ContentsContents 4 Going for Gold 6 Boxing 12 Judo 16 Wrestling 20 Tae Kwon Do 24 Fencing 28 Gold Medal Greats 30 Glossary 31 Books and Web Sites 32 Index
4 The Olympics is the greatest sporting event on Earth Every four years thousands of athletes known as Olympians spend their summer in one city There they compete against the very best in their sport hoping to win a highly-prized Olympic gold silver or bronze medal Ancient Olympics The ancient Greeks held games at Olympia from 776 BC for more than a thousand years At first they competed only in running events but after 708 BC wrestling matches were included and later a form of boxing Ancient Greek boxers could hit opponents when they were on the floor and wore leather thongs called himantes around their hands instead of gloves Going for Gold Hungarian fencer Aladar Gerevich won more gold medals than any other combat contestant at an Olympics He won a staggering seven gold medals between 1932 and 1960 Superstar Tajikistan’s Yusup Abdusalomov in red tries to throw Revazi Mindorashvili of Georgia during an Olympic freestyle wrestling match Mindorashvili won a gold medal
One-on-One Many sports grew as a result of soldiers training and practicing warfare skills from archery and javelin throwing to fencing boxing and wrestling All combat sports at the Olympics pit two opponents against each other in one-on-one competition For a long time these competitors were men but female wrestlers have competed in recent games In 2012 female boxers will take part for the first time A brutal mix of boxing and wrestling called pankration was first held at the ancient Greek Olympics in 648 BC A competitor called Sostratos of Sicyon had a reputation for breaking his opponent’s fingers until he surrendered Modern Games The games were revived when the first modern Olympic Games took place in the Greek city of Athens in 1896 Competitors wrestled and fenced at the first modern Olympics and other combat sports such as boxing judo and tae kwon do were introduced at later games Today tens of thousands of spectators visit the host city and nation while hundreds of millions watch on television 5 The 2008 Olympic light heavyweight boxing competition medal winners China’s Xiaoping Zhang second left won gold Ireland’s Kenny Egan left won silver and Tony Jeffries and Yerkebulan Shynaliyev both took bronze medals FEATS AND RECORDS The first woman to win an Olympic wrestling gold medal was Irini Merleni from the Ukraine in 2004
