For this new post I will be talking about the Olympic games. As you read in my about me post, you found out that I love the Olympic games, and enjoy watching them. So first I will start with some history on the Olympics, the modern Olympic games originated in 1896 in Athens Greece a lot of the sports were different at the time. the Olympics would go on every four years up until 1994. The Olympics in the early 1900s were in places such as Paris, Stockholm, St. Louis and other Places. Up until 1924 it was only summer Olympics, the events would include athletics, swimming, golf and other stuff. in 1924 Chamonix hosted the first ever winter Olympics. This would change the schedule of the Olympics a little bit, The Olympics would still happen every four years but in the winter season of an Olympic year a winter Olympics would happen, and in the summer season a Summer Olympics would happen. In 1956 controversy hit the Olympics, many teams such as Egypt, Lebanon and Iraq decided not to compete in the 1956 Olympics due to invasions, and Spain and the Netherlands decided not to compete in the same games because of the Soviet Union invasions. In the Olympics many sports would be added and some would be taken away such as in 1908 the now famous winter Olympic sport figure skating was added to the Olympics. Next came hockey, hockey debuted in the 1920 summer Olympics and would return in the 1924 winter Olympics. Another example would be curling, curling was added to the Olympics in 1998 and was instantly successful. Now that our history is done we move to 1976 in Montreal. The 1976 summer Olympics were the first Olympic games in Canada and they were pretty successful. One of the most famous things during the 1976 Olympics was that Montreal built an Olympic stadium for the Olympics. This Olympic stadium was used for the opening ceremony, closing ceremony and most of the athletics stuff. Though building the Olympic stadium came with consequences, with building the Olympic stadium cost a lot of money and the money needed to pay was a lot. This caused the city of Montreal to have a debt of 1.6 billion and wasn’t officially paid off until forty years later in 2006. But that wasn’t the only problem, When Montreal built the Olympic stadium it wasn’t totally finished when the Olympics came, the retractable roof could not be used for the Olympics because the height of the tower was not good enough. Now four years later history was made. In February of 1980 the winter Olympics hit Lake Placid New York. In these Olympics USA had a great time. They started by their speed skater Eric Heiden winning five gold medals. But history was really made when the USA upset the Soviet Union in men’s hockey. This happened when the soviet union hadn’t lost a tournament in twenty years, and the USA team was a bunch of college kids. The Soviet union started the Olympics men’s hockey by going 6 wins and 0 losses and 0 ties while the USA team went with 5 wins and 1 tie. coming into the semi finals the United States were going to face the Soviet Union and many people doubted that they were going to win. But it happened, the USA just narrowly beat the Soviet Union 4-3 on route to winning the gold medal two days later. This was one of the biggest upsets in sports history. Soon Olympic hockey would become more popular than the Stanley cup final. Soon Canada would become a powerhouse at hockey in the Olympics, with gold medals in 1920,1924,1928,1932,1952,2002,2010 and 2014.One of the most famous gold medals for Canada came at Vancouver 2010 when Sidney Crosby scored the “golden goal” in overtime to defeat the really good USA team. These are some of the reasons as to why I like the Olympics, the Olympics are so entertaining and it is so fun to watch your country try to compete for a gold medal.
