When did women first start participating in the Olympics?
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This is a bit of a trick question, but the first women to compete were in Paris 1900 \n\nGames of the II Olympiad \n\nThe Games of 1900 were held in Paris as part of the Exposition Universelle Internationale - the Paris World’s Fair. The exposition organizers spread the events over five months and de-emphasized their Olympic status to such an extent that many athletes died without ever knowing that they had participated in the Olympics. Women made their first appearance in the modern Games. The first to compete were Mme. Brohy and Mlle. Ohnier of France in croquet. The first female champion was in tennis: Charlotte Cooper of Great Britain. Tennis was one of five sports in which athletes from different nations competed on the same team. The others were football, polo, rowing and tug of war. Alvin Kraenzlein won four athletics events in three days and, on 16 July, Ray Ewry, who had overcome childhood polio, won three championships in one day - all in the standing jump events.\n\n24 NOCs (Nations)\n\n997 athletes (22 women, 975 men)\n\n95 events
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I think that by the time the second olympics was added in 1924, most of the world was still under European colonialism and thus the focus was on the northern hemisphere and the tradition as just stuck.\nIn the first Olympic games, only one country was from under the equator---Australia.
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Valentina Vladimirovna Tereshkova was the first woman in space. however, on Vostok 6 in 1963
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Olympic Summer Games:\n\n \nAthens 1896\nParis 1900\nLondon 1908\nStockholm 1912\nAntwerp 1920\nParis 1924\nAmsterdam 1928\nBerlin 1936\nLondon 1948\nHelsinki 1952\nRome 1960\nMunich 1972\nMoscow 1980\nBarcelona 1992\nAthens 2004\nBejing 2008\nLondon 2012
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Do you want men's or women's? I don't know the date, but Babe Didrikson won the women's hurdles that year:\nhttp://www.olympic.org/uk/games/past/facts_uk.asp?OLGT=1&OLGY=1932\nYou could try search for info on her. It may say the date in her bio somewhere.
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According to the site listed as a source, (located in the 'Did you know' near the bottom of the page) Denmark's Lisa Hartle was the first female rider to win an Olympic medal in Dressage.\n\nIt also states an interesting fact: She overcame a polio affliction and managed to win the silver medal in two consecutive Olympic Games, in 1952 and in 1956. :-)
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There is more than one women participating in that event for the women....\n\nFollowing women participated in the team biathalon from Poland today and they participated in the individual's as well...\nPoland  \nPALKA Krystyna\nGWIZDON Magdalena\nPONIKWIA Katarzyna \nGRZYWA Magdalena
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In 1896, winners' medals were in fact silver. The custom of gold-silver-bronze for the first three places dates from the 1904 games and has been copied for many other sporting events\n\nHowever, the 1904 Olympics also awarded silver trophies for first place, which makes Athens 1906 the first games that awarded the three medals only
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You can find a complete list of all women Olympic swimming medalists at:\n\nhttp://www.gbrathletics.com/olympic/swimw.htm
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1936 Berlin games, Leni Riefenstahl filmed a two-part documentary called Olympia. It was the first time the Games were seen with a moving image. 1936 was also the first year that the Summer Olympics were shown on television in some form. Twenty-five large screens were set up in Berlin allowing people to watch the Games for free.\nThe first Winter Games to be televised also took place in 1956 in Cortina. The first telecast of the Olympics in the United States was in 1960.
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The Modern Olympic Games started in 1896 in Athens.  The Centennial Olympic Games would have taken place in 1996 (Atlanta).  If I remember the story correctly, Athens originally won the bid for the '96 games but couldn't get their act together so they lost them to Atlanta.  Then they went back and got the '04 games
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Women were in 1920 nationally.  Although a few states started allowing it earlier.  Wyoming was actually the first to allow it.  Blacks were allowed to vote after of course, the civil war.
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In the Ancient Olympic Games, women were forbidden to take part. Married women were forbidden to even enter the competition areas as spectators. If they were caught, the punishment was death. Therefore, they created their own Games dedicated to the goddess Hera. Hera was the sister-wife of Zeus. The Olympic Games were dedicated to Zeus. \nWhen the Olympic Games were revived in 1896 even the founder himself, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, did not agree with women's participation in the Games. This issue was the topic of much debate between the initial members of the IOC. However, women did not take part in the Games until 1900 in Paris. It was here that Britain's Charlotte Cooper became the first female gold medallist in the tennis singles competition. Only one other sport saw women's participation in 1900, golf. \n\nIn London at the 1908 Games there were 36 women competitors in the figure skating and tennis events. After these Games and a recommendation from the British Olympic Association that women swimmers, divers and gymnasts be allowed to compete in future Games, the Swedish Organising Committee included two swimming events and one diving contest for women at the 1912 Stockholm Games. \n\nFinally, in 1924 the IOC decided to allow a larger participation of women in the Games. However, there was little evidence of this even by the 1936 Games in Berlin where there were only four sports available to women. \n\nIt was not until after the 1948 Games in London that there was a clearly marked increase in the participation of women in sport around the world. Nevertheless, there were only 5 women's sports in London and 6 sports by the 1968 Games in Mexico. \n\nAfter the 1976 Games, finally a large increase in the number of sports offered to women began to appear. At the 1996 Atlanta Games there were 26 sports and 97 events open to women, which is still far below the 163 events open to men. \n\nHighlights (Source: The Olympic Education Kit, Australian Olympic Committee) \n\n1896 At the first Olympic Games, a Greek woman called Melpomene became the first female to run an unofficial marathon in 4 hours and 30 minutes. \n1900 Tennis player Charlotte Cooper of Great Britain became the first female Olympic champion in the tennis singles. \n1908 Yachtswoman, Frances Clytie Rivett-Carnac and her husband win gold, making her the first woman in any event to win in a competition with men. \n1912 Swimmer, Fanny Durack first woman to win gold in a world-record time. \n1928 The collapse of several runners at the end of the 800m saw the race declared dangerous for women and banned. \n1948 Triumphant Fanny Blakers-Koen of the Netherlands breaks new ground as the first mother successful at the Olympic Games. She won four gold medals in the 100m, 200m, 4 x 100m relay and 100m hurdles. \n1952 The first women ever to compete in equestrian sport (against men). \n1956 The first woman, Giuliana Chenal-Minuzzo (Italy), in Olympic history to take the athletes' oath at the Opening Ceremony of the Olympic Winter Games. \n1968 Mexico's Enriqueta Basilio becomes the first woman to light the Olympic flame in the stadium. The 800m women's event is re-instated. \n1972 70 year old British equestrian competitor, Lorna Johnstone became the oldest ever female Olympian. \n1973 The IOC decided that women could be proposed as IOC members. \n1980 The greatest mother-daughter Olympic success - when Soviet runner Irin Nazarova, daughter of 1952 discus medallist Elizabeth Bagrinaseva, won gold in the relay. \n1981 Pirjo Haggman (Finland) and Flor Isava-Fonseca (Venezuela) became the first women IOC members. \n1982 Dame Mary Glen-Haig (Great Britain) was elected member of the IOC. \n1984 Princess Nora of Liechtenstein was elected member of the IOC. Joan Benoit (USA) wins the first women's Olympic marathon. \n1988 HRH the Princess Royal (Great Britain) was elected member of the IOC. Tennis returns to the Games, with the inequitable agreement that f
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Not the Ancient Greeks, if this Wikipedia entry is correct:\n\nThe 1928 Games were the first true Winter Olympics, held on its own, and not in conjunction with a Summer Olympics. The preceding 1924 Winter Olympics were retroactively renamed into Winter Olympics. They were actually part of the 1924 Summer Olympics. All preceding Winter Events of the Olympic Games were the winter sports part of the schedule of the Summer Games, and not as a separate Winter Games. These games also replaced the now redundant Nordic Games, that were held quadrennially since early in the century.\nContents
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Swimming has been known since prehistoric times. Drawings from the stone age were found in "the cave of swimmers" near Wadi Sora (or Sura) in the southwestern part of Egypt. Written references date back up to 2000 B.C., including Gilgamesh, the Iliad, the Odyssey, the Bible (Ezekiel 47:5, Acts 27:42, Isaiah 25:11), Beowulf, and other sagas. In 1538 Nicolas Wynman, German professor of languages, wrote the first swimming book "Colymbetes". Competitive swimming in Europe started around 1800, mostly using breaststroke. The front crawl, then called the trudgen was introduced in 1873 by John Arthur Trudgen, copying it from Native Americans.\n\nSwimming was part of the first modern Olympic games in 1896 in Athens. In 1900 backstroke was included as an Olympic Event. In 1902 the trudgen was improved by Richard Cavill, using the flutter kick. In 1908, the world swimming association Federation Internationale de Natation (FINA) was formed. Butterfly was first a variant of Breaststroke, until it was accepted as a separate style in 1952.\n\nCompetitive swimming is swimming with the goal to maximize the speed of the swimming. Competitive swimming became popular in the nineteenth century, and currently comprises 32 events, 16 male events, and 16 female events, at the Summer Olympic Games. Competitive swimming's international governing body is FINA (Federation International De Natation) International Swimming Federation. It is currently being debated whether or not to instate the 1500 m freestyle as part of the female events. Currently, the longest female event is the 800 m freestyle.\n\nThe four competitive strokes are the butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke, and freestyle. These strokes can be swum individually or together in an individual medley (IM). The order IM goes in is: 1) Butterfly 2) Backstroke 3) Breaststroke 4) Freestyle. There is also the medley relay in which the order is: : 1) Backstroke 2) Breaststroke 3) Butterfly 4) Freestyle. Each of the four swimmers in the relay swims one stroke for a quarter of a predetermined length.\n\nIn the United States, many communities sponsor competitive swimming leagues (for children and young people aged 4-18), made up of individual swim teams, which may range in size from a few dozen swimmers to several hundred swimmers. These leagues for the most part adhere to recognized swimming rules, swim the standard strokes, but swim shorter lengths as events in swim meets. These leagues are usually active in the warmer months, and are not directly associated with a national or world swim organization. However, some swimmers who begin their competitive swimming experience on such a local swim team go on to join a nationally-governed team, on their path to an Olympic berth later.
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A History of the Olympics\n\nAccording to legend, the ancient Olympic Games were founded by Heracles (the Roman Hercules), a son of Zeus. Yet the first Olympic Games for which we still have written records were held in 776 BCE (though it is generally believed that the Games had been going on for many years already). At this Olympic Games, a naked runner, Coroebus (a cook from Elis), won the sole event at the Olympics, the stade - a run of approximately 192 meters (210 yards). This made Coroebus the very first Olympic champion in history.\n\nThe ancient Olympic Games grew and continued to be played every four years for nearly 1200 years. In 393 CE, the Roman emperor Theodosius I, a Christian, abolished the Games because of their pagan influences.\n\nApproximately 1500 years later, a young Frenchmen named Pierre de Coubertin began their revival. Coubertin is now known as le Rénovateur. Coubertin was a French aristocrat born on January 1, 1863. He was only seven years old when France was overrun by the Germans during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. Some believe that Coubertin attributed the defeat of France not to its military skills but rather to the French soldiers' lack of vigor.* After examining the education of the German, British, and American children, Coubertin decided that it was exercise, more specifically sports, that made a well-rounded and vigorous person. ....
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The first Women's Two "man" bobsleigh competition was held in Salt Lake City in 2002. The gold medal went to USA II, Silver to Germany I and bronze to Germany II