Amazing Olympic Facts
1. Sports journalists were banned from the first Olympics as they were considered to be professional sportspeople.
2. Three and a half Olympic swimming pools could hold all the gold ever mined in the world.
3. Croquet was dropped as an Olympic sport after 1900 because only one spectator turned up to watch.
4. About 100,000 condoms were given to Olympic athletes at the Vancouver Winter Olympics 2010, and they used them all!
5. If every star in the Milky Way was a grain of salt, they would fill an Olympic sized swimming pool
6. At the Vancouver Winter Olympics, the medals were made from recycled televisions and computer circuit boards.
7. At the 1928 Olympics, oarsman Henry Pearce stopped to let a family of ducks cross his lane and went on to win the gold medal.
8. The 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics cost more than the last 13 Olympics combined.
9. At the 1932 Olympics, the 3,000-metre steeplechase was run over 3,400 metres because an official lost count of the number of laps.
10. Michael Phelps has won more Olympic golds than India, Nigeria, North Korea, Portugal, Taiwan and Thailand combined.
11. The five interlocking Olympic rings are black, blue, red, white and yellow because at least 1 of these colors appears on every flag
12. One Direction are the youngest band to ever perform at the Olympic Games.
13. The 1904 Summer Olympic Games, held in St. Louis, included greased pole climbing, rock throwing, and mud fighting.
14. I wish staircase tumbling was an olympic event.
15. The annual cost to the UK economy of reoffending by ex-prisoners is equivalent to staging the Olympics every year.
16. At the 1936 Berlin Summer Olympics, Haiti and Liechtenstein found out they had the same flag. Liechtenstein later added a crown.
17. All Olympic curling stones are made of a rare type of granite that is only found on a tiny island in Scotland.
18. The torch relay at the beginning of the Olympics was actually a Nazi idea.
19. The opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics was the first time a billion people have watched a sporting event.
20. Muhammad Ali actually threw his Olympic gold medal into a river as a way to protest racial discrimination in America.
21. The Olympic Gold metal is only 1.34% gold.
22. George Eyser, who won three golds, two silvers and a bronze at the 1904 Olympics, had a wooden leg.
23. Olympic medal-winners live almost three years longer than the rest of us.
24. Olympic swimmers routinely pee in the pool.
25. At the 1956 Olympics, Russian rower Vyacheslav Ivanov was so excited at winning gold that he dropped his medal into the lake and it was never found.
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Olympic FactsGeorge Eyser, who won three golds, two silvers and a bronze at the 1904 Olympics, had a wooden leg.
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