Memorising the Olympic Games venues
Memorising the Olympic Games venues is a good example of how to use your improved memory. To memorise a list of all the Olympics Games venues, all you have to do is associate each character from your 100 List with a symbol that you associate with the host city for that year.
For example, for 1900 (Paris), you could imagine Scrooge being chased up the Eiffel Tower by the three Christmas ghosts, and beating them, thereby winning gold! For 1960 (Rome), you could visualise (and hear) Nicholas Parsons dressed as a Roman senator and reciting the Olympic oath in the forum. For the Olympic Games of 1968 (Mexico City), you could see Reg Varney, wearing a sombrero and driving a bus to the Olympic Village. The 1972 Munich Games could be symbolised by an image of Mark Spitz swimming across the top of a foaming stein of German beer.
Incidentally, it was at the Olympic Games in Munich that Spitz won seven gold medals, so there’s a natural link there already, if you knew that. I chose Spitz as the character for 72 specifically because I link him to the Munich Olympics.
Of course, there will be the possibility of some confusion, since the dates in the 21st century are the same as ones in the 20th century (e.g. 1912, 2012), but that’s where your natural memory kicks in – once you make the effort to come up with mental images for each date, you’ll find it’s fairly easy to distinguish them from each other. Your natural memory will also take care of some of the details – for example, if you’ve linked a year to an image that brings Japan to mind, your natural memory will fill in the Tokyo-shaped gap that the Japan image calls up.
I could list images for all the years/venues, but I won’t, and for the very good reason that you will quite possibly be using different memory characters from the ones I use. Apart from that, the exercise of coming up with your own images or scenes is time well spent; the images will be more meaningful and memorable to you if you actually worked on creating them yourself.
THE MODERN OLYMPIC GAMES | ||
Olympiad | Year | Host City |
I | 1896 | Athens, Greece |
II | 1900 | Paris, France |
III | 1904 | St. Louis, USA |
IV | 1908 | London, England |
V | 1912 | Stockholm, Sweden |
VI | 1916 | --- Cancelled due to WWI --- |
VII | 1920 | Antwerp, Belgium |
VIII | 1924 | Paris, France |
IX | 1928 | Amsterdam, Netherlands |
X | 1932 | Los Angeles, USA |
XI | 1936 | Berlin, Germany |
XII | 1940 | --- Cancelled due to WWII --- |
XIII | 1944 | --- Cancelled due to WWII --- |
XIV | 1948 | London, England |
XV | 1952 | Helsinki, Finland |
XVI | 1956 | Melbourne, Australia |
XVII | 1960 | Rome, Italy |
XVIII | 1964 | Tokyo, Japan |
XIX | 1968 | Mexico City, Mexico |
XX | 1972 | Munich, West Germany |
XXI | 1976 | Montreal, Canada |
XXII | 1980 | Moscow, USSR |
XXIII | 1984 | Los Angeles, USA |
XXIV | 1988 | Seoul, South Korea |
XXV | 1992 | Barcelona, Spain |
XXVI | 1996 | Atlanta, USA |
XXVII | 2000 | Sydney, Australia |
XXVIII | 2004 | Athens, Greece |
XXIX | 2008 | Beijing, China |
XXX | 2012 | London, England |
XXXI | 2016 | Rio de Janeiro, Brazil |
XXXII | 2020 | Tokyo, Japan |
The Olympic Games in London, 2012
The Olympic Games in London, 2012, the greatest show on earth!
The London Olympics 2012 was memorable even before it started, in that it marked the first time any city had been chosen to host the Olympic Games for a third occasion. For the host nation, Great Britain, the Olympic Games of 2012 surpassed anybody’s wildest dreams of success. Not only was it a triumph of organisation, but as the host nation, Great Britain had an amazing run of athletic triumphs as well.
CITIES THAT HAVE HOSTED THE OLYMPICS MORE THAN ONCE | |
Athens | 1896, 2004 |
Paris | 1900,1924 |
London | 1908, 1948, 2012 |
Los Angeles | 1932, 1984 |
Tokyo | 1964, 2020 (proposed) |
More than 10,000 athletes from 204 nations competed at the Olympic Games in London in 2012, the XXX (30th) Olympiad. It ran from 27 July to the 12 August. Athletes from around the world praised the London Games as the best ever.
The Olympic Games of 2012 became the first Olympics at which every sport had female competitors.
The official motto of these Games was “Inspire a generation”. They certainly did that!
Sir Chris Hoy brought his gold medal tally up to six, even surpassing Sir Steve Redgrave’s haul of five golds (although Redgrave’s five golds were won at five successive Olympics, from 1984-2000, an achievement that may never be topped). Jessica Ennis, the poster girl of the GBR team, performed magnificently and won the women’s pentathlon, becoming one of the world’s most successful female athletes.
Other top performers at the Olympic Games in London included Mo Farah, Usain Bolt, Michael Phelps, Nicola Adams (who won women’s boxing’s first ever gold medal), Bradley Wiggins, and the list goes on and on.
Michael Phelps’ medal haul
Michael Phelps is the most decorated Olympic athlete of all time, having won 22 medals in all. His haul includes 18 gold, two silver, and two bronze. At the Olympic Games 2012, Phelps won four gold and two silver medals, making him the most successful athlete of the Games for the third Olympics in a row.
Across the three major international long-course competitions (the Olympic Games, the World Championships, and the Pan Pacific), he has won an astonishing 71 medals, 57 of which are gold!
UPDATE SOON
He’s at it again! I’ll update this entry once the Rio Games have finished.
The Olympic Games in summer and winter
Summer and Winter games were always held the same year, till 1994 when they were spaced two years apart (and from then on).
The Olympic Games in ancient Greece
The Olympic Games that was first memorialised by written records was in 776 BC, although it is generally accepted that the Games had been going on for some time prior to that. Apparently, there was only one event at the time (the stade), a race of about 192 metres, which was the length of the track at Olympia. The modern word ‘stadium’ derives from the name of this track.
The Olympic Games steadily developed and continued to be celebrated every ‘olympiad’ (a period of four years) for well over 1,000 years. The Roman emperor Theodosius I (a Christian) abolished the Games in 393 AD because of their supposed pagan influences.
The Games saw a revival in the late 19th century, spurred on by a young French aristocrat, Baron Pierre de Coubertin. After several years of failing to inspire enough interest in his proposals, Coubertin finally got his ideas accepted and the first modern Olympics was eventually organised, and took place in 1896. You may want to read an interesting article about the Baron and his drive to revive the Olympic Games.
The Olympic Games of 1896 was staged in Athens, the site of the original Games, and it was based on the concept of fair competition, the idea that it was more important to compete than to win, and the hope that it would foster brotherhood among nations.
Since 1896 the Olympic Games has been cancelled only three times, once in 1916, due to World War I, and twice in the 1940s (1940 and 1944), due to World War II.
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