The Summer and Winter Olympic games includes a
total of thirty five sports with fifty three
disciplines. The Summer Olympics comprise of twenty
sports with thirty-eight disciplines and the Winter
Olympics consists of seven sports with fifteen
disciplines. On a whole four hundred events are
conducted. Each of the sport has an International
Governing Body. More athletes and nations
participate in the Summer Olympics.
The IOC or International Olympic Committee arranges
the sports, disciplines and events in a hierarchical
manner. Sports are subdivided into disciplines and
disciplines are subdivided into events. The IOC
after analyzing the popularity of a sport around the
globe and decides whether it should be a part of the
Olympics or not. To be a part of the Olympics, an
event should be participated by men from fifty
countries from three continents and women from
thirty-five countries from three continents, at
least.
Sports, which are no longer a part of today's
Olympics, are polo, golf, rugby union, tug of war,
cricket, water skiing, etc. The reason for their
discontinuation is lack of adequate participation,
lack of interest and lack of a governing body.
Tennis and archery are also some of the dropped
sports, which were again a part of the Olympics in
the year 1988 and 1972, respectively. Sports, which
are included in the Olympics to promote the local
sports of a particular region, are known as
demonstration sports. Some of the demonstration
sports, which are a part of the Olympics sports, are
curling and baseball.
In the first modern Summer Olympic games, held in
1896, there were a total of nine sports. Now the
count is twenty-eight and it has been decided that
in the 2012 Summer Olympics, the count will be
reduced to twenty six, with the withdrawal of
softball and baseball. For a sport or discipline to
be a part of the Summer Olympics, men from
seventy-five nations from four continents and women
from forty nations from three continents, should be
participating at the least.
The aquatics discipline includes sports swimming,
diving, water polo and synchronized swimming. The
canoeing discipline consists of flatwater, BMX,
slalom, track, road and mountain biking. The
Gymnastics discipline consists of trampoline,
artistic, and rhythmic. The volleyball discipline
consists of indoor and beach. The other sports are
archery, athletics, badminton, baseball, basketball,
boxing, equestrian, fencing, field hockey, soccer,
handball, judo, modern pentathlon, rowing, sailing,
shooting, softball, table tennis, taekwondo, tennis,
triathlon, weightlifting and wrestling.
The Summer Olympic sports, which are discontinued,
are Basque Pelota, Cricket, Croquet, Figure Skating,
Golf, Ice Hockey, Ieu de Paume, Lacrosse, Polo,
Rackets, Roque, Rugby Union, Tug of War, and Water
Motor sports.
The demonstration sports which weren't selected to
be a part of the official Summer Olympics are
American football, Australian rules football,
ballooning, boules, budo, field handball, Finnish
baseball, glima, gliding, kaatsen, korfball, la
canne, lifesaving, longue paume, motor sport, roller
hockey, sambo, savate, Swedish gymnastics, weight
training with dumbbells, and water skiing.
Winter Olympic games started in 1924. Ice hockey and
figure skating were a part of the Summer Olympics,
before Winter Olympics started. In the beginning,
there were nine sports in the Winter Olympic games,
which have now been decreased to seven. There are a
total of fifteen disciplines. For a sport or
discipline to be a part of the Winter Olympics, men
from at least twenty-five countries from three
continents should participate.
The Bobsleigh discipline consists of bobsleigh and
skeleton. The skating discipline consists of figure
skating, speed skating and short track speed
skating. The skiing discipline consists of alpine
skiing, snowboarding, cross-country skiing, ski
jumping, freestyle skiing and Nordic combined. The
other sports are biathlon, curling, ice hockey, and
luge.
The demonstration sports, which were never included
in the official list of Winter Olympics, are bandy,
disabled alpine skiing, disabled cross-country
skiing, ice stock sport, military patrol, ski
ballet, skijoring, sled-dog racing, speed skiing,
and winter pentathlon.
The games which were recognized by the IOC, but
weren't a part of the Olympics are air sports,
bandy, billiard sports, boules, bowling, bridge,
chess, dance sport, golf, karate, korfball,
lifesaving, motorcycle sport, mountain climbing,
netball, orienteering, pelote basque, polo,
power boating, racquetball, roller sports, rugby,
squash, sumo, surfing, tug of war, underwater
sports, water skiing, and wushu.
