Olympic Sports

Aquatic sports come second only to track and field in terms of the number of Olympic medals up for grabs. The four disciplines - swimming, diving,...

To the untrained eye, weightlifting can appear a straightforward test of brute strength, but the sport's apparent simplicity is deceptive....

Cycling is one of the few sports to have been contested at every Olympics and, although the programme has varied, it now includes track, road,...

Fencing is one of the few sports to have been contested at every Olympic Games and was the first to allow professionals to compete for medals. Baron...

Gymnastics is one of the defining sports of the Olympics and has been present at every Games. The sport can be traced back to ancient Greece and...

For a sport with such ancient roots, badminton has a relatively short Olympic history. It was introduced to the Games as a demonstration sport in...

Anyone who thought that introducing baseball to the Olympic Games was like giving the USA a licence to produce gold medals was well wide of the mark....

The phenomenon that is beach volleyball opened the sport up to a completely new market when it made its debut at the Olympic Games at Atlanta in...

Baseball and softball will become the first Olympic sports to be dropped for 76 years when they are cut from the programme for the London 2012 Games....

Table tennis is the world's largest participation sport, with an incredible 40 million competitive players and countless millions more playing...

Equestrianism is the only Olympic sport to team up athletes with animals and one of the few in which men and women compete on equal terms. Horse and...

In many ways, track and field athletics epitomises the Olympic Games. It is the original Olympic sport, dating back to the first recorded ancient...

The recorded modern history of competitive rowing precedes that of most other Olympic sports. The first Oxford-Cambridge race took place in 1828 and...

India produced one of the longest winning streaks in the history of the Olympic Games by winning six consecutive hockey gold medals between 1928 and...

Wrestling is widely recognised as the oldest competitive sport in the world. Cave drawings have been found from the Sumero-Akkadian civilisation...

Few Olympic sports have been dominated by one nation in the way that basketball has been dominated by the USA. The Americans have won the men's...

Football was the first team sport included in the Olympic Games when introduced for the 2nd Olympiad at Paris in 1900. With the exception of 1932 in...

The bullseye in Olympic archery measures only 12.2 centimetres in diameter and archers have to hit it from 70 metres away. The accuracy required is...

The noble art of boxing is one of the most illustrious sports at the Olympics and has produced a string of legends, although it is perhaps surprising...

Judo, a traditional Japanese wrestling sport, means 'the gentle way', yet it is the only Olympic sport that allows choking an opponent in a...

Triathlon is the youngest of all Olympic sports. It was invented by San Diego Track Club as an alternative workout, with the first known events held...

In a way, sailing made its Games debut at Sydney in 2000, when it became the first Olympic sport to change its name. Up until then it had always been...