37.Olympic World
Olympics, held every four years, were celebrated as solemn religious festivals, complete with sacrifices to Greek gods. Truces were declared as Greek city-states were invited to send their best athletes to compete. Field events, which resembled their modern equivalents, included the long jump, discus, shot put and javelin. The five-sport pentathlon included wrestling along with the discus, javelin, long jump and a sprint.
Judo made its first appearance in the Olympic Games, in 1964, at Tokyo and, though absent from New Mexico in 1968, it has been included in the programme for every Games since then. Some of the most thrilling judo contests have taken place under the Olympic banner. This book sets out to provide a complete history of Olympic judo, from its tentative beginnings as an 'option' sport to the demonstration of a women's category in 1988.
The Olympic programme, is followed by a series of commentaries, each covering one Olympiad. These relate the main contests and list the medallists in every weight category for each Games, as well as charting the development of judo as a competitive sport. Changes in the rules and evolving fighting styles are discussed in full at the end of each commentary.
Apart from making leaps and bounds in environmental Olympic history, the Beijing Olympic Village is welcoming record numbers of international visitors. The Village has already hosted more receptions for individual country delegations than any other Olympic Games. The Village has held receptions for 204 different National Olympic Committees (NOCs), with an astonishing 51 delegation receptions held in one day.
The Olympic Village itself includes a near-zero energy building that generates most of the power for the Village's heating and cooling systems through renewable energy sources such as solar cells and geothermal heat pumps. Technical assistance for the project was provided by the U.S. Department of Energy.