«
»

Olympic Urban Legends History

Email

Here are quick descriptions of each of the previous editions of Olympic Legends Revealed.

To see if they are true or false, you have to click on the link!

1. Dan O’Brien missed out on competing in the 1992 Olympics due to an act of pride.

2. Olympic skiier Picabo Street was named after the game “Peek-a-boo.”

3. The idea of running a four minute mile was considered impossible before Roger Bannister did it in 1954.

4. The Olympic Torch Relay was started by the Nazis.

5. Tara Lipinski stood on Tupperware as a 2-year-old to imitate the Gold Medal winners at the Olympic Games.

6. The Olympics led to a watch company becoming one of the largest printer manufacturers in the world.

7. Athletes during the Ancient Greek Olympic Games were amateurs.

8. The International Olympics Committee created a new rule just to make a certain participant ineligible for future Olympics.

9. The Jamaican bobsled team carried their sled to the finish line after a crash.

10. An Olympic rower paused during a race to let a family of ducks pass in front of his scull.

11. Five years before winning a Gold medal, an Olympic athlete was declared dead at the scene of a plane crash.

12. Joe Frazier qualified for the Olympics due to Buster Mathis suffering an injury – an injury Mathis suffered when he defeated Frazier in the qualifying rounds!!

13. The Chinese Table Tennis team cut four players for “falling in love.”

14. A gymnast won six medals at an Olympics…with only one leg!

15. A British athlete had to make a quick (and strange) move to find a country to compete for in the Olympics.

16. A 17 year old took up the decathlon a few months before he won the Gold Medal in the event.

17. A song was re-named years after it first came out because it was used in a clip package for an Olympic athlete.

18. An Olympian who stole the Olympic flag in 1920 returned the flag…eighty years later!!!

19. A billion people watched the opening ceremony for the 2012 London Olympics.

20. Johnny “Tarzan” Weissmuller took on a fake identity so he could represent the United States in the 1924 Olympics.

21. Through strange political circumstances, the very first Chinese delegation to the Summer Olympics was a single athlete.

22. The current distance for the Olympic marathon was based on where Queen Alexandra was sitting at the 1908 Summer Olympics.

Ta da!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 6th, 2009 at 4:11 pm and is filed under Archives. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Leave a Reply