Gold Rush
• Look back at some of the Olympic movement's most enduring memories.
In a Flash
• Travel back in time and see the evolution of the Olympic Games.
Medal Breakdown
• Athens, 1896
• Paris, 1900
• St. Louis, 1904
• Athens, 1906
• London, 1908
• Stockholm, 1912
• Antwerp, 1920
• Paris, 1924
• Amsterdam, 1928
• Los Angeles, 1932
• Berlin, 1936
• London, 1948
• Helsinki, 1952
• Melbourne, 1956
• Rome, 1960
• Tokyo, 1964
• Mexico City, 1936
• Munich, 1972
• Montreal, 1976
• Moscow, 1980
• Los Angeles, 1984
• Seoul, 1988
• Barcelona, 1992
• Atlanta, 1996
Discussion Area
• Share your favorite Olympic memory.
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The Washington Post
Sunday, Sept. 3, 2000
Great Olympic moments:
Jim Thorpe, impoverished Indian from the Oklahoma Territory, as great an athlete as ever lived – winner of the decathlon and pentathlon in the 1912 Games – is stripped of his gold medals by snobby aristocrats because he had once been paid a few dollars to play baseball.
Jesse Owens, a black man, wins four gold medals in 1936 under the disapproving gaze of the Aryan supremacist Adolf Hitler.
Tommie Smith and John Carlos, two of the fastest men in the world in 1968, accept their medals in Mexico City with fists raised in the black power salute.
Mike Eruzione, glorious palooka, leads a delirious American ice hockey team in celebration after beating the powerhouse Soviets in 1980 – just weeks after the Soviet Union inflamed the Cold War by invading Afghanistan.
The path running through these points leads you to an inescapable conclusion about the Olympics: They're not just about sports. Astonishing physical achievements are not enough to hold our attention, not entirely. We need some added juice, and the more operatic, the better. Class war. Race war. Real war – hot or cold variety.
And if nothing so serious comes along, we'll settle for soap opera.
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