The earliest Olympic games took place in ancient Greece possibly as far back as the fourteenth century B.C.E. The ancient Olympics mixed sport with pagan religion, and the Romans banned them in 393 C.E. Baron Pierre de Coubertin (1862–1937) staged the first "modern" summer Olympic games for amateur athletes in Athens, Greece, in 1896. The first official winter games were held in 1928 in St. Moritz, Switzerland, though the events of the eleven-day "International Winter Sports Week" in Chamonix, France, are usually called the first winter games. In the 1960s, the first "Paralympics" allowed athletes with disabilities to compete on a world stage. For years and years, both the summer and winter Olympics were held in different cities the same year, every four years; beginning in 1994, however, the winter and summer Olympics began alternating every two years.

The Olympics began in a spirit of fair play and honor among...