The Olympic Games is a major international multi-sport event. During its history, both the Summer and Winter Games have been the subject of scandals, controversies and incidents.
Cheating, such as the use of performance enhancing drugs by athletes, has regularly affected the Olympic Games. Some countries have boycotted the Games on various occasions, either as a protest against the International Olympic Committee or the contemporary politics of other participants. Some countries have also been banned from the Olympics, such as the defeated countries after both World Wars or South Africa under apartheid. Other controversies have included decisions by referees and gestures by athletes.
Summer Olympics 1896 Summer Olympics – Athens, Greece Marathon runner Spyridon Belokas won the bronze medal, but later admitted to covering part of the course by carriage, and was disqualified.
1900 Summer Olympics – Paris, France The Games were considered a planning and organizational failure. In athletics, organizers did not allow enough room for throwing events, leading Hungarian discus throw gold medalist Rudolf Bauer to throw three of his attempts into the crowd. Swimming events were held in the River Seine, which was a sewage outflow for Paris.
1904 Summer Olympics – St. Louis, Missouri, United States Marathon runner Frederick Lorz reached the finish line first and was about to be awarded the gold medal before it was revealed he had not run the entire race. Lorz, suffering cramps, had dropped out of the race after nine miles and hitched a ride back to the stadium in a car. When the car broke down at the 19th mile, he re-entered the race and jogged across the finish line. Upon being confronted by race officials, Lorz admitted his deception and was disqualified. Anthropology Days, an unofficial part of the Games, involved indigenous peoples from around the world being displayed and performing in sporting events that they had not been prepared for.
1906 Intercalated Games – Athens, Greece Peter O'Connor, an Irish athlete representing Great Britain, climbed up the Olympic flagpole with an Irish flag in order to protest being considered a British competitor.
1908 Summer Olympics – London, England, United Kingdom Grand Duchy of Finland competed separately from the Russian Empire, but was not allowed to display the Finnish flag. In the men's 400 metres, American winner John Carpenter was disqualified for blocking British athlete Wyndham Halswelle in a manoeuvre that was legal under American rules but prohibited by the British rules under which the race was run. As a result of the disqualification, a second final race was ordered. Halswelle was to face the other two finalists William Robbins and John Taylor, but both were from the United States and decided not to contest the repeat of the final to protest the judges' decision. Halswelle was thus the only medallist in the 400 metres, a race which became the only walkover victory in Olympic history. Taylor later ran on the gold medal-winning U.S. team for the now-defunct Medley Relay, becoming the first African American medallist. History Talk
1912 Summer Olympics – Stockholm, Sweden American athlete Jim Thorpe was stripped of his gold medals in the decathlon and pentathlon after it was learned that he had played professional minor league baseball three years earlier. In solidarity, the decathlon silver medalist, Hugo Wieslander, refused to accept the medals when they were offered to him. The gold medals were restored to Thorpe's children in 1983, 30 years after his death. Portuguese marathon runner Francisco Lázaro became the first Olympic athlete to die in competition after collapsing on the track. Heat exhaustion, sunstroke, heart problems, and a possible electrolyte imbalance are thought to have contributed.
1916 Summer Olympics (not held due to World War I) The 1916 Summer Olympics were to have been held in Berlin, German Empire, but were cancelled because of the outbreak of World War I.
1920 Summer Olympics – Antwerp, Belgium Budapest had initially been selected over Amsterdam and Lyon to host the Games, but as the Austro-Hungarian Empire had been a German ally in World War I, the French-dominated International Olympic Committee transferred the Games to Antwerp in April 1919. Austria, Bulgaria, Germany, Hungary, and Turkey were not invited to the Games, being the successor states of the Central Powers which were defeated in World War I. The final of the football tournament was won by Belgium after the Czechoslovakia team walked off the pitch while the score was 0–2 to protest a referee's decision.
1924 Summer Olympics – Paris, France Germany was again not invited to the Games. In the boxing middleweight quarter final, British boxer Harry Mallin showed the referee a bite mark on his chest inflicted by French opponent Roger Brousse. The referee nonetheless declared Brousse the victor. A Swedish official protested on Mallin's behalf, and Brousse's previous opponent, Argentine Manolo Gallardo, complained that he had also been bitten. Brousse was disqualified, and Mallin went on to win the gold medal.
1928 Summer Olympics – Amsterdam, Netherlands The women's 800 meters race caused controversy after several women reportedly collapsed at the finish line. As a result, races longer than 200 meters were banned for women until the 1960 Olympics.
1932 Summer Olympics – Los Angeles, California, United States Nine-time Finnish Olympic gold medallist Paavo Nurmi was found to be a professional athlete and banned from running in the Games. The main orchestrators of the ban were the Swedish officials that were the core of the IOC bureaucracy, including IOC president Sigfrid Edström, who claimed that Nurmi had received too much money for his travel expenses. Nurmi did, however, travel to Los Angeles and kept training at the Olympic Village. Despite pleas from all the other entrants of the marathon, he was not allowed to compete at the Games. This incident, in part, led to Finland refusing to participate in the traditional Finland-Sweden athletics international annual event until 1939. After winning the silver in equestrian dressage, Swedish rider Bertil Sandström was demoted to last for clicking to his horse to win encouragement. He asserted that it was a creaking saddle making the sounds.Bertil Sandström. sports-reference.com
1936 Summer Olympics – Berlin, Germany
In 1931, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) selected the German capital city Berlin as the host city of the 1936 Summer Olympics. However, following Adolf Hitler's rise to power in 1933, the plans for the Olympic Games became entangled with the politics of the Nazi regime. Hitler regarded the event as 'his' Olympics and sought to exploit the Games for propaganda purposes, with the aim of showcasing post-First World War Germany. In 1936, a number of prominent politicians and organizations called for a boycott of the Summer Olympics, while other campaigners called for the games to be relocated. Lithuania was not invited by Germany due to the Memelland/Klaipėda region controversy. Under the proposal of the autonomous Government of Catalonia, the newly elected Popular Front government of the Second Spanish Republic decided to boycott the Berlin Games entirely and, together with labour and socialist groups around the world, organized an alternative event, the People's Olympiad, held in Barcelona, Catalonia. The event did not take place however; just as the Games were about to begin the Spanish Civil War broke out and the People's Olympiad was canceled. In the United States, there was considerable debate about boycotting the Games. A leading advocate of a boycott was U.S. athlete and politician Ernest Lee Jahncke, the son of a German immigrant, who was an IOC member before being expelled from the IOC for his views. International concern surrounded the ruling German Nazi Party's ideology of racial superiority and its application at an international event such as the Olympics. In 1934 Avery Brundage undertook a visit to Germany to investigate the treatment of Jews. When he returned, he reported, "I was given positive assurance in writing ... that there will be no discrimination against Jews. You can't ask more than that and I think the guarantee will be fulfilled." However, a number of record-holding German athletes were excluded from competing at Berlin for being racially undesirable, including Lilli Henoch, Gretel Bergmann and Wolfgang Fürstner. The only Jewish athlete to compete on the German team was fencer Helene Mayer. Jewish American athletes Sam Stoller and Marty Glickman were originally selected to compete in the 4x100 meter relay, but were replaced on the day of the race by Jesse Owens and Ralph Metcalfe, despite Owens' protests. Glickman has claimed the decision was made to keep Jewish athletes off the podium "so to not embarrass Adolf Hitler". Hitler's decision not to shake hands with American long-jump medal winner Jesse Owens has been widely interpreted as a snub of an African American; however some commentators have noted that Hitler missed all medal presentations after the first day as he only wished to shake hands with German victors.Hyde Flippo, The 1936 Berlin Olympics: Hitler and Jesse Owens , German Myth 10, german.about.comRick Shenkman, Adolf Hitler, Jesse Owens and the Olympics Myth of 1936 13 February 2002 from History News Network (article excerpted from Rick Shenkman's Legends, Lies and Cherished Myths of American History, William Morrow & Co, 1988 ) Owens himself was reported to have been magnanimous when he mentioned Hitler. After the Games however, Owens was not personally honoured by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The Irish Olympic Council boycotted the games as the IAAF had expelled the National Athletic and Cycling Association for refusing to restrict itself to the Irish Free State rather than the island of Ireland. In the cycling match sprint final, German Toni Merkens fouled Dutch Arie van Vliet. Instead of disqualification, Merkens was fined 100 German reichsmarks and kept the gold medal. In one of the football quarter-finals, Peru beat Austria 4–2 but Austria nonetheless advanced to the next round under very controversial circumstances. As a sign of protest the complete Olympic delegations of Peru and Colombia left Germany.
1940 and 1944 Summer Olympics (not held due to World War II) The 1940 Summer Olympics were scheduled to be held in Tokyo, Japan, but were cancelled due to the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War. The government of Japan abandoned its support for the 1940 Games in July 1938. The IOC then awarded the Games to Helsinki, Finland, the runner-up in the original bidding process, but the Games were not held due to the Winter War. Ultimately, the Olympic Games were suspended indefinitely following the outbreak of World War II and did not resume until the London Games of 1948.
1948 Summer Olympics – London, England, United Kingdom The two major Axis powers of World War II, Germany and Japan, were suspended from the Olympics, although Italy, their former ally, participated. German and Japanese athletes were allowed to compete again at the 1952 Olympics.
1952 Summer Olympics – Helsinki, Finland The Republic of China (Taiwan) withdrew their athletes due to the participation of the People's Republic of China.
1956 Summer Olympics – Melbourne, Australia and Stockholm, Sweden