OLYMPIC GAMES - 1 - ANSWERS

1. C. Sweden

To date, only five countries have participated in every Summer Olympic Games – Australia (participated as "Australasia" in two editions), France, Great Britain, Greece, and Switzerland.

(1908 "Australasia" Olympic Team emblem)

"Australasia" was a combined team of athletes from Australia and the Dominion of New Zealand that competed together at the 1908 and 1912 Summer Olympics. When the Olympic Games resumed in 1920 after World War I, the two nations sent separate teams to the Games and have done so ever since.

2. B. Chess

Chess has never been a part of Modern Olympics. There was an effort to include Chess in the 1924 Olympics but the difficulty to distinguish between amateurs and professionals prevented this from happening. Later Chess was an exhibition sport at the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney.

(The last - 43rd Chess Olympiad was held at Batumi, Georgia in 2018)

However, Chess has its own chess Olympics, called the "Chess Olympiad", which is a biennial event.

Cricket has been the part of the Summer Olympics only once. In 1900, a team of British cricket players competed against the French Athletic Club Union (mostly comprising members of the British embassy staff) in Paris during that year’s Summer Olympics, which at the time were considered part of the World’s Fair. Twelve years later, the match was retroactively recognized as an event of the official 1900 Games.

Golf was featured in the Summer Olympic Games in 1900 and 1904 edition and was discontinued. IOC reinstated the sport in the 2016 Summer Olympics.

3. A. Panathenaic Stadium

The Panathenaic Stadium or the "Kallimarmaro" (meaning ‘made of beautiful marble’) is a multi-purpose stadium in Athens, Greece and one of the main historic attractions of the city. It is the only stadium in the world built entirely of marble.

(The Panathenaic Stadium in 1895, as workers prepared the stadium for its marble construction in a race against time for the 1896 Olympics)

The ancient stadium where the Kallimarmaro now stands was the place where nude male athletes were competing in athletic events during the Panathenaia celebrations, the greatest festivities in ancient Athens. It was built around 330 BC by Athenian orator Lykourgos. The stadium had a parallelogram shape with an entrance on one end and spectator seats on the three sides of the stadium. Later during the Roman times, Herodes Atticus made a contribution to renovate the stadium with some restructuring. After the prevailing of Christianity, the stadium was largely abandoned and was later excavated in the 19th century with the push of the revival of the tradition of the Olympic Games by Evangelis Zappas, a Greek businessman. After being refurbished, it hosted the opening and closing ceremonies of the first modern Olympics in 1896. The stadium was also used in 2004 Athens Olympics for Athletic events. 

The Wembley Stadium hosted the 1948 London Olympics, while the Bislett Stadium in Oslo, Norway was the host for the 1952 Winter Olympic Games.

4. B. Mark Spitz

Mark Andrew Spitz (born February 10, 1950) is an American former competitive swimmer and nine-time Olympic champion. He won seven gold medals at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, all in world record time - [100-meter freestyle (51.22), 200-meter freestyle (1:52.78), 100-meter butterfly (54.27), 200-meter butterfly (2:00.70), 4×100-meter freestyle relay (3:26.42), 4×200-meter freestyle relay (7:35.78), and 4×100-meter medley relay (3:48.16)]. This was an achievement that lasted for 36 years until it was surpassed by fellow American swimmer Michael Phelps, who won eight golds at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing.

5. A. Norway

Norway with participation in all the 23 editions of Winter Olympics currently leads the all time Winter Olympics Medal Table both in no of Gold Medals (132) and in overall no of Medals (368).

The all-time top 10 Gold Medal winning Nations (including now defunct Soviet Union) in Winter Olympics are as below: 

No	Nation	No of Games Participated	Gold	Silver	Bronze	Total
1	Norway	23	132	125	111	368
2	United States	23	105	110	90	305
3	Germany	12	92	86	60	238
4	Soviet Union	9	78	57	59	194
5	Canada	23	73	64	62	199
6	Austria	23	64	81	87	232
7	Sweden	23	57	46	55	158
8	Switzerland	23	55	46	52	153
9	Russia	6	47	38	35	120
10	Netherlands	21	45	44	41	130