Sydney
Sydney is the state capital of New South Wales and the most populous city in Australia and Oceania. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Port Jackson and extends about 70 km on its periphery towards the Blue Mountains to the west, Hawkesbury to the north, the Royal National Park to the south and Macarthur to the south-west. Sydney is made up of 40 local government areas and 15 contiguous regions. Residents of the city are known as "Sydneysiders"; as of June 2017, Sydney's estimated metropolitan population was 5,230,330 and is home to 65% of the state's population. Indigenous Australians have inhabited the Sydney area for at least 30,000 years, thousands of engravings remain throughout the region, making it one of the richest in Australia in terms of Aboriginal archaeological sites. During his first Pacific voyage in 1770, Lieutenant James Cook and his crew became the first Europeans to chart the eastern coast of Australia, making landfall at Botany Bay and inspiring British interest in the area.
In 1788, the First Fleet of convicts, led by Arthur Phillip, founded Sydney as a British penal colony, the first European settlement in Australia. Phillip named the city Sydney in recognition of 1st Viscount Sydney. Penal transportation to New South Wales ended soon after Sydney was incorporated as a city in 1842. A gold rush occurred in the colony in 1851, over the next century, Sydney transformed from a colonial outpost into a major global cultural and economic centre. After World War II, it experienced mass migration and became one of the most multicultural cities in the world. At the time of the 2011 census, more than 250 different languages were spoken in Sydney. In the 2016 Census, about 35.8% of residents spoke a language other than English at home. Furthermore, 45.4% of the population reported having been born overseas, making Sydney the 3rd largest foreign born population of any city in the world after London and New York City, respectively. Despite being one of the most expensive cities in the world, the 2018 Mercer Quality of Living Survey ranks Sydney tenth in the world in terms of quality of living, making it one of the most livable cities.
It is classified as an Alpha+ World City by Globalization and World Cities Research Network, indicating its influence in the region and throughout the world. Ranked eleventh in the world for economic opportunity, Sydney has an advanced market economy with strengths in finance and tourism. There is a significant concentration of foreign banks and multinational corporations in Sydney and the city is promoted as Australia's financial capital and one of Asia Pacific's leading financial hubs. Established in 1850, the University of Sydney is Australia's first university and is regarded as one of the world's leading universities. Sydney is home to the oldest library in Australia, State Library of New South Wales, opened in 1826. Sydney has hosted major international sporting events such as the 2000 Summer Olympics; the city is among the top fifteen most-visited cities in the world, with millions of tourists coming each year to see the city's landmarks. Boasting over 1,000,000 ha of nature reserves and parks, its notable natural features include Sydney Harbour, the Royal National Park, Royal Botanic Garden and Hyde Park, the oldest parkland in the country.
Built attractions such as the Sydney Harbour Bridge and the World Heritage-listed Sydney Opera House are well known to international visitors. The main passenger airport serving the metropolitan area is Kingsford-Smith Airport, one of the world's oldest continually operating airports. Established in 1906, Central station, the largest and busiest railway station in the state, is the main hub of the city's rail network; the first people to inhabit the area now known as Sydney were indigenous Australians having migrated from northern Australia and before that from southeast Asia. Radiocarbon dating suggests human activity first started to occur in the Sydney area from around 30,735 years ago. However, numerous Aboriginal stone tools were found in Western Sydney's gravel sediments that were dated from 45,000 to 50,000 years BP, which would indicate that there was human settlement in Sydney earlier than thought; the first meeting between the native people and the British occurred on 29 April 1770 when Lieutenant James Cook landed at Botany Bay on the Kurnell Peninsula and encountered the Gweagal clan.
He noted in his journal that they were somewhat hostile towards the foreign visitors. Cook was not commissioned to start a settlement, he spent a short time collecting food and conducting scientific observations before continuing further north along the east coast of Australia and claiming the new land he had discovered for Britain. Prior to the arrival of the British there were 4,000 to 8,000 native people in Sydney from as many as 29 different clans; the earliest British settlers called the natives Eora people. "Eora" is the term the indigenous population used to explain their origins upon first contact with the British. Its literal meaning is "from this place". Sydney Cove from Port Jackson to Petersham was inhabited by the Cadigal clan; the principal language groups were Darug and Dharawal. The earliest Europeans to visit the area noted that the indigenous people were conducting activities such as camping and fishing, using trees for bark and food, collecting shells, cooking fish. Britain—before that, England—and Ireland had for a long time been sending their convicts across the Atlantic to the American colonies.
That trade was ended with the Declaration of Independence by the United States in 1776. Britain decided in 1786 to found a new penal outpost in the territory discovered by Cook some 16 years ear
Field hockey
Field hockey is a team game of the hockey family. The earliest origins of the game date back to the Middle Ages in Pakistan; the game can be played on grass, water turf, artificial turf or synthetic field as well as an indoor board surface. Each team plays with eleven players, including the goalie. Players use sticks made out of wood, carbon fibre, fibre glass or a combination of carbon fibre and fibre glass in different quantities to hit a round, plastic ball; the length of the stick depends on the player's individual height. Only one face of the stick is allowed to be used. Goalies have a different kind of stick, however they can use an ordinary field hockey stick; the specific goal-keeping sticks have another curve at the end of the stick, this is to give them more surface area to save the ball. The uniform consists of shin guards, shorts, a mouth guard and a jersey. Today, the game is played globally in parts of Western Europe, South Asia, Southern Africa, New Zealand and parts of the United States.
Known as "hockey" in many territories, the term "field hockey" is used in Canada and the United States where ice hockey is more popular. In Sweden, the term "landhockey" is used and to some degree in Norway where it is governed by Norway's Bandy Association. During play, goal keepers are the only players who are allowed to touch the ball with any part of their body, while field players play the ball with the flat side of their stick. If the ball is touched with the rounded part of the stick, it will result in a penalty. Goal keepers cannot play the ball with the back of their stick. Whoever scores the most goals by the end of the match wins. If the score is tied at the end of the game, either a draw is declared or the game goes into extra time or a penalty shootout, depending on the competition's format. There are many variations to overtime play that depend on the tournament play. In college play, a seven-aside overtime period consists of a 10-minute golden goal period with seven players for each team.
If a tie still remains, the game enters a one-on-one competition where each team chooses 5 players to dribble from the 25-yard line down to the circle against the opposing goalie. The player has 8 seconds to score on the goalie keeping it in bounds; the play ends after a goal is scored, the ball goes out of bounds, a foul is committed or time expires. If the tie still persists extra rounds thereafter until one team has scored; the governing body of field hockey is the International Hockey Federation, with men and women being represented internationally in competitions including the Olympic Games, World Cup, World League, Champions Trophy and Junior World Cup, with many countries running extensive junior and masters club competitions. The FIH is responsible for organizing the Hockey Rules Board and developing the rules for the game. A popular variant of field hockey is indoor field hockey, which differs in a number of respects while embodying the primary principles of hockey. Indoor hockey is a 5-a-side variant, with a field, reduced to 40 m × 20 m.
With many of the rules remaining the same, including obstruction and feet, there are several key variations: Players may not raise the ball unless shooting on goal, players may not hit the ball, the sidelines are replaced with solid barriers which the ball will rebound off. In addition, the regulation guidelines for the indoor field hockey stick require a thinner, lighter stick than an outdoor stick. There is a depiction of a field hockey-like game in Ancient Greece, dating to c. 510 BC, when the game may have been called Κερητίζειν because it was played with a horn and a ball. Researchers disagree over, it could have been one-on-one activity. Billiards historians Stein and Rubino believe it was among the games ancestral to lawn-and-field games like hockey and ground billiards, near-identical depictions appear both in the Beni Hasan tomb of Ancient Egyptian administrator Khety of the 11th Dynasty, in European illuminated manuscripts and other works of the 14th through 17th centuries, showing contemporary courtly and clerical life.
In East Asia, a similar game was entertained, using a carved wooden stick and ball prior, to 300 BC. In Inner Mongolia, the Daur people have for about 1,000 years been playing beikou, a game with some similarities to field hockey. A similar field hockey or ground billiards variant, called suigan, was played in China during the Ming dynasty. A game similar to field hockey was played in the 17th century in Punjab state in India under name khido khundi. In South America, most in Chile, the local natives of the 16th century used to play a game called chueca, which shares common elements with hockey. In Northern Europe, the games of hurling and Knattleikr, both team balls games involving sticks to drive a ball to the opponents' goal, date at least as far back as the Early Middle Ages. By the 12th century, a team ball game called la soule or choule, akin to a chaotic and sometimes long-distance version
Australia
Australia the Commonwealth of Australia, is a sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and numerous smaller islands. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area; the neighbouring countries are Papua New Guinea and East Timor to the north. The population of 25 million is urbanised and concentrated on the eastern seaboard. Australia's capital is Canberra, its largest city is Sydney; the country's other major metropolitan areas are Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide. Australia was inhabited by indigenous Australians for about 60,000 years before the first British settlement in the late 18th century, it is documented. After the European exploration of the continent by Dutch explorers in 1606, who named it New Holland, Australia's eastern half was claimed by Great Britain in 1770 and settled through penal transportation to the colony of New South Wales from 26 January 1788, a date which became Australia's national day; the population grew in subsequent decades, by the 1850s most of the continent had been explored and an additional five self-governing crown colonies established.
On 1 January 1901, the six colonies federated. Australia has since maintained a stable liberal democratic political system that functions as a federal parliamentary constitutional monarchy, comprising six states and ten territories. Being the oldest and driest inhabited continent, with the least fertile soils, Australia has a landmass of 7,617,930 square kilometres. A megadiverse country, its size gives it a wide variety of landscapes, with deserts in the centre, tropical rainforests in the north-east and mountain ranges in the south-east. A gold rush began in Australia in the early 1850s, its population density, 2.8 inhabitants per square kilometre, remains among the lowest in the world. Australia generates its income from various sources including mining-related exports, telecommunications and manufacturing. Indigenous Australian rock art is the oldest and richest in the world, dating as far back as 60,000 years and spread across hundreds of thousands of sites. Australia is a developed country, with the world's 14th-largest economy.
It has a high-income economy, with the world's tenth-highest per capita income. It is a regional power, has the world's 13th-highest military expenditure. Australia has the world's ninth-largest immigrant population, with immigrants accounting for 26% of the population. Having the third-highest human development index and the eighth-highest ranked democracy globally, the country ranks in quality of life, education, economic freedom, civil liberties and political rights, with all its major cities faring well in global comparative livability surveys. Australia is a member of the United Nations, G20, Commonwealth of Nations, ANZUS, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, World Trade Organization, Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, Pacific Islands Forum and the ASEAN Plus Six mechanism; the name Australia is derived from the Latin Terra Australis, a name used for a hypothetical continent in the Southern Hemisphere since ancient times. When Europeans first began visiting and mapping Australia in the 17th century, the name Terra Australis was applied to the new territories.
Until the early 19th century, Australia was best known as "New Holland", a name first applied by the Dutch explorer Abel Tasman in 1644 and subsequently anglicised. Terra Australis still saw occasional usage, such as in scientific texts; the name Australia was popularised by the explorer Matthew Flinders, who said it was "more agreeable to the ear, an assimilation to the names of the other great portions of the earth". The first time that Australia appears to have been used was in April 1817, when Governor Lachlan Macquarie acknowledged the receipt of Flinders' charts of Australia from Lord Bathurst. In December 1817, Macquarie recommended to the Colonial Office. In 1824, the Admiralty agreed that the continent should be known by that name; the first official published use of the new name came with the publication in 1830 of The Australia Directory by the Hydrographic Office. Colloquial names for Australia include "Oz" and "the Land Down Under". Other epithets include "the Great Southern Land", "the Lucky Country", "the Sunburnt Country", "the Wide Brown Land".
The latter two both derive from Dorothea Mackellar's 1908 poem "My Country". Human habitation of the Australian continent is estimated to have begun around 65,000 to 70,000 years ago, with the migration of people by land bridges and short sea-crossings from what is now Southeast Asia; these first inhabitants were the ancestors of modern Indigenous Australians. Aboriginal Australian culture is one of the oldest continual civilisations on earth. At the time of first European contact, most Indigenous Australians were hunter-gatherers with complex economies and societies. Recent archaeological finds suggest. Indigenous Australians have an oral culture with spiritual values based on reverence for the land and a belief in the Dreamtime; the Torres Strait Islanders, ethnically Melanesian, obtained their livelihood from seasonal horticulture and the resources of their reefs and seas. The northern coasts and waters of Australia were visited s
Field hockey in India
Field hockey in India refers to two teams, the India men's national field hockey team and the India women's national field hockey team. In June 2018, the Chief Minister of Indian state Odisha wrote a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi urging him to declare field hockey as the national sports of India; the state government of Odisha has been supporting India's national field hockey team from February 2018 till next five years. The 2018 Men's Hockey World Cup was held in Odisha between November 28 and December 16 and culminated with Belgium as World Champions defeating Netherlands in the finals. Field hockey was India's National sport but this is no longer the case as the country now has no national sport; the Indian Olympic Association appointed a new five-member national selection committee. This panel will work in conjunction with the International Hockey Federation in managing field hockey in India; the panel was headed by Aslam Sher Khan, a former MP and former hockey captain and includes Ashok Kumar, Ajit Pal Singh, Zafar Iqbal and Dhanraj Pillay.
Aslam Sher Khan has now been replaced by Ajit Pal Singh as the chairman of the national selection committee. Aslam Sher Khan was displeased by this decision, though he remained as a selector. On 30 April 2008, in an interview with India Today, Khan indicated the impact of the 2007 film about the National Women's Hockey Team, Chak De India, on his future strategy by stating that he wants "to create a'Chak De' effect" within Indian hockey. Indian Men's Hockey Team never won the Champions trophy; the 2018 Edition of Champions Trophy will be the last of its kind. Second Place Years - Third Place Years - Fourth Place Years - " = host nation Related Article: List of Indian field hockey captains in Olympics Related Article: Hockey World Cup The Indian Hockey Team is the national men's hockey team of India, it was the first non-European team to be a part of the International Hockey Federation. In 1928, the team won its first Olympic gold medal. From 1928 to 1956, was the golden period for the Indian Hockey team.
The Indian men's team remained unbeaten in the Olympics. The Indian team has won a total of one silver and two bronze medals in Olympics. On 9 March 2008, India lost 2–0 to Britain at Santiago, Chile in the final of one of the three qualifying tournaments for the Beijing Olympics. With only the winner advancing to the 12-team event, the Indian men's team was eliminated from the Beijing Olympics competition; this is the first time that the Indian men's team did not participate in the Olympics since 1928. India finished in 12th place in the 2012 London Olympics. On 26 Feb 2012, the India men's national field hockey team qualified for the 2012 Summer Olympics in London after a gap of 8 years; the team had a resounding victory over France in the finals of the Olympic qualifiers by beating France by 8–1. Ace drag-flicker Sandeep Singh, starred in the final against France by scoring five goals – including a hat-trick – all from penalty corners. Indian Men's Team Finished in 9th place in World Cup 2014 held in Netherlands.
Indian team won Silver Medal at Glasgow. They lost to Australia 4-0 in the Finals. India will host the 2018 World Cup. India won 2014 Asian Games Gold Medal after 16 years. India won Asia Cup held in DHaka in 2017. Indian Men's hockey team won by a record 26-0 margin against Hong Kong in the 2018 Asian Games pool games; the earlier record was 24-1 made 86 years ago in the 1932 Olympics when India outclassed the USA. The Indian Women's Hockey Team is the national women's team representing hockey in India. Is the national women's team that represents India in international field hockey competitions; the team is coached by Canada's Mathias Ahrens and led by halfback Ritu Rani from Haryana and is ranked 13th in the FIH World Rankings. Captain Suraj Lata Devi led the team to the Gold for three consecutive years: during the 2002 Commonwealth Games, the 2003 Afro-Asian Games, the 2004 Hockey Asia Cup, they were referred to as the "Jassi jaisi koi nahi" or "Golden girls of hockey," after winning the 2004 Hockey Asia Cup.
During the summer of 2015, the team hosted the Round 2 of the 2014–15 Women's FIH Hockey World League and finished on top to qualify for the next stage. At the World League Semifinals held in Antwerp the team finished in the fifth place beating higher ranked Japan in classification match; the Indian woman's national field hockey team has thus qualified for the 2016 Summer Olympics for the first time since the 1980 Summer Olympics. The Odisha Hockey Team is one of the regional hockey team from Indian state of Odisha. Lazarus Barla, Prabodh Tirkey, Dilip Tirkey, Ignace Tirkey, Jyoti Sunita Kullu, Lazarus Barla, Subhadra Pradhan, Birendra Lakra and Anupa Barla have been part of Indian hockey team in International level. Premier Hockey League is league competition for field Hockey clubs in the top division of the Indian hockey system. There are seven teams in the PHL and Orissa Steelers is the only team from Eastern India. Orissa Steelers has won the Premier Hockey League in 2007; the 2014 Men's Hockey Champions Trophy was held in Bhubaneswar.
The 2018 Men's Hockey World Cup is going to be held in the state capital Bhubaneswar Biju Patnaik Hockey Stadium - Rourkela Kalinga Stadium - Bhubaneswar All India MCC Murugappa Gold Cup Hockey Tournament, Chennai All India Gurmeet Memorial Hockey Tournament, Chandigarh IndianOil Surjit Hockey Tournament, Jalandhar All India Chhatrapati Shivaji Hockey Tournament, Delhi Al
Chandigarh
Chandigarh is a city and a union territory in India that serves as the capital of the two neighbouring states of Punjab and Haryana. The city is unique as it is not a part of either of the two states but is governed directly by the Union Government, which administers all such territories in the country. Chandigarh is bordered by the state of Punjab to the north, the west and the south, to the state of Haryana to the east, it is considered to be a part of the Chandigarh capital region or Greater Chandigarh, which includes Chandigarh, the city of Panchkula and cities of Kharar, Mohali, Zirakpur. It is located 260 km north of 229 km southeast of Amritsar, it was one of the early planned cities in post-independent India and is internationally known for its architecture and urban design. The master plan of the city was prepared by Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier, which transformed from earlier plans created by the Polish architect Maciej Nowicki and the American planner Albert Mayer. Most of the government buildings and housing in the city, were designed by the Chandigarh Capital Project Team headed by Le Corbusier, Jane Drew and Maxwell Fry.
In 2015, an article published by BBC named Chandigarh as one of the perfect cities of the world in terms of architecture, cultural growth and modernisation. Chandigarh’s Capitol Complex was in July 2016 declared by UNESCO as World Heritage at the 40th session of World Heritage Conference held in Istanbul. UNESCO inscription was under "The Architectural Work of Le Corbusier an outstanding contribution to the Modern Movement"; the Capitol Complex buildings include the Punjab and Haryana High Court and Haryana Secretariat and Punjab and Haryana Assembly along with monuments Open hand, Martyrs Memorial, Geometric Hill and Tower of Shadow and the Rock Garden The city has one of the highest per capita incomes in the country. The city was reported to be one of the cleanest in India based on a national government study; the union territory heads the list of Indian states and territories according to Human Development Index. In 2015, a survey by LG Electronics, ranked it as the happiest city in India over the happiness index.
The metropolitan area of Chandigarh–Mohali–Panchkula collectively forms a Tri-city, with a combined population of over 1,611,770. The name Chandigarh is a compound of Garh. Chandi refers to Hindu goddess Garh means fortress; the name is derived from Chandi Mandir, an ancient temple devoted to the Hindu Goddess Chandi, near the city in Panchkula District. The motif or sobriquet of "The City of Beauty " was derived from the City Beautiful movement, a popular philosophy in North American urban planning during the 1890s and 1900s. Architect Albert Mayer, the initial planner of Chandigarh, lamented the American rejection of City Beautiful concepts and declared "We want to create a beautiful city..." The phrase was used on as a logo in official publications in the 1970s, is now how the city describes itself. The city has a prehistoric past. Due to the presence of a lake, the area has fossil remains with imprints of a large variety of aquatic plants and animals, amphibian life, which were supported by that environment.
As it was a part of the Punjab region, it had many rivers nearby where the ancient and primitive settling of humans began. So, about 3000 years ago, the area was known to be a home to the Harappans. Chandigarh was the dream city of Jawaharlal Nehru. After the partition of India in 1947, the former British province of Punjab was split between East Punjab in India and West Punjab in Pakistan; the Indian Punjab required a new capital city to replace Lahore, which had become part of Pakistan during the partition. Therefore, an American planner and architect Albert Mayer was tasked to design a new city called "Chandigarh" in 1949; the government carved out Chandigarh of nearly 50 Puadhi speaking villages of the state of East Punjab, India. Shimla was the temporary capital of East Punjab until Chandigarh was completed in 1960. Albert Mayer, during his work on the development and planning of the new capital city of Chandigarh, developed a superblock-based city threaded with green spaces which emphasized cellular neighborhoods and traffic segregation.
His site plan used natural characteristics, using its gentle grade to promote drainage and rivers to orient the plan. Mayer discontinued his work on Chandigarh after developing a master plan for the city when his architect-partner Matthew Nowicki died in a plane crash in 1950. Government officials recruited Le Corbusier to succeed Mayer and Nowicki, who enlisted many elements of Mayer's original plan without attributing them to him. Le Corbusier designed many administration buildings, including the High Court, the Palace of Assembly and the Secretariat Building. Le Corbusier designed the general layout of the city, dividing it into sectors. Chandigarh hosts the largest of Le Corbusier's many Open Hand sculptures, standing 26 metres high; the Open Hand is a recurring motif in Le Corbusier's architecture, a sign for him of "peace and reconciliation. It is open to give and open to receive." It represents what Le Corbusier called the "Second Machine Age". Two of the six monuments planned in the Capitol Complex which has the High Court, the Assembly and the Secretariat, remain incomplete.
These include Martyrs Memorial. On 1 November 1966, the newly formed state of Haryana was carved out of the eastern portion of East Punjab, in order to create a new state for the majority Haryanvi-speaking people in that portion, while the western portion
India men's national field hockey team
The India national field hockey team was the first non-European team to be a part of the International Hockey Federation. In 1928, the team won its first Olympic gold medal and until 1960, the Indian men's team remained unbeaten in the Olympics, winning six gold medals in a row; the team had a 30–0 winning streak during this time, from their first game until losing in the 1960 gold medal final. India won the 1975 World Cup. India is the most successful team in the Olympics, having won eight gold, one silver and two bronze medals till date. After their gold medal win at the 1980 Olympics, the team's performance declined through the next three decades, with the team failing to win a medal at the Olympics or the World Cup. In 2016, the Indian men's team won its first silver medal in Champions Trophy and reached the knockout stage of the Olympics for the first time in 36 years; as of 2018, the team is ranked fifth in the world. From February 2018, the Government of Odisha has started sponsoring the Indian national field hockey team, both men and women team.
In a first-of-its-kind association, the state has decided to support the India's field hockey team for next five years. * denotes players part of the 2018 Men's Hockey Champions Trophy squad. Caps as of 27 October 2018 as per FIH. Players who are part of the 33-member core squad for 2018: Other players who were part of the squad in 2018: Head coach: Graham Reid Assistant coach: Jugraj Singh Analytical coach: Chris Ciriello High-performance director: David John Scientific advisor: Scott Conway List of Indian hockey captains in Olympics Hockey Junior World Cup Hockey Junior Asia Cup Hockey in India India women's national field hockey team Official website FIH profile
Summer Olympic Games
The Summer Olympic Games or the Games of the Olympiad, first held in 1896, is a major international multi-sport event held once every four years. The most recent Olympics were held in Rio de Brazil; the International Olympic Committee oversees the host city's preparations. In each Olympic event, gold medals are awarded for first place, silver medals are awarded for second place, bronze medals are awarded for third place; the Winter Olympic Games were created due to the success of the Summer Olympics. The Olympics have increased in scope from a 42-event competition with fewer than 250 male competitors from 14 nations in 1896, to 306 events with 11,238 competitors from 206 nations in 2016; the Summer Olympics has been hosted on five continents by a total of nineteen countries. The Games have been held four times in the United States; the IOC has selected Tokyo, Japan, to host the Summer Olympics for a second time in 2020. The 2024 Summer Olympics will be held in Paris, for a third time one hundred years after the city's last Summer Olympics in 1924.
The IOC has selected Los Angeles, California, to host its third Summer Games in 2028. To date, only five countries have participated in every Summer Olympic Games – Australia, Great Britain and Switzerland; the United States leads the all-time medal table for the Summer Olympics. The United States has hosted the Summer Olympic Games four times: the 1904 Games were held in St. Louis, Missouri; the 2028 Games in Los Angeles will mark the fifth occasion on which the Summer Games have been hosted by the U. S. In 2012, the United Kingdom hosted its third Summer Olympic Games in the capital city, which became the first city to have hosted the Summer Olympic Games three times; the cities of Los Angeles and Athens have each hosted two Summer Olympic Games. In 2024, France will host its third Summer Olympic Games in its capital, making Paris the second city to have hosted three Summer Olympics. In 2028, Los Angeles will become the third city to have hosted the Games three times. Australia, France and Greece have all hosted the Summer Olympic Games twice.
The IOC has selected Tokyo, Japan, to host the 2020 Summer Olympics, when it will become the first city outside the Western world to have hosted the Summer Olympics more than once, having hosted the Games in 1964. The other countries that have hosted the Summer Olympics are Belgium, China, Finland, Mexico, South Korea, Soviet Union, Sweden. Asia has hosted the Summer Olympics three times, in Tokyo, Seoul, South Korea, Beijing, China; the Summer Olympics has been held predominantly in English-speaking countries and European nations. Tokyo will be the first city outside these regions to have hosted the Summer Olympics twice; the 2016 Games in Rio de Janeiro, were the first Summer Olympics to be held in South America and the first that were held during the local winter season. The only two countries in the Southern Hemisphere to have hosted the Summer Olympics have been Australia and Brazil. Africa has yet to host a Summer Olympics. Stockholm, has hosted events at two Summer Olympic Games, having been sole host of the 1912 Games, hosting the equestrian events at the 1956 Summer Olympics.
Amsterdam, has hosted events at two Summer Olympic Games, having been sole host of the 1928 Games and hosting two of the sailing races at the 1920 Summer Olympics. At the 2008 Summer Olympics, Hong Kong provided the venues for the equestrian events, which took place in Sha Tin and Kwu Tung; the modern Olympic Games were founded in 1894 when Pierre de Coubertin sought to promote international understanding through sporting competition. He based his Olympics on the Wenlock Olympian Society Annual Games, contested in Much Wenlock since 1850; the first edition of de Coubertin's games, held in Athens in 1896, attracted just 245 competitors, of whom more than 200 were Greek, only 14 countries were represented. No international events of this magnitude had been organised before. Female athletes were not allowed to compete, though one woman, Stamata Revithi, ran the marathon course on her own, saying "If the committee doesn't let me compete I will go after them regardless"; the 1896 Summer Olympics known as the Games of the Olympiad, was an international multi-sport event, celebrated in Athens, from 6 to 15 April 1896.
It was the first Olympic Games held in the Modern era. About 100,000 people attended for the opening of the games; the athletes came with most coming from Greece. Although Greece had the most athletes, the U. S. finished with the most champions. 11 Americans placed first in their events vs. the 10 from Greece
