Know your Olympics

Also in Prospect's guide to the Olympics: David Goldblatt's guide to the political and cultural landscape of the Games; and a special feature on China's critics—China's most famous democratic activist, Wei Jingsheng, speaks to author Christian Tyler, and Chinese entrepreneur Jimmy Lai reports on the moral crises of his nation

Athens 1896

The first modern Olympics were only rescued from the chaotic morass of Greek politics by the intervention of the Greek royal family. Of Danish descent and only recently installed, they saw the games as a perfect opportunity to establish their Hellenic credentials. But the Royal House did not do cash—instead, a generous donation from the Greek business tycoon George Averoff was required. Nothing changes: the Hellenic Olympics were underwritten by booty and betting, prizes and patronage. Nigel Spivey's The Ancient Olympics (Oxford University Press) is a wry and witty account of the circus.

Paris 1900

Held to coincide with the city's universal exhibition and fair, the games disappeared somewhere in Bois de Boulogne. Held over many months, the organisation was chaotic. Skaters were listed as part of the wider cutlery festival. Accommodation was so poor the Germans thought the French had deliberately insulted them; swimming events were held in the filthy waters of the Seine. The marathon was marred by accusations of cheating, and competitive firefighting got its only Olympic outing. For more on the immense Gallic contribution to the Olympics, try John Macaloon's This Great Symbol: Pierre de Coubertin and the Origins of the Modern Olympic Games (University of Chicago Press); for light relief and an appropriate air of farce, the recently released movie Asterix and the Olympic Games might be closer to the mark.

St Louis 1904

The games went to St Louis. 3,000 miles on a boat from Europe and then another 1,500 on a train meant that few followed them. Over four fifths of the athletes at the games were American—if you could find the games at all, which took place in the parallel world fair. The organisers thought they might bridge the two by arranging sporting exhibitions in which the Africans, Asians, Polynesians and Native Americans that were being exhibited as tropical freaks in the fair would display their own sporting cultures. As George R Matthews demonstrates in his America's First Olympics: The St. Louis Games of 1904 (University of Missouri Press), it turned into a grotesque and ritualised form of humiliation and an opportunity to assert the physical superiority of Caucasians over everyone else.

London 1908

De Coubertin wanted Rome but the Italians could not deliver and the British stepped into the breach. Rebecca Jenkins's The First London Olympics: 1908 (Piatkus Press) gives us a brisk panorama of this uncanny precedent for our own times. A secessionist region of the home nation uses the games to mobilise international support in its struggle for independence. For Tibet read Ireland and the demands for a separate Irish Olympic team and the broad support for the Irish nationalist cause among American athletes of Irish descent. On the other hand, while the great White City was in the end a plasterboard set for imperial hubris, the towers of contemporary Beijing suggest something altogether more substantial.

Stockholm 1912

Jim Thorpe, of Irish and Native American ancestry, was the star of the Stockholm Olympics. Afterwards, when his involvement in occasional pro-baseball in the US was revealed, he was stripped of his medals, which were returned only in 1982. A strapping Burt Lancaster puts the big man on the big screen in Jim Thorpe: All American (1951).

Antwerp 1920

Antwerp was the Belgians' commiseration prize for hosting most of the first world war. The Germans, the Austrians, the Hungarians and the Turks didn't get an invite. The games provided the first outing for the newly designed and as yet uncopyrighted Olympic rings and flag. Official history is rarely helpful, but there is much to be learnt about Olympic symbolism and artefacts at the Olympic Museum website, where the best Olympic art, stamps, coins and posters can be pored over.

Paris 1924

Paris was the ultimate setting for Chariots of Fire (1981), which with plenty of artistic and historical licence retells the entwined stories of two British athletes—Harold Abrahams and Eric Liddell—the former Jewish, the latter devout Scots Christian. But the Vangelis soundtrack works better with film of the greatest runner at the games: the multiple medal winner, "flying Finn" Paavo Nurmi.

Amsterdam 1928

The Amsterdam Olympics were all about the football. The Argentineans and the Uruguayans were way ahead of the field and their two-game final attracted ticket applications from nearly half the adult population of the Netherlands. Football had outgrown the Olympics, and two years later the two South American countries would be facing each other in Montevideo in the final of the first FIFA World Cup. Guy Oliver rescued long-forgotten film of Uruguay's football triumph at both the 1924 and 1928 Olympics as well as the inaugural World Cup in a superb short film commissioned by FIFA to mark its centenary.

Los Angeles 1932

Chariots of Fire goes to China. The recently released movie The One Man Olympics tells the story of China's first Olympian, the sprinter Liu Changchun, the nation's sole representative at the 1932 Los Angeles Games. There is of course a Japanese sub-plot. See how another culture can mangle its own athletic history.

Berlin 1936

One is spoilt for choice when it comes to 1936. Good places to start include Christopher Hilton's Hitler's Games (Sutton Press) and Guy Walter's Berlin Games: How Hitler Stole the Olympic Dream (John Murray). However, Leni Riefenstahl's film Olympia remains the single most brilliant and grotesque record of the games, its bombast and its ambition. Neither the Olympics or sports coverage would ever be the same again.

London 1948

If Beijing at $32bn is the Olympics of excess, London 1948 was its polar opposite. Janie Hampton's The Austerity Olympics (Aurum Press) catches the moment beautifully. Competitors were asked to bring their own towels, stay in spartan huts on RAF fields and brave the city's public transport.

Helsinki 1952

Where else to hold the first Olympics of the cold war than right on the front line in the strange geopolitical limbo that was Finland. The Soviets came, in the end, but only after a separate eastern bloc village was constructed. The stars were the simple but elegant Olympic stadium (see footage of the sinuous Olympic tower at the opening ceremony here) and the amazing triumphs of the triple gold medal-winning Czech distance runner Emil Zátopek. This man just didn't know when to give up.

Melbourne 1956

The Taiwanese were allowed in, so the People's Republic of China stayed out. The Franco-British-Israeli invasion of Suez kept the Egyptians, the Lebanese and the Syrians away, while the Soviet invasion of Hungary kept the Swiss, the Spaniards and the Dutch at home. The battle of Budapest was fought out all over again in the swimming pool during the water polo match between Hungary and the Soviet Union, an event that in 2006 was made the subject of a feature film, Freedom's Fury. Take a look at their recreation of the day the pool turned red.

Rome 1960

As with the baseball World Series, Americans often confuse themselves with the entirety of humanity. David Maraniss's book on the Rome Olympics, Rome 1960: The Olympics That Changed the World (Simon & Schuster), makes the same mistake. Sure, there was more television coverage and a trickle of postcolonial nations, but the big bucks and viewing figures that made for a mega-event were yet to come. However, what this often grippingly written book does show is that for Americans, the world was changing. Or more specifically for African-Americans—Cassius Clay took the gold in the heavyweight boxing, Rafer Johnson carried the flag and won the decathlon gold, and Wilma Rudolph triumphed in three sprinting events. The river of change that ran all the way to 1968, with Tommie Smith's black power salute in Mexico City and Martin Luther King's assassination, flowed through the Rome games.

Tokyo 1964

Tokyo Olympiad, Kon Ichikawa's documentary record of the 1964 Olympics—was the antidote to Riefenstahl. Bombast and epic were out and the quotidian and momentary were in. With a musical score that constantly teeters on the cheesy, the film nonetheless remains a pleasure to watch. It is impossibly hard to get hold of on any format, but some good soul has done us the favour of putting it up on YouTube in chunks—albeit with Spanish subtitles.

Mexico City 1968

Just ten days before the games were due to start, the Mexican army opened fire on a student demonstration a stone's throw from the Olympic village, killing over 30 people. As this BBC news report made clear, the IOC and the Mexican government carried on regardless.

Munich 1972

The games that were meant to herald the return of at least part of Germany to international normality and erase the overkill of Berlin 1936 are instead forever associated with the kidnapping of Israeli athletes by the Palestinian Black September movement. Kevin McDonald's 1999 documentary of these events, One Day in September, remains a taut and humane record of the games and their tragedy.

Montreal 1976

And still they pay. Disastrous financial planning and cost overruns left Montreal's citizens with three decades of tax bills. You could take it as the opportunity to read Holger Preuss's The Economics of Staging the Olympics (Edward Elgar) but then maybe not. Better remind yourself why we watch the Olympics with Romanian gymnast Nadia Comaneci's perfect 10s.

Moscow 1980

The Soviets invade Afghanistan, cruise missiles are coming to Europe and the cold war is hotting up. Moscow 1980 was always intended to display the military-athletic complex of the Soviet Union in all its steroid-crazed might. The Americans stayed away, but the world watched anyway. In retrospect, the gargantuan co-ordinated displays of the opening ceremony betrayed the USSR's many essential weaknesses. See the ceremony in all its Soviet kitsch glory, cardboard chariots, implausibly large military caps and polyester jacket.

Los Angeles 1984

LA broke the mould and actually made money. It was the high point of the Reagan era: the Soviet bloc stayed away, Disney did the opening ceremony, Atlantic Richfield refurbished the Coliseum, McDonald's did the swimming pool and Carl Lewis and Team America cleaned up. The sponsors paid up so much that a legacy of over £200m was left. Over 20 years later, the LA 84 foundation website is as good place as any on the web to access the output of the academic Olympic studies industry.

Seoul 1988

The Olympics' claim to be a force for democratisation and openness rests on Seoul 1988. The South Korean state, both authoritarian and insular, shifted toward democracy and international engagement. And the conversation with North Korea over joint hosting, while ultimately unsuccessful, was their most cordial in decades. What really drove the process was a fearsome domestic alliance of workers and students. PJ O'Rourke's essay on the pre-Olympic riots in Holidays in Hell (Picador) catches the moment hysterically.

Barcelona 1992

The American men's basketball team—aka the Dream Team—was the ultimate in Olympic ambush marketing. The first team filled by genuine professional superstars allowed the NBA to snatch the limelight from the IOC, while Michael Jordan ensured that Nike rather than Reebok, the official sportswear sponsors of the games, reaped the benefits of their gold medal. The meaning and madness of Jordan's Olympic adventure is meticulously and sharply captured in David Halberstram's Playing for Keeps: Michael Jordan and the World He Made (Yellow Jersey Books).

Atlanta 1996

The IOC had been riding the rollercoaster of television and sponsorship money for over a decade by the time Atlanta rolled along. For the very best exposé of the corruption and folly of the IOC, look no further than the work of investigative journalist Andrew Jennings, whose Great Olympic Swindle (Simon & Schuster) tells you all you need to know about brown envelopes and donations.

Sydney 2000

Australia promised us the greenest games ever and the environment is now a core pillar of official Olympics. However, Sydney, Athens and Beijing have less than perfect records. Swiss NGO COHRE charts their disastrous impact on local housing here.

Athens 2004

The WWF report, Environmental Assessment of the Athens 2004 Olympic Games, evaluated the environmental wins and losses of the Athens Olympics based on the Sydney 2000 Olympics benchmark for "clean and green" games. On a scale of 0–4, it rated the environmental component of the Athens Olympics at a very disappointing score of 0.77. Download the report here.