History of the Olympic games

The history of the Olympic games goes back to ancient times. The Olympic games began in Greece more than two thousand years ago. According to legend, it was Heracles who first called the Games "Olympic" and established the custom of holding them every four years.
A legend says that Heracles built the Olympic stadium in honour of Zeus, the principle god of the Greeks, who lived on Mount Olympus. The period between the games was called an Olympiad. The festival lasted five days and become a symbol of peace friendship because when the Games were held all the wars were stopped.

Sport competitions were organized in the city of Olympia and consisted of running, wrestling, jumping and chariot racing. Only men could take part in these games. The competitions lasted for five days. Winners were called “olympionics”. They were awarded with olive wreaths and cups of olive oil.
The Olympic games had been held for about eleven hundred years, until they were banned for religious reasons in 394 A.D. and the temple of Olympia was destroyed.

The revival of the Olympic games began in 1892, when a French teacher Pierre de Coubertin offered people to start the Olympic games again. He told about the importance of sports in uniting peoples of the world and serving the cause of peace, as in ancient times.
The first modern Olympic Games were held in Athens in 1896. Since then the Games have been regularly held in different countries of the world. The Olympic games can not take place in a country which is at war, and during the two world wars there were no Olympic games – 1916, 1940 and 1944.
The main symbol of the Olympic games are the colored rings. They represent the five continents of the world. Blue represents Europe. Black represents Africa. Red – America. Yellow- Asia. Green – Oceania. The flag with rings in the Olympics appeared for the first time in 1920.
The Olympic motto is “Citius, Altius, Fortius” – “Faster, Higher, Stronger!”

Our country hosted the Olympics on two occasions.
The 1980 Summer Olympics were held in Moscow in the Soviet Union. The Games were the first to be staged in Eastern Europe.
The 2014 Winter Olympics took place in popular Russia's resort Sochi. The motto of those Games was «Hot. Cool. Yours." It was the largest Winter Olympics to date.
The Russian Federation has competed at the modern Olympic Games as different nations in its history. As the Russian Empire, the nation first competed at the 1900 Games. After the Russian revolution in 1917, it would be thirty years until the Soviet Union competed at the Olympics, as at the 1952 Summer Olympics. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Russia competed at the 1994 Winter Olympics.
In 2017, Russia was suspended from competing at the Olympic Games due to the doping scandal. Russian athletes were allowed to participate in the 2018 Winter Olympics as the Olympic Athletes from Russia (OAR). They are also allowed to compete at the 2020 Summer Olympics and the 2022 Winter Olympics, representing the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC).