Olympic Games — Bunk History

Nine synchronized swimmers underwater in a pool.

Why No Men Will Compete in Synchronized Swimming in Paris

For the first time, men are permitted to compete in artistic swimming at the 2024 Olympics. But none will.

by Vicki Valosik via Made by History on August 5, 2024

Parade of U.S. Olympic team members, 1960.

At the 1960 Olympics, American Athletes Recruited by the CIA Tried to Convince Soviets to Defect

Al Cantello, a star of the U.S. track and field team, arranged a covert meeting between a government agent and a Ukrainian long jumper.

by Erik Ofgang via Smithsonian on August 1, 2024

Runners on a track and crowds in the stands at the All Africa Games, 1973.

Afraid of an Inspiring Olympics Story

How Europe reacted when Ethiopia tried to join the famed global sporting tradition at the 1924 Paris Olympics.

by Hannah Borenstein via HNN on July 16, 2024

Zdeněk Koubek running.

Human Velocity

“The Other Olympians: Fascism, Queerness, and the Making of Modern Sports” upends long-held assumptions about trans people’s participation in sports.

by Michael Waters, Frankie de la Cretaz via The Baffler on June 7, 2024

Erin Jackson of the United States holds an American flag after winning the gold medal in the speedskating women's 500-meter race at the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, on Feb. 13.

The Hidden History That Explains Why Team USA is Overwhelmingly White

Exclusion and violence in Western U.S. states help explain the Whiteness of winter sports.

by Sherri Sheu via Made by History on February 17, 2022

Tommie Smith on podium receives gold medal with fist raised, holding shoe.

Rule 50 and Racial Justice

The long history of the international olympic committee's war on athletes' free expression.

by Debbie Sharnak, Yannick Kluch via HNN on August 22, 2021

Olympic surfer

Centuries of U.S. Imperialism Made Surfing an Olympic Sport

With an eye toward U.S. power, Americans spread the sport making its Olympic debut.

by Thomas Blake Earle via Made by History on July 25, 2021

The 1904 Olympic Marathon May Have Been the Dumbest Race Ever Run

While we're missing three weeks of sporting endeavors due to the Tokyo Olympics, we can revisit one of the most bizarre races in modern Olympic history.

by Jake Sturmer, Rebecca Armitage via ABC News on July 25, 2020

The 1952 Olympic Games, the US, and the USSR

The Olympics have long enabled global superpowers to enact their political and ideological conflicts in sport.

by Erin Redihan via Process: A Blog for American History on February 8, 2018

Two paintings of sports: Jean Jacoby's Corner, left, and Rugby. At the 1928 Olympic Art Competitions in Amsterdam, Jacoby won a gold medal for Rugby.

When the Olympics Gave Out Medals for Art

In the modern Olympics’ early days, painters, sculptors, writers and musicians battled for gold, silver and bronze.

by Joseph Stromberg via Smithsonian on July 25, 2012

A newspaper clipping with the headline "Norway Makes Skateboarding Against Law"

Skateboarding: From Criminal Offense to Olympic Sport

Skateboarding was considered a silly and childish phenomenon for much of its existence.

by Louis Anslow via Pessimists Archive on July 30, 2024

The Phrygian cap derives its name from the ancient region of Phrygia, in what is now Turkey. Also known as a liberty cap, it inspired revolutionaries in both the Colonies and France.

The Paris Games' Mascot, the Olympic Phryge, Boasts a Little-Known Revolutionary Past

The Phrygian cap, also known as the liberty cap, emerged as a potent symbol in 18th-century America and France.

by Greg Daugherty via Smithsonian on June 18, 2024

Zdeněk Koubek.

A Forgotten Athlete, a Nazi Official, and the Origins of Sex Testing at the Olympics

In 1936, the Czech track star Zdeněk Koubek became world-famous after undergoing surgery so that he could live openly as a man.

by Michael Waters via The New Yorker on June 1, 2024

Silver medalists Karen Chen and Nathan Chen pose for a photo after the team event in the figure skating competition at the 2022 Winter Olympics, Feb. 7, 2022, in Beijing.

The ‘Miracle on Ice’ Shaped the Olympics Coverage We’re Seeing Every Night

How rooting for American athletes became part of Olympic TV coverage.

by Bruce Berglund via Made by History on February 9, 2022

Tommie Smith holding shoe

Amateurism, Sneaker Money, and the Forgotten Protest of the 1968 Games

One of the most audacious examples of product placement at the Olympics was staged by John Carlos and Tommie Smith.

by Harry Blutstein via HNN on July 25, 2021

Tsökahovi "Louis" Tewanima became an Olympian while being forced to attend the Carlisle Indian Industrial School.

The Olympic Star Who Just Wanted to Go Home

Tsökahovi Tewanima held an American record in running for decades, but his training at the infamous Carlisle school kept him from his ancestral Hopi lands

by Kathleen Sharp via Smithsonian on May 20, 2021

How Wilma Rudolph Became the World’s Fastest Woman

Wilma Rudolph won three Olympic golds and was among the first athletes to use her celebrity to fight for civil rights.

by Kate Siber via Outside on June 8, 2018

A Brief History of Women’s Figure Skating

You might be surprised to learn that this sport where women now shine was initially seen as solely the purview of male athletes

by Kat Eschner via Smithsonian on February 6, 2018

How the National Anthem Got Tangled Up With American Sports

Like most relationships, it’s complicated.

by Tevi Troy via Politico Magazine on September 26, 2017

The Drugs Won: The Case for Ending the Sports War on Doping

Two former anti-doping professionals think the fight against performance-enhancing drugs is doing more harm than good.

by Patrick Hruby via Vice Sports on August 1, 2016

Soldiers around tanks on the street.

Want to Understand the 1992 LA Riots? Start with the 1984 LA Olympics

The causes were many, but police brutality and economic insecurity were supercharged in Los Angeles after the 1984 Olympics.

by Dave Zirin via The Nation on April 30, 2012

Zdeněk Koubek's ID card.

Discrimination Against Trans Olympians Has Roots in Nazi Germany

1934 world champion runner Zdenek Koubek, boxer Imane Khelif, and how far we haven’t come on gender in sports.

by Michael Waters, Alex Abad-Santos via Vox on August 1, 2024

Skateboarder doing trick on ramp.

How a Generation of Women and Queer Skateboarders Fought for Visibility and Recognition

On defying gender norms and expectations in extreme sports.

by Deborah Stoll via Literary Hub on July 18, 2024

American Exchanges: Third Reich’s Elite Schools

How the Nazi government used exchange student programs to foster sympathy for Nazism in the United States.

by Helen Roche via OUPblog on March 26, 2024

Painting of a girl with a basketball looking out a window.

Lady Vols Country

How college basketball coach Pat Summitt transformed women's sports.

by Jessica Wilkerson via Oxford American on June 6, 2023

A pole vaulter pointing the end of the pole at the camera.

Pole Vaulting Over the Iron Curtain

When it became clear that the United States and its allies couldn’t “liberate” Eastern Europe through psychological war and covert ops, they turned to sports.

by Matthew Wills, Toby Rider, Kevin Witherspoon via JSTOR Daily on May 12, 2023

Photo of Jackie Robinson and Jacki Robinson Jr at the Youth March for Integrated Schools demonstration in Washington DC with Harry Belafonte.

Jackie Robinson, Pioneer of BDS

The Dodgers great didn’t just break Major League Baseball’s color line. He was also an activist whose legacy reaches from Brooklyn to South Africa to Palestine.

by Robert Ross via The Nation on April 15, 2022

Diagram of a man swinging a wooden club.

Eastern Sports and Western Bodies: The “Indian Club” in the U.S.

Although largely forgotten today, exercise by club swinging was all the rage in the 19th century.

by Daniel Elkind via The Public Domain Review on April 1, 2020

Agency, Order and Sport in the Age of Trump

Jim Thorpe, Jack Johnson, and the sporting middle ground.

by Andrew McGregor via Public Seminar on July 18, 2018

What Thomas Jefferson’s Daughters Can Teach Us About the False Promises of Patriarchy

Women have always come to the aid of men in power, but the costs of such actions have not always been immediately apparent.

by Catherine Kerrison via Medium on April 20, 2018

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