Olympic Trivia @olympictrivia - Tumblr Blog

VONETTA FLOWERS

the first African-American person, of any gender, to win a gold medal at the Winter Olympics. Vonetta won the gold in the women’s bobsled event in 2002 at Salt Lake City. #WinterOlympics #BestOfUS #BlackHistoryMonth #Day11

#olympics #figure skating

foodffs

Pyeongchang Local Cuisine to Celebrate the Olympics!

Really nice recipes. Every hour.

Show me what you cooked!

#olympics

Official for 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympic Games calls the medal decaying "completely normal"

pataaka

Olympians in Love

Photos of the Olympic Judo final match in Barcelona in 1992, where Miriam Blasco (right) of Spain won the gold over Nicola Fairweather (left) of GB.

In a documentary for the 25 year anniversary of the Barcelona Olympics yesterday, Miriam revealed that she and Nicola have been married for almost 2 years. Their relationship began soon after the Olympics in 1992, and at their wedding they exchanged both rings and medals.

thebaconsandwichofregret

THEY EXCHANGED BOTH RINGS AND MEDALS!!!!!

your-instructions-from-moscow

Three days after the opening ceremonies of the 1960 Rome Olympics, New York Times reporter William Barry Furlong bemoaned the tendency for female Olympians to destroy “The Image.” According to the author, The Image referred to the innate beauty possessed by petite, aesthetically pleasing, non-muscular women. In a three-page article titled “Venus Wasn’t a Shot-Putter,” Furlong complained that certain sports destroyed this natural feminine appeal, specifically admonishing discus, field hockey, shot put, and snooker pool, because in these activities the athletes’ “force of intellect—if any—was subordinated to harsher disciplines.” However, he noted that a “girl” athlete could maintain The Image if she selected a socially sanctified pastime. “Those that frolic athletically in swim suits or brief tennis skirts find it easy to preserve, not to say enhance, that Image,” Furlong explained. His disdain for women’s sports that required strength and power, such as shot put, and appreciation for those that mandated grace and skirts, such as tennis, mirrored the predominant gender ideology of the West during the onset of the Cold War.

…While the Soviet Union and the United States both propagated athletic victories as signifiers of national prowess, they diverged on the acceptability of women’s involvement in physical contests. Female athletes in the United States remained bounded by Western notions of femininity, but women in the Soviet Union were encouraged to succeed in a variety of sports. This rare promotion of female athleticism extended from the Soviet Union’s egalitarian beliefs in physical labor. Soviet women thus dominated international sport, excelling in the activities that destroyed what Furlong labeled The Image. Notably, Soviet female athletes competed unhindered—and successfully—in track and field. As male sports columnist Shirley Povich noted before the 1956 Melbourne Olympics, “The Russian women indeed are favored again over the American women, mostly because they have muscles, big ones, in the places United States gals don’t want ’em.” The USSR women earned first-place finishes in the European Championships, gold medals in the Olympic Games, and condemnation from abroad.

Consequently, the gender anxieties that had previously plagued interwar track and field were amplified during the early phases of the Cold War. After witnessing the Soviet women’s remarkable achievements in athletics, the IAAF decided that all female competitors should verify their womanhood prior to competition. In 1966 the federation introduced a “nude parade,” the first compulsory sex test of modern sport. Although the desire to police womanhood was not entirely sparked by the Soviet Union’s triumphs in international sport—as illustrated by the sporadic interwar-era examinations—the rise of the Cold War allowed many to point to the USSR athletes as the sole reason for the policy’s implementation. “Let’s take a hard look at some facts,” suggested Frank True of the Sarasota Herald Tribune. “If the Commies hadn’t been guilty of substituting men for women in the first place, the new rule of the IAAF wouldn’t have been necessary.” … Encouraged but not caused by the Soviet’s victories, sport authorities grew increasingly worried that powerful female athletes in the 1950s and 1960s were either unnaturally inauthentic women, men posing as women, or dopers. Using the USSR women as scapegoats, the IAAF established tests to eliminate all three categories and delineate “true” womanhood.

Lindsay Parks Pieper, Sex Testing: Gender Policing in Women’s Sports (2016), 35-36

#i know it's been a while but this was too good to not reblog

citymaus

Six months after hosting South America’s first-ever Olympic and Paralympic Games, the Rio de Janeiro venues – some of which have been looted – sit mainly idle and already in disrepair, raising questions about a legacy that organisers promised would benefit the Brazilian city and its residents.

The iconic stadium has fallen into a state of abandonment and has been closed to tourists due to a dispute between the stadium operators, the Rio state government, and Olympic organisers over $1m in unpaid electricity bills and management of the venue.

more photos: guardian, 10.02.17.

skeery

Rehearsal for the opening ceremony of the 1980 Olympics, held in Moscow. via

micdotcom

NBC aired 6,755 hours of Olympics coverage this year — and just 66 hours of the Paralympics. Look at all the awesome sh*t we’re missing! They’re breaking world records and making headlines. Why it makes no sense that there isn’t more coverage:

snazsy-deactivated20180822

Because despite being just as impressive, if not more so impressive and admirable that they go through such lengths and overcome such hardships, it’s just not as interesting. That’s the reality of it. As a species, we want to see the best of the best, to see people faster than ever, stronger than ever, etc. That’s the reality of it.

micdotcom

https://mic.com/articles/153971/these-4-paralympic-runners-would-have-beaten-every-olympic-runner-in-the-1500m-final

pinkcheesegreenghost-deactivate

Let’s celebrate these professional world class athletes!

mapsontheweb

Every Olympic gold medallist in men’s water polo since 2000 was born within the marked area.

nodded

Rio 2016 Olympics Closing Ceremony

You can find me on my couch through the closing ceremony.

#olympics #submission #thanks for submitting!

poeedamerons

I would like to clarify something about the trophy the athletes are receiving, because I have read things that are not worthy of mention.

The trophy given to athletes is the 3D Olympic logo of the Rio 2016 Olympic Games. The logo was inspired by the Sugarloaf Mountain curves and the Brazilian & Olympic spirit.

As you can see in the picture the logo ‘fits’ perfectly in the shape of the mountain and looks like it’s being embraced by the three athletes featured on it (yes, each color is the representation of a person): a goal keeper, a rower and a volleyball player.

Not only they embrace the mountain, but each other representing the welcoming spirit of the Brazilian people but also conveys the ideal Olympic spirit.

While for several people is a ‘multicolored mess made by children in crafts’, the logo colors are the ones in the Brazilian flag: yellow, blue and green.

In the logo you can read the word ‘Rio’ (green forms the letter ‘R’, the yellow forms the letter ‘I’ and the union of the yellow and blue you can see the ‘O’, pretty fucking cool if you ask me).

The trophy can also be used as a medal holder.

The logo is a complex visual identity that represents Rio and was created to be universally understood.