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The 5 Olympic rings symbolise the 5 contenents. there is Asia, Europe, Oceana, America (both North and South) and Africa. The colours ofthe rings symbolise flags of the countries that participate in the Olympics. Every flag of the contries have either the colour blue, red, black, green or yellow.
The Olympic motto is "Swifter, Higher, Stronger" which come from the three Latin words, "Citius, Altius, Fortius". A man named "Baron de Coubertin" thought that those three words described the goals of our Great athletes all over the world.
In 1896, a French man named "Pierre de coubertin" decided to start up the Olympics again. In the same year, the first modern Olympic games were statred but rather than being chosen to be in the Olympics, anyone competed. Even some tourists entered while they were visiting the country.
The Ancient Olympics were started in Greece many years ago. They were very different to our Olympics because the games were played nude, women could'nt compete, all Olympic games were played in Olympia, there were fewer games and rather than many people from all over the world compete, it was only for Greek men who could speek Greek.
These are the games that they competed in: - Boxing - boxers fought without rounds until someone was knocked out or admitted he was beaten. Also, there was no rule against hitting the opponent when he was down.
- Chariot racing - a charriot (cart) was attached to the back of a horse and was raced against 1 other opponent. The race was 12 laps around the stadium track which is 9 miles.
- Horse ridding - horses were raced 6 laps around the track which is about 4.5miles and there were seperate races for full-grown horses and foals.
- Discus - the discus was made out of either lead, stone, iron or bronze and varies in size.
- Javelin - a peice of wood about as tall as a man with either a sharpened or attachable metal end.
- Running - there were 4 different types of running races but most commonly was the "Stadion". Runners sprinted 192m or the length or the stadiom. Other races were either 384m, 1344m or 4608m.
- Wrestling - needed to throw apponent on ground with either his hip, back or shoulder on ground for a fair fall. That needed to be done 3 times in order to win and bitting or trying to break opponents fingers were illegal.
- Pankration - this was a mixture of boxing and wrestling. Punches and kicking the opponent in the belly were allowed.
