Ballz Sports! Ballz Sports!

There is a fascinating link between Greece and India, which stretches back to 975 BC. The zest for chariot racing and wrestling was common to both the countries. In the day and age of the Rig-Veda, Ramayana and Mahabharata men of stature and circumstance were expected to be competent in chariot-racing, archery, horsemanship, military tactics, wrestling, weight-lifting, swimming and hunting. Tiruvedacharya describes many fascinating games, in his Villas Mani Majra namely, archery, hammer throwing and chariot racing. In Manas Olhas (1135 AD), Someshwar writes about bhrashram (weight lifting), bhramanshram (walking) and also about Mall-Stambha (wrestling). In the Mahabharatha, there is a mention of athletic competitions held between the Pandavas and Kauravas, which were held in public, amidst the city of Hastinapura.

The Olympics, after being dormant for nearly 1500 years, was revived in the later half of the 19th century. In 1852, the Olympia Temple ruins, where the ancient games took place, were evacuated. The idea of the revival of Olympic games was the logical culmination of a great movement. The 19th century saw the taste for physical exercises revive everywhere. At the same time the great inventions, the railways and the telegraph have abridged distances and mankind had come to live a new existence; the peoples have intermingled, they have learned to know each other better and immediately they started to compare themselves.

The Greek sports values were revived and it influenced Charles Louis de Feddy of France, more popularly known as Baron Pierre de Coubertin. He summoned a sports congress on July 23, 1894,and presented his proposal for the return of the Olympic games. The 12 officials from different countries present were so thrilled that they immediately scheduled the first edition of the Modern Olympic Games to take place in Athens in 1896. Although Baron Pierre de Coubertin is known as the father of modern Olympics, there were other attempts too, to bring back the games, earlier. It was decided to have the Games each 4 years in the city of Pyrgos. A wealthy Greek Evangelos Zappas, who started the Zappian Olympic Games, undertook another more successful attempt. There were four editions of the games, in the years of 1859, 1870, 1875 and 1889 with prize money for all winners.

An Olympiad is a period of four successive years. The Olympic games celebrate each Olympiad. For the modern Olympic games, the first Olympiad celebration was in 1896. Every four years celebrates another Olympiad; thus, even the Games that were cancelled (1916, 1940, and 1944) count as Olympiads. The 2004 Olympic games in Athens was called the Games of the XXVIII Olympiad.

In 1960, the Winter Olympic Games were held in Squaw Valley, California (United States). In order to impress the spectators, Walt Disney was head of the committee that organized the opening day ceremonies. The 1960 Winter Games Opening Ceremony was filled with high school choirs and bands, releasing of thousands of balloons, fireworks, ice statues, releasing of 2,000 white doves, and national flags dropped by parachute. The winter Olympic games were also held in 1924, beginning a tradition of holding them a few months earlier and in a different city than the summer Olympic Games. Beginning in 1994, the winter Olympic games were held in completely different years (two years apart) than the summer Games.

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