The longest standing modern Olympic athletics record is Bob Beamon s achievement in the men s long jump at the 1968 Summer Olympics The jump at 8 90 m (29 ft 2 in) also broke the existing world record by 55 cm (22 in) and stood for 23 years until Beamon s compatriot Mike Powell jumped further in the 1991 World Championships in Athletics in Tokyo
Back at the turn of the 20th century there were some pretty strange events at the Olympics The oddest might have actually been the standing jump for horses Strange not just because the actual participants didn t get awarded the medals but also because the winning jump was over two metres shorter than Mike Powell s incredible 8 95m long jump world record
The athletics events which take place at each Olympics Games are divided into four groups: track events (including sprints middle and long-distance running hurdling and relays) field events (including javelin discus hammer pole vault long and triple jumps) road events (such as walks and the marathon) and combined events (the heptathlon and the decathlon)
At the 1912 Olympics in Stockholm one of the 75kg middleweight Graeco-Roman wrestling semi-finals lasted 11 hours and 40 minutes The competitors were Martin Klein an Estonian representing Tsarist Russia and Alfred Asikainen of Finland who was eventually defeated Unfortunately Klein was too exhausted to wrestle in the final and had to settle for second place
In 1936 Olympics Shuhei Nishida and Sueo Oe both of Japan were tied for 2nd place in Pole Vaults After coin toss Nishida was placed 2nd and Oe 3rd Japanese officials thought it to be a little unfair to Oe Both were also unhappy So they decided to take their medals and split them in half They then combined the halves to make two half bronze-half silver medals
Anne Ottenbrite of Canada won the 200 metres breast-stroke in the Los Angeles Olympics in 1984 despite doing her best not to be there Shortly before the Canadian trials she managed to dislocate her right kneecap while showing off a pair of shoes While in Los Angeles she was involved in a car crash and also managed to sustain a thigh strain while playing a computer game
Jim Thorpe won the pentathlon and decathlon in 1912 On his return to the USA he was accorded a hero s welcome and a tickertape parade Then it was discovered that he had played a few professional baseball games which disqualified him from amateur status He was stripped of his Olympic titles After his death the IOC re-instated him and presented duplicate medals to his children
Should Hoketsu also compete at the Rio Games in 2016 he will then become the oldest Olympian ever The current record holder is Sweden s Oscar Swahn who not only competed in shooting at age 72 during the 1920 Antwerp Olympics but actually won a silver medal too It was his sixth Olympic medal having won his first at the tender age of 60 in shooting s running deer single-shot event
When a Sports Illustrated reporter asked USA goalkeeper Briana Scurry what she would do if the US won gold in the 1996 Olympics she replied that she would run naked through the streets of Athens Georgia where the final was played Well the US won and at 2 00am next morning an honour-bound Scurry accompanied by a friend with a video camera did a 10-metre dash wearing only her gold medal
In the 1908 Olympics in London the final of the 400 metres was between three American runners and Wyndham Halswelle of the UK The Americans used team tactics to block Halswelle and an official broke the tape and declared the race void The London OOC ordered the race to be re-run but the US athletes refused to take part Next day Wyndham Halswelle ran on his own - to win Only the gold medal was awarded
Eric Moussambani of Equatorial Guinea - Eric the Eel as he has become known epitomises what the Olympics are about He apparently only learned to swim a year before the 2000 Olympics and had never swum a full 100m race Then the other two swimmers in his heat were disqualified for false starts Eric swam alone - pretty slowly ñ but to the roars of the crowd he finished His time was 1:52 72 (The gold medal was won in 0:48 30 )
Hitler used the 1936 Berlin Olympics to promote his ideology and he used the games to show the world a resurgent Nazi Germany Obsessed with Aryan supremacy Hitler s applecart was upset by Jesse Owens - an Afro-American athlete In fact these games are known more as Owens Games rather than Hitler s On Aug 3 he won the 100m sprint defeating Ralph Metcalfe; the following day he won the long jump event and next day he added two more gold medals (200m and 4X100 relay) to his kitty
Sohn Kee-chung is the only olympic gold medallist not to hear his national anthem after winning a gold medal Sohn (d 2002) was a Korean and won the gold in the 1936 games But because Korea was under control of imperial Japan Koreans were forced to compete under the Japanese flag with Japanese names and the Japanese anthem was played No attempt has ever been made to correct that and the two medals won by Koreans in 1936 (gold and bronze) are still counted as Japanese medals by the IOC
Charlotte Lottie Dod (24 September 1871 - 27 June 1960) was an English sportswoman best known as a tennis player She won the Wimbledon Ladies Singles Championship five times the first one when she was only fifteen in the summer of 1887 She remains the youngest ladies singles champion though Martina Hingis was three days younger when she won the women s doubles title in 1996 In addition to tennis Dod competed in many other sports including golf field hockey and archery She also won the British Ladies Amateur Golf Championship played twice for the England women s national field hockey team (which she helped to found) and won a silver medal at the 1908 Summer Olympics in archery
