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Culture Salon
Olympic History 
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The early Olympic Games (from 776 B.C. until 393 A.D.) were celebrated as a religious festival honoring the Greek god Zeus. The games were eventually banned in ancient Greece for being a pagan festival and the Olympic tradition died. However, centuries later a French educator, named Baron Pierre de Coubertin, decided that he wanted to start a program that would teach people to balance the development of their minds and bodies.
In 1892 he presented his idea at the Union des Sport Athletiques in Paris and proposed a revival of this ancient tradition. Thus the modern-day Summer Olympic Games were born. Pierre de Coubertin created a sports congress to help him plan the Games and it included representatives from the United States, Russia, Belgium, France, Britain, Greece, Italy, Spain and Sweden. Pierre de Coubertin originally wanted the event to take place in France but he was convinced by the countries participating in the council to hold the first Modern Olympics in Greece because that was where the tradition started. After that the Olympics would move to a different city every four years. The first modern Olympic Games took place in 1896 with athletes competing in nine sports events: cycling, fencing, gymnastics, lawn tennis, shooting, swimming, track and field, weight lifting, and wrestling. The Games were a big success. In 1924, a Winter Olympics was added to the schedule. It was to take place in a separate, colder, location in the same year as the summer events. In 2004, the Olympic Games returned to Greece, the home of both the ancient Olympics and the first modern Olympics. For the first time ever, a record 201 National Olympic Committees (NOCs) participated in the Olympic Games.
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notes
1 Zeus n. 宙斯（希腊神话中的主神）
2 ban v. 禁止；取缔
3 pagan adj. 异教徒的
4 revival n. 复活
5 representative n. 代表
6 wrestling n. 摔跤 |
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