用英语来说奥运的历史与起源

The first Games were held at a place called Olympia in Greece over 3000 years ago. The Games were ceremonies for the Greek god Zeus. Young men ran a race of about 184 meters-the length of a stadium-to see who would be crowned champion.
3000多年前，最早的奥林匹克运动会在希腊一个名为奥林匹亚的地方举行。那是一个祭拜希腊主神宙斯的典礼。青年男子会进行约184米的赛跑，看谁是冠军，这个比赛距离其后成为运动场标准跑道的长度。
The first recorded Olympic Games were held in 766 B. C. Although there was only one event-a running race-other events were added in later years. Men competed in chariot racing, wrestling, boxing, horse- riding, and many kinds of running races. In one race men had to run wearing a full suit of armor!
第一个有记录的奥林匹克运动会在公元前766年举行。当时只有一个比赛项目——赛跑，后来才加入了其它的项目，有赛战车、摔跤、拳击、赛马以及各种形式的赛跑。有种赛跑选手们还得穿着一整套盔甲上场！
The ancient Olympic Games were held in Greece for over 1000 years. But when the Romans conquered Greece the Games were banned, and battles between slaves and animals became a more popular competition. Fifteen hundred years were to pass before the Olympics would be born again.
古代奥林匹克运动会在希腊举行了1000多年。但罗马征服希腊后，运动会被禁止了，奴隶和动物之间的搏斗则成为更流行的比赛。过了1500年，奥林匹克运动会才得以重新举行。
The Modern Olympic Games 现代奥林匹克运动会
The modern Olympic Games were started by a Frenchman, Baron Pierre de Coubertin. During his travels around the world, he noticed that many people from many different countries liked sports. So in 1894 he arranged a meeting of people from nine countries to discuss holding a sports competition for athletes from all around the world.
现代奥林匹克运动会的创始人是法国男爵皮埃尔.德.顾拜旦。他在环游世界的时候发现许多国家的人都喜欢运动。于是，他于1894年召集了九国会议，商议举办一场由全世界运动员参与的运动比赛。
Two years later the first modern Olympic Games were held in Athens, with 311 men competing. At the next Olympic Games in 1900, 19 women joined the competition.
两年后，首届现代奥林匹克运动会在雅典举行，当时有311名男子运动员参加。在1900年举行的第二届奥运会有19名女运动员参加。
In the century to follow, the Olympics traveled to many countries around the world, meeting many different cultures and people, facing new challenges, growing and evolving. And now they have returned to Athens, the country of their birth.
在接下来的一个世纪里，奥运会在世界多个国家举行，与许多不同的文化和民族擦出火花，面对各种新的挑战、成长和发展。现在，奥运会又回到了它的发源地-——雅典。

The Olympics of Ancient Greece

Although records cannot verify games earlier than 776 B.C., the contests in Homer's Iliad indicate a much earlier competitive tradition. Held in honor of Zeus in the city of Olympia for four days every fourth summer, the Olympic games were the oldest and most prestigious of four great ancient Greek athletic festivals, which also included the Pythian games at Delphi, the Isthmian at Corinth, and the Nemean at Argos (the Panathenaea at Athens was also important). The Olympics reached their height in the 5th–4th cent. B.C.; thereafter they became more and more professionalized until, in the Roman period, they provoked much censure. They were eventually discontinued by Emperor Theodosius I of Rome, who condemned them as a pagan spectacle, at the end of the 4th cent. A.D.

Among the Greeks, the games were nationalistic in spirit; states were said to have been prouder of Olympic victories than of battles won. Women, foreigners, slaves, and dishonored persons were forbidden to compete. Contestants were required to train faithfully for 10 months before the games, had to remain 30 days under the eyes of officials in Elis, who had charge of the games, and had to take an oath that they had fulfilled the training requirements before participating. At first, the Olympic games were confined to running, but over time new events were added: the long run (720 B.C.), when the loincloth was abandoned and athletes began competing naked; the pentathlon, which combined running, the long jump, wrestling, and discus and spear throwing (708 B.C.); boxing (688 B.C.); chariot racing (680 B.C.); the pankration (648 B.C.), involving boxing and wrestling contests for boys (632 B.C.); and the foot race with armor (580 B.C.).

Greek women, forbidden not only to participate in but also to watch the Olympic games, held games of their own, called the Heraea. Those were also held every four years but had fewer events than the Olympics. Known to have been conducted as early as the 6th cent. B.C., the Heraea games were discontinued about the time the Romans conquered Greece. Winning was of prime importance in both male and female festivals. The winners of the Olympics (and of the Heraea) were crowned with chaplets of wild olive, and in their home city-states male champions were also awarded numerous honors, valuable gifts, and privileges.

The Modern Olympics

The modern revival of the Olympic games is due in a large measure to the efforts of Pierre, baron de Coubertin, of France. They were held, appropriately enough, in Athens in 1896, but that meeting and the ones that followed at Paris (1900) and at St. Louis (1904) were hampered by poor organization and the absence of worldwide representation. The first successful meet was held at London in 1908; since then the games have been held in cities throughout the world (see Sites of the Modern Olympic Games, table). World War I prevented the Olympic meeting of 1916, and World War II the 1940 and 1944 meetings. The number of entrants, competing nations, and events have increased steadily.

To the traditional events of track and field athletics, which include the decathlon and heptathlon, have been added a host of games and sports—archery, badminton, baseball and softball, basketball, boxing, canoeing and kayaking, cycling, diving, equestrian contests, fencing, field hockey, gymnastics, judo and taekwondo, the modern pentathlon, rowing, sailing, shooting, soccer, swimming, table tennis, team (field) handball, tennis, trampoline, the triathlon, volleyball, water polo, weight lifting, and wrestling. Olympic events for women made their first appearance in 1912. A separate series of winter Olympic meets, inaugurated (1924) at Chamonix, France, now includes ice hockey, curling, bobsledding, luge, skeleton, and skiing, snowboarding, and skating events. Since 1994 the winter games have been held in even-numbered years in which the summer games are not contested. Until late in the 20th cent. the modern Olympics were open only to amateurs, but the governing bodies of several sports now permit professionals to compete as well.

As a visible focus of world energies, the Olympics have been prey to many factors that thwarted their ideals of world cooperation and athletic excellence. As in ancient Greece, nationalistic fervor has fostered intense rivalries that at times threatened the survival of the games. Although officially only individuals win Olympic medals, nations routinely assign political significance to the feats of their citizens and teams. Between 1952 and 1988 rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union, rooted in mutual political antagonism, resulted in each boycotting games hosted by the other (Moscow, 1980; Los Angeles, 1984). Politics has influenced the Olympic games in other ways, from the propaganda of the Nazis in Berlin (1936) to pressures leading to the exclusion of white-ruled Rhodesia from the Munich games (1972). At Munich, nine Israeli athletes were kidnapped and murdered by Palestinian terrorists. The International Olympic Committee (IOC), which sets and enforces Olympic policy, has struggled with the licensing and commercialization of the games, the need to schedule events to accommodate American television networks (whose broadcasting fees help underwrite the games), and the monitoring of athletes who seek illegal competitive advantages, often through the use of performance-enhancing drugs. The IOC itself has also been the subject of controversy. In 1998 a scandal erupted with revelations that bribery and favoritism had played a role in the awarding of the 2002 Winter Games to Salt Lake City, Utah, and in the selection of some earlier venues. As a result, the IOC instituted a number of reforms including, in 1999, initiating age and term limits for members and barring them from visiting cities bidding to be Olympic sites.

The Olympic Games
The Olympic Games have a history of more than two thousand years. The Games are held every four years.
There are five rings on the Olympic flag which are considered to symbolize the five continents: Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia and America. The Olympic motto is swifter, higher, stronger.
Many countries try their best to hold the Olympic Games. Every country does its best to get more medals in the Games.
In 2004, Athens held the 28th Olympic Games. Over one hundred countries joined the Games. We won 32 gold medals that year and came second in the Games. China, a large sports country, will hold the 29th Olympic Games in 2008. It is the first time for China to hold such an important match. We have no experience, but the people all over the country are participating in all kinds of activities and getting ready for it. Chinese people will give the world the best Olympic Games in history. It is also a good chance for China to show its strong national power to the world. Having the future in mind, we must study hard and try to be good at English.