The 2008 Summer Olympics are about to begin, hosted in Beijing, China. A lot has changed in the Olympics since the 60s and 70s, when Gen-Xers started observing the Olympics. In the 70s and 80s, our generation started to become participants in the Olympiad, the world-class athletes who represented their countries' finest competition in truly "global" competition. "Global" is relative, though, considering some countries and/or athletes have boycotted games for moral, political, religious, and other reasons.
The most major change for us came in 1992, when the Olympic Summer and Winter events were switched to an alternating four cycle, with the Summer and Winter games in years two apart. Prior to this, both the Winter and Summer games occurred in the same year, with each Olympiad celebrated four years apart. Was this a marketing ploy by the IOC to increase interest in the games? Was it done to help the country's maintain "relevancy" in their Olympic efforts to raise funds and keep awareness alive?
There were major tragedies in the spirit of the games, though, too. In Munich, Germany in 1972, members of the Israeli team were taken hostage, resulting in deaths. In 1996 in Atlanta, Georgia, USA, a bomb was exploded during nighttime festivities, killing two and injuring and maiming over one hundred others. The 1980 Moscow games were boycotted by many Western nations over the controversial invasion of Afghanistan by the U.S.S.R. In 1984, many Eastern Bloc countries retaliated and boycotted the Los Angeles games, citing security concerns for their athletes and delegations. The 1984 Winter Games were proudly held in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia. Since then, the city has been essentially destroyed due to the Bosnian-Serbian conflict.
The actual events have changed drastically, too. Performances have improved dramatically due to training, strength, diet, and technology. Many new events have been added to each of the various seasonal arenas, too. Many "fringe" or "extreme" sports have been added. Martial arts, synchronized swimming, snow-boarding, beach volleyball have been added to attract interest from younger spectators. Finally, there has been a major shift in the athletes' professional status. It had once been "customary" that the athletes in Olympic games were to be considered amateur, but this has changed dramatically as now it is frequent to see many highly paid athletes competing for "the gold," including NBA, NHL, MLB, and other sports such as tennis, equestrian, etc. The only major event to be really still considered "amateur" is boxing.
