How have the Olympic Games evolved over 120 years?

In 1896 the very first modern Olympic Games were held in Athens. Only 241 athletes, all of them men, took part in those Games. In contrast, during the last Summer Olympics in 2016 a staggering 11,238 athletes competed. But the Games have changed in various other ways as well. We'll highlight a few interesting changes and trends here.

The gender gap in Olympic athletes

Women have always been able to participate in the Games, except for the very first edition in Athens in 1896. At first only very few women competed in the Olympics, but even before the turn of the 21th century some countries send more female athletes than male athletes.

We can explore the evolution of the gender gap in Olympic athletes with the chart below. It shows the gender gap for the 30 countries with the most participants for a specific Summer Olympic. The blue and red circles show the number of male and female athletes respectively. The size of the circles represent the absolute size and the y axis shows the percentage of the total. You can scroll through history with the timeline and select a specific Summer Olympic.

Dot chart of competing athletes from the countries with the most participants in the year .
male athletes female athletes

The Olympic events

Nowadays the host organising committee is allowed to add sports to the Olympic program to augment the permanent core Olympic events. Under these rules Tokio 2020 will see karate, sport climbing, surfing, and skateboarding make their Olympic debuts, as well as the return of baseball and softball for the first time since 2008.

It's not unusual however for the list of Olympic events to change. The instance chart below shows that in fact many sports have come and gone throughout Olympic history.

The popularity of Olympic sports

Not only the listed events changed with every edition. The popularity of different sports changed with every four years as well. Those sports that are popular often remain popular, but sometimes they disappear like Art Composition.

We can explore the gain in popularity or the downfall of a sport with the chart below. You can get more information about a sport in a certain year if you move over the corresponding dot. Hover on the name of a sport to see the see the journey it has taken so far. The colors have no meaning.

The names of the sports are sorted by first year of introduction and those from the same year are sorted by popularity. Dashed line implies that the sport was not organized.