Female athletes

Australian athlete Cathy Freeman, one of 11 Aboriginals in the host nation's team, was under pressure to perform in the Sydney Games in 2000. It was hoped her performance could help promote the image of a modern, tolerant Australia.

Freeman was chosen to light the Olympic flame, but her re...

In 1948, UK neurologist Sir Ludwig Guttman, who worked with war veterans suffering from spinal injuries, added sport into his patients' rehabilitation program.

Others started copying Guttman's methods, and athletic competitions ensued. At the 1960 Olympics in Rome, Guttman brought ...

25 Countries staged a boycott of the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal. They were outraged that New Zealand, whose rugby team had toured South Africa in the year despite the country being under apartheid, was allowed to take part in the 1976 Olympics.

The foreign minister of Kenya at the time...

The 1936 Summer Olympics in Nazi Germany were supposed to demonstrate the Aryan racial supremacy. But Jesse Owens, a black athlete, won gold in the 100m, 200m, the 4 x 100m relay, and the long jump.

After the latter event, German athlete Carl Ludwig Long was the first to c...

During the 1972 Games in Munich, a Palestinian terrorist group Black September took hostage and killed 11 members of the Israeli Olympic team, shattering the image of international cooperation and friendship associated with the Olympics.

Muhammad Ali, first called Cassius Clay, won Olympic gold in Rome in 1960.

Back in the US, when Clay was refused service in a whites-only restaurant, he threw his Olympic medal into a river. Thirty-six years later, Muhammad Ali lit the flame at the 1996 Atlanta Games, and the Internat...

The North Korean and South Korean teams marched as one at the opening ceremony of the 2000 Games in Sydney.

Female basketball player Chung Un Soon from South Korea, and Park Chong Chul, a male judo coach from the North, led the united teams. The teams were holding hands an...