijing games will be "the best in Olympic history,"[6> and current president Jacques Rogge asserts that the IOC has "absolutely no regrets" in choosing Beijing to host the 2008 games.[7> The choice of China as a host country has been a subject of criticism by politicians and NGOs concerned about China's human rights record
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1896 - Athens, Greece
The very first modern Olympic Games opened in the first week of April 1896. Since the Greek government had been unable to fund construction of a stadium, a wealthy Greek architect, Georgios Averoff, donated one million drachmas (over $100,000) to restore the Panathenaic Stadium, originally built in 330 BCE, with white marble for the Olympic Games.
Since the Games were not well publicized internationally, contestants were not nationally chosen but rather came individually and at their own expense. Some contestants were tourists who happened to be in the area during the Games. Athletes wore their athletic club uniform rather than a national team one.
Pole vaulting, sprints, shot put, weight lifting, swimming, cycling, target shooting, tennis, marathon and gymnastics were all events at the first Olympics. The swimming events were held in the Bay of Zea in the Aegean Sea. Gold medalist, Alfred Hoyos Guttmann described it: "I won ahead of the others with a big lead, but my greatest struggle was against the towering twelve-foot waves and the terribly cold water." (Guttmann, pg. 19) Approximately 300 athletes participated, representing thirteen countries.
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A History of the Olympics
According to legend, the ancient Olympic Games were founded by Heracles (the Roman Hercules), a son of Zeus. Yet the first Olympic Games for which we still have written records were held in 776 BCE (though it is generally believed that the Games had been going on for many years already). At this Olympic Games, a naked runner, Coroebus (a cook from Elis), won the sole event at the Olympics, the stade - a run of approximately 192 meters (210 yards). This made Coroebus the very first Olympic champion in history.
The ancient Olympic Games grew and continued to be played every four years for nearly 1200 years. In 393 CE, the Roman emperor Theodosius I, a Christian, abolished the Games because of their pagan influences.
Approximately 1500 years later, a young Frenchmen named Pierre de Coubertin began their revival. Coubertin is now known as le Rénovateur. Coubertin was a French aristocrat born on January 1, 1863. He was only seven years old when France was overrun by the Germans during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. Some believe that Coubertin attributed the defeat of France not to its military skills but rather to the French soldiers' lack of vigor.* After examining the education of the German, British, and American children, Coubertin decided that it was exercise, more specifically sports, that made a well-rounded and vigorous person.
Coubertin's attempt to get France interested in sports was not met with enthusiasm. Still, Coubertin persisted. In 1890, he organized and founded a sports organization, Union des Sociétés Francaises de Sports Athlétiques (USFSA). Two years later, Coubertin first pitched his idea to revive the Olympic Games. At a meeting of the Union des Sports Athlétiques in Paris on November 25, 1892, Coubertin stated,
Let us export our oarsmen, our runners, our fencers into other lands. That is the true Free Trade of the future; and the day it is introduced into Europe the cause of Peace will have received a new and strong ally. It inspires me to touch upon another step I now propose and in it I shall ask that the help you have given me hitherto you will extend again, so that together we may attempt to realise [sic>, upon a basis suitable to the conditions of our modern life, the splendid and beneficent task of reviving the Olympic Games.** His speech did not inspire action. Though Coubertin was not the first to propose the revival of the Olympic Games, he was certainly the most well-connected and persistent of those to do so. Two years later, Coubertin organized a meeting with 79 delegates who represented nine countries. He gathered these delegates in an auditorium that was decorated by neoclassical murals and similar additional points of ambiance. At this meeting, Coubertin eloquently spoke of the revival of the Olympic Games. This time, Coubertin aroused interest.
The delegates at the conference voted unanimously for the Olympic Games. The delegates also decided to have Coubertin construct an international committee to organize the Games. This committee became the International Olympic Committee (IOC; Comité Internationale Olympique) and Demetrious Vikelas from Greece was selected to be its first president. Athens was chosen for the revival of the Olympic Games and the planning was begun.
