The growing Olympics

All the host cities of the Winter Olympics / Wikimedia Commons

The modern Olympic games have grown in scale exponentially since its beginning in 1896. More countries participate now and there is a greater sense of equality in both gender and race. The games are a much more accurate measure for who is the best of the world due to these changes.

The very first winter Olympics only permitted the participation of Scandinavian countries, such as Norway and Sweden. The 2014 Sochi Winter Olympic Games allowed 84 different countries from six continents. A growth in the number of teams in the Olympics also increases the challenge to win as there are more athletes to compete against each other.

On top of a more varied pool of countries, the athletes of each country became more and more diverse. Since the first Olympics, all races could compete, but each country was responsible for deciding on athletes represent them. Countries with a history of racism hosted or entered the Olympics since it began. The racism in competing nations brought controversy to the games. There were even talks of boycotting the 1968 Olympics in Mexico from Martin Luther King Jr.

"We're not saying ‘burn it down,'" King Jr. said in The John Carlos Story. "We're just merely saying we don't care to participate and see how you feel without us as a part of the show."

Women also became a bigger part of the games. The first time that women were allowed to compete was the 1900 Olympic Games in Paris. Only 22 out of 997 athletes were females and they participated in five different sports including tennis and golf. In contrast, 44 percent of the athletes were women in the more recent 2012 Olympics in London.

“More and more women are chairing IOC commissions, such as the Coordination Commissions for the Rio 2016 Olympic Games, the PyeongChang 2018 Olympic Winter Games and the 2nd Winter Youth Olympic Games in 2016 in Lillehammer, as well as the Women and Sport Commission and Athletes’ Commission,” International Olympic Committee reported in an October 2013 fact sheet.

The growth of the Olympics also appears in the increased money surrounding the games. In 1976, the Olympics cost about $1.6 billion. Host countries now more than ever view the Olympics as an opportunity to demonstrate their wealth and success. Almost four decades later, the 2014 games cost a whopping $51 billion.

“For President Putin [staging the Games] is a chance to show off Russia as a resurgent superpower,” Rick Broadbent and Ben Hoyle wrote in a Times of London article in 2014.

Contributed by: Sean Santiago, Velid Mulic