The Olympic Motto

The Olympic motto is "Citius, Altius, Fortius" which is Latin for "Swifter, Higher, Stronger." Baron de Coubertin borrowed the motto from Father Henri Martin Dideon, the headmaster of Arcueil College in Paris. Father Dideon used the motto to describe the great achievements of the athletes at his school. Coubertin felt it could be used to describe the goals of great athletes all over the World. The motto was introduced in 1924 at the Olympic Games in Paris.

If you think that this is the end of my olympic yappin.......think again

there is loads more to talk about.

tune in for the next 6 weeks

I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I enjoy writing for you

Cya : )

The beginning of the modern olympics

The modern Olympic Games began in the first week of April 1896 in Athens. Pierre Fredy, Baron de Coubertin of France was responsible for starting them up again. Olympics was restarted to encourage world peace and friendship and to promote healthy sporting competition for the youth of the world. The Olympic games was set up to be a big festival type event and there were many parades and ceremonies honouring the athletes that came from other countries. There were just 245 competitors, and more than 200 were Greek, and only 14 countries were represented during the first games. Pole vaulting, sprints, shot put, weight lifting, swimming, cycling, target shooting, tennis, marathon and gymnastics were all events at the first Olympics.

This is Pierre Freddy's bio

Born in 1863

Died in
September 2, 1937 (aged 74)Geneva, Switzerland

Burial place
Olympia in Greece.

Nationality
French

history of the ancient olympics

It is not known when men first began celebrating the Olympic Games, but it was sometime around 776 BC.
There are many myths surrounding the origin of the ancient Olympic Games. The most popular legend describes that Hercules was the creator of the Olympic Games and built the Olympics stadium. It was called the Olympic Games because the place was called Olympia in western Greece. The games were held every four years and the period between two celebrations became known as an “Olympiad”. The Greeks used Olympiads as one of their methods to count years.
Once every four years, men from all over Greece came to compete in a great athletic religious festival to honor the Greek gods Zeus and Hera. Women were not allowed to compete. When it was time for the games, the rulers sent out messengers all over Greece and to the Greek colonies around the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. They declared a truce throughout the Greek world for a month. This means no matter who you had a war with, you had to stop the war and let their athletes and performers go through the city safely to get to the Olympic Games. But if you had ever been a slave, or if you had ever done anything against the gods, then you couldn't be in the Olympics. And, the men had to swear that they had already trained for at least ten months. This meant that only men who were pretty rich could be in the Games, so they could afford to take so long off work, and also pay a trainer.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympic_Games
http://www.nostos.com/olympics/#Ancient%20Olympic%20Games
http://www.historyforkids.org/learn/greeks/games/index.htm