The Slummer: Quarters Till Death

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The 2008 Summer Olympics was held in Beijing, People's Republic of China. Several new events were held, including the new discipline of BMX for both men and women. Women competed in the steeplechase for the first time. The fencing programme was expanded to include all six events for both men and women; previously, women had not been able to compete in team foil or sabre events, although women's team épée and men's team foil were dropped for these Games. Marathon swimming events were added, over the distance of 10km (6.2mi). Also, the doubles events in table tennis were replaced by team events. [46] American swimmer Michael Phelps set a record for gold medals at a single Games with eight, and tied the record of most gold medals by a single competitor previously held by both Eric Heiden and Vitaly Scherbo. Another notable star of the Games was Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt, who became the first male athlete ever to set world records in the finals of both the 100 and 200metres in the same Games. Equestrian events were held in Hong Kong. London was the first city to host the Summer Olympic Games three times. As of 2022 [update], Paris, Los Angeles, Athens and Tokyo have each hosted twice; Paris will host for the third time in 2024, followed by Los Angeles which will host the Games in 2028. [2] Only five countries have participated in every Summer Olympic Games: Australia, France, Great Britain, Greece, and Switzerland. Australia, France and Great Britain have won at least a medal at every edition of the Games, with Great Britain as the only one to win gold each time. The United States leads the all-time medal count at the Summer Olympics, and has topped the medal table on 18 separate occasions—followed by the USSR (six times), and France, Great Britain, Germany, China, and the ex-Soviet 'Unified Team' (once each). Francis Field of Washington University in St. Louis during the 1904 Summer Olympics Dorando Pietri finishes the modern marathon in 1908 at the current distance. The 1988 Games, in Seoul, was very well planned but the games were tainted when many of the athletes, most notably men's 100 metres winner Ben Johnson, failed mandatory drug tests. Despite splendid drug-free performances by many individuals, the number of people who failed screenings for performance-enhancing chemicals overshadowed the games.

By then the process of choosing a location for the Games had become a commercial concern; there were widespread allegations of corruption potentially affecting the IOC's decision process. The United States hosted the Summer Olympic Games four times: the 1904 Games were held in St. Louis, Missouri; the 1932 and 1984 Games were both held in Los Angeles, California, and the 1996 Games were held in Atlanta, Georgia. The 2028 Games in Los Angeles will mark the fifth occasion on which the Summer Games have been hosted by the U.S. Due to World War II, the 1940 Games (due to be held in Tokyo and temporarily relocated to Helsinki upon the outbreak of war) were cancelled. The 1944 Games were due to be held in London but were also cancelled; instead, London hosted the first games after the end of the war, in 1948. The IOC has never decided which events of the early Games were "Olympic" and which were not. [57] The founder of the modern Olympics, Pierre de Coubertin, ceded that determination to the organisers of those Games. Nations most often qualify teams for team sports through continental qualifying tournaments, in which each continental association is given a certain number of spots in the Olympic tournament. Each nation may be represented by no more than one team per competition; a team consists of just two people in some sports.Tensions caused by the Russo–Japanese War and the difficulty of getting to St. Louis may have contributed to the fact that very few top-ranked athletes from outside the US and Canada took part in the 1904 Games. [9] The 1992 Barcelona Games featured the admittance of players from one of the North American top leagues, the NBA, exemplified by but not limited to US basketball's " Dream Team". The 1992 games also saw the reintroduction to the Games of several smaller European states which had been annexed into the Soviet Union during World War II. At these games, gymnast Vitaly Scherbo set an inaugural medal record of five individual gold medals at a Summer Olympics, and equaled the inaugural record set by Eric Heiden at the 1980 Winter Olympics. The Olympic flag at halfmast in Kiel (host city of the sailing events), after the Munich massacre at 1972 Games In 2012, Great Britain hosted its third Summer Olympic Games in London, which became the first city ever to have hosted the Summer Olympic Games three times. The cities of Los Angeles, Paris, and Athens (excluding 1906) have each hosted two Summer Olympic Games. In 2024, France will host its third Summer Olympic Games in its capital, making Paris the second city ever to have hosted three Summer Olympics. In 2028, Los Angeles will in turn become the third city ever to have hosted the Games three times. Greek officials and the public were enthusiastic about the experience of hosting an Olympic Games. This feeling was shared by many of the athletes, who even demanded that Athens be the permanent Olympic host city. The IOC intended for subsequent Games to be rotated to various host cities around the world. The second Olympics was held in Paris. [8]

There has been a total of 42 sports, spanning 55 disciplines, included in the Olympic programme at one point or another in the history of the Games. The schedule has comprised 33 sports for recent Summer Olympics ( 2020), with 32 sports planned for the next Summer Olympics ( 2024).E. 1 2 3 Although the Games of 1916, 1940, and 1944 were cancelled, the Roman numerals for those Games were still applied because the official titles of the Summer Games count the Olympiads, not the Games themselves, per the Olympic Charter. [92] This contrasts with the Winter Olympics, which ignore the cancelled Winter Games of 1940 and 1944 in their numeric count.