The Olympic Games were originally an ancient Greek religious festival in honour of Zeus, held in Olympia near Mount Olympus, the mythical home of the gods. An athletic festival with competitions in music and poetry was held every four years on the island of Peplos in Southern Greece. The period between the games was called an Olympiad.
The initial date for the beginning of the Games was 776 B.C. They were held every four years, in the middle of the summer, and lasted five days; the main condition of the festival was that there should be peace throughout Greece. The festival became a symbol of peace and friendship.
The ceremonies included contests in oratory, poetry, music and art, as well as in athletic skills like wrestling, boxing, horse and chariot racing, throwing the javelin and running.
The Olympic Games were an exclusively male festival, open to young men from all the Greek cities. Women were not allowed to compete in the Olympic Games, or even to attend and watch them, though there are legends of girls having done so in disguise. The winners were given laurel wreaths in the temple of Zeus. To be a victor in the classical Olympic Games was a great honour not only for the athlete but for his city too.
The Olympic Games were held for nearly twelve centuries. Factionalism and controversies over the status of competitors became so fierce and disruptive in later years that the Games were finally abolished by the Roman Emperor Theodosius in 392 A.D. as a disturbance of Roman peace.
The Olympic Games were revived only at the end of 19-th century due to Baron Pierre de Coubertin. In 1894 he addressed the International Congress of Athletes and pointed out the importance of sports in the peoples' life.
The first modern Olympic Games were held in Athens in 1896 to signify the succession of the tradition. In 1896 311 athletes, competing in nine sports represented 13 countries in the Olympic Games. Since then, except in 1916, 1940 and 1944, the Olympic Games have been held every leap-year in different countries of the world. The International Olympic Committee is responsible for the programme, the number of participants, and the city-host for the Games.
At first the modern Games were limited to men. Women first competed in the Games in 1910, playing golf, but real women's participation only began in Paris in 1924 with the inclusion of women's athletics in the programme. In recent Olympiads the women's programme has been greatly extended.
Winter sports were brought into the Olympic programme through the organization of special Winter Games, first held in France at Chamonix in 1924, with competitions in ice hockey, speed skating, figure skating and skiing. These are still the basic events of the winter programme, with the addition of bobsleigh and toboggan races.
Each Olympiad the size of the Olympic Games has been growing in the scale of competition, number of competitors, and size of the audience watching them.
Nowadays the Olympic Games have become a wonderful tradition which helps to bring people closer together.