The opening ceremony took place on Sunday, April 5, when both the Catholic and
\nOrthodox Christians were celebrating Easter. The number of spectators attending
\nthe ceremony was estimated at 80 thousand.<\/p>\n
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Competitions started on April 6 on the Olympic
\nStadium which was built from scratch by the Greek authorities on the location
\nof an ancient arena. 241 athletes from 14 countries took part in the Olympic
\nGames. This was the largest international participation in a sports event up to
\nthat moment.<\/p>\n
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In the spirit of the ancient Greek Olympic
\ntradition and especially at the insistence of the French baron Pierre de
\nCoubertin, the participation of women in the Olympic Games was forbidden. It
\nwas only in Paris, in 1900, that women were allowed to compete in the Olympic
\nGames.<\/p>\n
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The first sports event held at the Athens
\nOlympics was the 100 meters race and the first Olympic medalist was the
\nAmerican Francis Lane who ended the race in 12.20 seconds. Besides athletics,
\nthe Olympic Games in Athens also included cycling, fencing, gymnastics,
\nshooting, swimming, tennis, weightlifting and wrestling.<\/p>\n
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The marathon race took place on April 10 on
\nthe same route, which the Athenian soldier Philippides had covered more than
\n2,300 years before, to deliver news of the victory of the battle of Marathon
\nover Persia. The winner of the marathon race was the Greek athlete Spiros Louis
\nwho thus became a national hero.<\/p>\n
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The competition ended on April 15. The first
\nplace in the nations’ ranking was held by the US with 11 gold medals out of a
\ntotal of 20 medals won at the Olympic Games. Greece obtained 46 medals, of
\nwhich 10 gold. (translation by L. Simion)<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Today we look at the first modern edition of the Olympic Games held in Athens 124 years ago, more precisely in April 1896<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":93,"featured_media":120603,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[40940],"tags":[30415],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-121725","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sport","tag-olympic-games"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n