Around Britain 5 Olympic Connections 1. Chipping Campden, Gloucestershire - Every spring, Chipping Campden plays host to the Cotswold Olympicks, an annual festival of sports and games established in the 1600s. Like the modern Games, these Olympicks were devised along the lines of those of Ancient Greece, but featured disciplines like shin-kicking contests, stick-fighting and ‘spurning the barre’, a game similar to tossing the caber. 2. London - In 2012, London became the first city in the world to host the Summer Olympics three times, following the 1908 Games (when the eruption of Mount Vesuvius forced Rome, the original host city, to pull out) and the 1948 Games (which compensated for the cancellation of London’s 1944 Games due to the Second World War). 3. Much Wenlock, Shropshire - The ‘Wenlock Olympian Games’ have been held in Much Wenlock since 1850, devised by William Penny Brookes to promote ‘the moral, physical and intellectual improvement’ of the townspeople by awarding ‘prizes ... at public meetings for skill in athletic exercise’. The success of these Games eventually inspired the founding of the International Olympic Committee. 4. Stoke Mandeville, Buckinghamshire - The first ever Stoke Mandeville Games, a series of multidiscipline sporting events for athletes with a disability, were held in 1948. Also known as the World Wheelchair & Amputee Games, these games are considered the precursor of the Paralympics – in 1984, the Paralympics were jointly awarded to Stoke Mandeville and New York. 5. Isle of Man - Unlike in the Olympics, in the Commonwealth Games all individual constituent countries of the UK are permitted to enter, as well as all British dependencies and territories. Of all of these, the Isle of Man is by far the most successful having garnered eight medals (including three gold) since the 1950s.
© Taken from The British Isles: A Trivia Gazetteer by Paul Anthony Jones, out now.
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