Olympics Venues

September 24, 2008

Which nations have hosted the most Olympics games? The USA has hosted four Summer Games and four Winter games. Second highest is France, with three Winter Games and two Summer games. A total of 12 nations have hosted at least two Games, and Russia will become the 13th when they host the 2014 Winter Olympics.

Here’s a table of nations that have hosted at least two Games.

Nation Total Summer Winter
USA 8 4 4
France 5 2 3
Germany 3 2 1
Italy 3 1 2
Japan 3 1 2
United Kingdom 2 2* 0
Canada 2 1 1**
Australia 2 2 0
Austria 2 0 2
Greece 2 2 0
Norway 2 0 2
Switzerland 2 0 2

*The United Kingdom is hosting the 2012 Summer Olympics in London.
**Canada is hosting the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver.

Summer Venues and Winter Venues can be found on the iWeblists website.


Olympics Records at Beijing

August 27, 2008

It’s interesting that out of 32 possible records in Men’s and Women’s Swimming combined at the Olympics, 30 of those records were broken in Beijing in 2008. In no other sport were anything close to so many records broken. The only sports that come close are Women’s Shooting and Women’s Weightlifting. Both of those sports made their debut at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, so they’re still fairly new.

Here’s a list of all the possible Summer Olympics records and the number that were broken in 2008.

Sport Total Records Broken Records Percent

Men’s Swimming 16 15 94%

Women’s Swimming 16 15 94%

Women’s Shooting 14 10 71%

Women’s Weightlifting 21 14 67%

Cycling (Men’s & Women’s) 7 4 57%

Men’s Athletics 24 10 42%

Women’s Athletics 23 7 30%

Archery 0.5 (tie) 15 3%

Men’s Weightlifting 24 0 0%

So why were so many Swimming records broken in Beijing? You could argue that Michael Phelps is just a phenomenal athlete, and that’s true, but of the 15 records broken, seven of them were broken by other individuals, and three involved Michael Phelps as part of a team. And for the Women’s swimming, the 15 records were split among eight different nations.

The swimming records were broken due to improved training techniques and better technology (swimsuit material, etc.) but weren’t there similar improvements in the other sports?

For more details on Olympics records, visit iWeblists’ Olympics Records pages.


Olympics Swimming records

August 19, 2008

The Men’s Swimming portion of the 2008 Beijing Olympics are now over. Of course there was lots of hype about Michael Phelps. Another interesting point is the fact that there are 16 Olympic records in swimming, and in 2008, all but one of them was broken. That’s the 400 meter freestyle. Here’s a list of all the new Olympics Men’s Swimming records.

In addition, the same goes for Women’s Swimming. The only Women’s record that was not broken in 2008 was the 100 meter butterfly. Here’s a list of all the new Olympics Women’s Swimming records.