The 2020 Olympics have been postponed to 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
This is the very first time any Summer Olympics have been delayed.
But this isn't the first crisis to influence the Olympics, not even the first pandemic.
We'll go backwards through history and shine a light on the tumultuous story of these famous Games.
Throughout the 20th century the number of athletes participating in the Olympic Games rose greatly.
In the post-Cold War era the number of athletes has leveled out though.
We can clearly see this in the chart below.
We also see that the increase in participants is marked by many sharp declines however.
In the following sections we'll look more closely at each of the crises at the root of these
decreases.
Chart of participating athletes for each edition of the modern Olympic Games.
The pre-Cold War era
In the pre-Cold War era the most disruptive crisis for the Olympics was The Great Depression in the
thirties.
Chart showing the effect of different crises on the number of participating athletes for each
edition of
the modern Olympic Games.
The Spanish Flu outbreak of 1918–1919 seems to have had little impact on the Olympic Games of 1920.
In
fact one could argue that the pandemic contributed to the end of WWI, and in doing so, allowed the
1920
Summer Olympics in Antwerp to take place.
Chart showing the participating teams for each edition of the modern Olympic Games.
WWI and WWII
During both world wars no Olympic Games were held. The 1916, 1940, and 1944 Summer Olympics were the
only
every to be canceled.
However the 1936 Games in Nazi Germany are inexorably linked with our memory of the Second World War.
Debates about boycotts or whether to even allow the competition to take place, started prior to the
Games
and continued during the event as well.
The protests were ultimately unsuccessful however and a record forty-nine teams partook in Berlin.
The Cold War
Chart showing the effect of different Cold War crises on the number of participating athletes for
each
edition of the modern Olympic Games.
Chart showing the participating teams for each edition of the modern Olympic Games during the Cold
War.
The post-Cold War era
The financial crisis of 2008 hit around the time of the Olympic Games in Beijing and so probably didn't
affect it.
The subsequent games in London did however have a marked drop in competing athletes which could be
explained
by the preceding recession.
Chart of participating athletes for each edition of the modern Olympic Games in the post-Cold War
era.