Instruct: Given a question, retrieve relevant passages that answer the question.
Query: When were the first Greek Olympic Games?
On 15 November 1859 the first Olympic Games was held, in a city square in central Athens. These athletic contests were the first Olympic Games of modern times with the provenance of ancient Greek roots and the intention of using an, as yet unready, ancient Greek stadium. That stadium, the Panathenaic Stadium, was first used for a modern Olympic Games in 1870 and for the first time since the ancient Panathenaic and Olympic Games. The athletes competed in a variety of disciplines, similar to that of the ancient Olympic Games: running, discus, javelin throwing, wrestling, jumping, and pole climbing.
When these games turned out less than perfect and were overshadowed by the Exposition Universelle, the IOC supported the Greek idea by granting them a second series of quadrennial games, in between the first series. All of the games would be International Olympic Games; the difference was that only half of them would follow De Coubertin's idea of organising them in different countries to make the Olympic Movement more international, while the other half would follow the Greeks' idea of a permanent home with the Greek NOC as experienced organisers. This was a departure of the ancient schedule, but it was expected that if the ancient Greek could keep a four-year schedule, the modern Olympic Movement could keep a two-year schedule. As 1902 was now too close, and Greece was experiencing internal difficulties, the 2nd Olympic Games in Athens were scheduled for 1906.
Pankration (; ) was a sporting event introduced into the Greek Olympic Games in 648 BC and was an empty-hand submission sport with scarcely any rules. The athletes used boxing and wrestling techniques, but also others, such as kicking and holds, locks and chokes on the ground. The only things not acceptable were biting and gouging out the opponent's eyes.
By the Imperial Period, the Romans had adopted the Greek combat sport (spelled in Latin as "pancratium") into their Games. In 393 A.D., the pankration, along with gladiatorial combat and all pagan festivals, was abolished by edict by the Christian Byzantine Emperor Theodosius I. Pankration itself was an event in the Olympic Games for some 1,400 years.
The 1896 Olympic Games were the first held in the Modern era and the most important international multi-sport event Greece had ever hosted. The rules of the Games generally excluded women from competition. Influenced by both his times—in the Victorian era women were considered to be inferior to men—and his admiration for the ancient Olympic Games, when only men were allowed to participate in the events, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the visionary of the modern Olympic Games, was not in favour of women's participation in the Olympic Games or in sports generally. He believed that a woman's greatest achievement would be to encourage her sons to be distinguished in sports and to applaud a man's effort.
The inaugural Winter Olympics were held in Chamonix, France, from 25 January to 4 February 1924. A total of 258 athletes from 16 National Olympic Committees (NOCs) competed in 16 events across 9 disciplines. Women also took part in these Games, although the only events they were allowed to compete in were the figure skating ladies' singles and pairs. When the Games were held, they were not recognized as the Winter Olympics but rather as a winter sports week festival. It was not until 1926 that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) officially recognized them as the first Winter Olympics.
The Gambia National Olympic Committee was recognized by the International Olympic Committee on 1 January 1976. The nation boycotted the first two Summer Olympic Games held after their recognition. They boycotted the 1976 Summer Olympics over New Zealand's participation, and joined a United States-led boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics. Therefore they did not make their Olympic debut until the 1984 Summer Olympics, and have participated in every Summer Olympics since then. Sydney was their fifth consecutive appearance at the Summer Games. The 2000 Summer Olympics were held from 15 September to 1 October 2000; a total of 10,651 athletes represented 199 National Olympic Committees. The Gambian delegation consisted of two track and field athletes, Pa Mamadou Gai and Adama Njie. The flag bearing duties at the opening ceremony were performed by Njie.
Many local variants of the Greek alphabet were employed in ancient Greece during the archaic and early classical periods, until they were replaced by the classical 24-letter alphabet that is the standard today, around 400 BC. All forms of the Greek alphabet were originally based on the shared inventory of the 22 symbols of the Phoenician alphabet, with the exception of the letter Samekh, whose Greek counterpart Xi () was used only in a sub-group of Greek alphabets, and with the common addition of Upsilon () for the vowel . The local, so-called "epichoric", alphabets differed in many ways: in the use of the consonant symbols , and ; in the use of the innovative long vowel letters ( and ), in the absence or presence of Η in its original consonant function (); in the use or non-use of certain archaic letters ( = , = , = ); and in many details of the individual shapes of each letter. The system now familiar as the standard 24-letter Greek alphabet was originally the regional variant of the Ionian cities in Asia Minor. It was officially adopted in Athens in 403 BC and in most of the rest of the Greek world by the middle of the 4th century BC.
Wrestling is practiced all around the world - officially in 177 countries, some of which participate in the Olympic program just in this sport. It was initially dropped from the program for the 2020 games; however, the sport will have the opportunity to retain its spot in the Olympics. Wrestling will still be part of the program at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. Wrestling was first introduced in the ancient Olympic Games in 708 BC and was a sport practiced in all the ancient Olympics from then till their abolition in 323 AD. It has been played at the Summer Olympics since the 1896 Olympics in Athens, and it has been a part of all modern Olympics except the 1900 Olympics in Paris.
In the wake of the Greco-Turkish War (1919–22) and the population exchange between Greece and Turkey, the multi-sport club Panionios G.S.S. was transferred to Athens. They have won two Greek Cups (in 1979 and 1998), while they were runners-up in the Greek Championship during the 1950–51 and 1970–71 seasons. They have won also the 1971 Balkans Cup and reached the quarter-finals of the UEFA Cup Winners' Cup in 1998–99 season.
There were neither weight divisions nor time limits in pankration competitions. However, there were two or three age groups in the competitions of antiquity. In the Olympic Games specifically there were only two such age groups: men (andres – ἄνδρες) and boys (paides – παῖδες). The pankration event for boys was established at the Olympic Games in 200 B.C.. In pankration competitions, referees were armed with stout rods or switches to enforce the rules. In fact, there were only two rules regarding combat: no eye gouging or biting. Sparta was the only place eye gouging and biting was allowed. The contest itself usually continued uninterrupted until one of the combatants submitted, which was often signalled by the submitting contestant raising his index finger. The judges appear, however, to have had the right to stop a contest under certain conditions and award the victory to one of the two athletes; they could also declare the contest a tie.
The first Winter Games were held in 1924, in Chamonix, France. They were originally called "International Winter Sports Week" and held in association with the 1924 Summer Olympics, but were in retrospect designated by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) as the "I Olympic Winter Games".
Sixteen nations participated in these Games: fourteen from Europe and two from North America.
Four years later, 25 nations were represented at the 1928 Winter Olympics, in St. Moritz, Switzerland, including Argentina (the first nation from the Southern Hemisphere), Japan (the first Asian nation), and Mexico.
Participation in the 1932 Games, held in Lake Placid, United States, during the Great Depression, was reduced to 17 nations.
The 1936 Winter Games, in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, had 28 participating nations, the largest number to that date.
These would be the last Winter Games for twelve years, as the planned 1940 Games and 1944 Games were cancelled due to World War II.
At the 1904 Summer Olympics, seven wrestling events were contested, all in the freestyle discipline for men. All wrestlers who competed in the 1904 Games were from the United States. It was the first time freestyle wrestling was featured, as the first Olympic wrestling contests had been in the Greco-Roman style. Weight classes also made their first appearance.
The decades that followed became known as the Golden Age of Athenian democracy, during which time Athens became the leading city of Ancient Greece, with its cultural achievements laying the foundations for Western civilization. The playwrights Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides flourished in Athens during this time, as did the historians Herodotus and Thucydides, the physician Hippocrates, and the philosopher Socrates. Guided by Pericles, who promoted the arts and fostered democracy, Athens embarked on an ambitious building program that saw the construction of the Acropolis of Athens (including the Parthenon), as well as empire-building via the Delian League. Originally intended as an association of Greek city-states to continue the fight against the Persians, the league soon turned into a vehicle for Athens's own imperial ambitions. The resulting tensions brought about the Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC), in which Athens was defeated by its rival Sparta.
Before 1924, when the first Winter Olympic Games were celebrated, sports held on ice, like figure skating and ice hockey, were held at the Summer Olympics. These two sports made their debuts at the 1908 and the 1920 Summer Olympics, respectively, but were permanently integrated in the Winter Olympics program as of the first edition. The "International Winter Sports Week", later dubbed the I Olympic Winter Games and retroactively recognized as such by the IOC, consisted of nine sports. The number of sports contested at the Winter Olympics has since been decreased to seven, comprising a total of fifteen disciplines.
The Theatre of Dionysus Eleuthereus is a major theatre in Athens, considered to be the world's first theatre, built at the foot of the Athenian Acropolis. Dedicated to Dionysus, the god of plays and wine (among other things), the theatre could seat as many as 17,000 people with excellent acoustics, making it an ideal location for ancient Athens' biggest theatrical celebration, the Dionysia. It was the first theatre ever built, cut into the southern cliff face of the Acropolis, and supposedly the birthplace of Greek tragedy. The remains of a restored and redesigned Roman version can still be seen at the site today. It is sometimes confused with the later, smaller, and better-preserved Odeon of Herodes Atticus, located nearby on the southwest slope of the Acropolis.
The site has been used as a theatre since the sixth century BC. The existing structure dates back to the fourth century BC but it has had many other later remodellings. 
On November 24, 2009 the Greek government announced that they would partially restore the Theatre of Dionysus.
The first endeavour to build a sanctuary for on the site of the present Parthenon was begun shortly after the Battle of Marathon (c. 490–488 BC) upon a solid limestone foundation that extended and levelled the southern part of the Acropolis summit. This building replaced a "hekatompedon" (meaning "hundred-footer") and would have stood beside the archaic temple dedicated to "Athena Polias" ("of the city"). The Older or Pre-Parthenon, as it is frequently referred to, was still under construction when the Persians sacked the city in 480 BC and razed the Acropolis.
Men's Artistic Gymnastics had been an Olympic sport since the beginning of the modern games. Women's gymnastics were introduced as a single (team) event in the 1928 games, but were not expanded until the 1952 games, when there were seven events. The International Federation of Gymnastics first drew up a code of points—for men—in 1949.
The Greek campaign was launched primarily because the western Allies, particularly British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, had promised Greece territorial gains at the expense of the Ottoman Empire, recently defeated in World War I. The armed conflict started when the Greek forces landed in Smyrna (now Izmir), on 15 May 1919. They advanced inland and took control of the western and northwestern part of Anatolia, including the cities of Manisa, Balıkesir, Aydın, Kütahya, Bursa and Eskişehir. Their advance was checked at the Battle of Sakarya in 1921 by forces of the Turkish national movement. The Greek front collapsed with the Turkish counter-attack in August 1922, and the war effectively ended with the recapture of Smyrna by the Turkish forces and the Great Fire of Smyrna.
The Olympic Games are an international multi-sport event featuring both summer and winter sports, held every two years with Summer and Winter Olympic Games alternating. During Olympic Games opening ceremonies, the sitting president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) will make a speech before inviting a representative from the host country to officially declare that particular Games open. The current Olympic Charter requires this person to be the head of state of the host country, although this has not always been the case. This article lists the people who have had the ceremonial duty to declare each Olympic Games open.
Athenian democracy developed in the Greek city-state of Athens, comprising the city of Athens and the surrounding territory of Attica, around 600 BC. Athens was one of the very first known democracies. Other Greek cities set up democracies, and even though most followed an Athenian model, none were as powerful, stable, or well-documented as that of Athens. In the direct democracy of Athens, the citizens did not nominate representatives to vote on legislation and executive bills on their behalf (as in the United States) but instead voted as individuals. The public opinion of voters was influenced by the political satire of the comic poets in the theatres.
Greek interest in reviving the Olympic Games began with the Greek War of Independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1821. It was first proposed by poet and newspaper editor Panagiotis Soutsos in his poem "Dialogue of the Dead", published in 1833. Evangelos Zappas, a wealthy Greek-Romanian philanthropist, first wrote to King Otto of Greece, in 1856, offering to fund a permanent revival of the Olympic Games. Zappas sponsored the first Olympic Games in 1859, which was held in an Athens city square. Athletes participated from Greece and the Ottoman Empire. Zappas funded the restoration of the ancient Panathenaic Stadium so that it could host all future Olympic Games.
When the 1900 Olympic Games failed to meet expectations and were overshadowed by the Exposition Universelle, the IOC supported the Greek idea by granting them a second series of quadrennial games in between the first series. All of the games would be International Olympic Games; the difference was that half of them would follow Coubertin's idea of "organisation internationale", while the other half would follow the Greeks' idea of a permanent home with the Greek NOC as experienced organizers. This was a departure from the ancient schedule, but it was expected that, if the ancient Greeks could keep a four-year schedule, the modern Olympic Movement could keep a two-year schedule. As 1902 was now too close, and Greece experienced internal difficulties, the 2nd Olympic Games in Athens were scheduled for 1906. The IOC as a whole gave the Greek NOC full support for the organization.
The Greek All Star Game was held for the first time on December 31, 1991, and in that first game, "The Rest of the World All Stars" defeated "The Greek All Stars", by a score of 133–122. Over the next seven all star games, the format was "The European All Stars" versus "The American All Stars". From 2001 until now, the format has been the same as the original all star game was, The Greek All Stars versus The Rest of the World All Stars. Also, since 2001, the Greek All-Star Game is held annually in various cities in Greece, which is in contrast to the early years of the all star game, when most of the games were held at either the Peace and Friendship Stadium, or Nikos Galis Olympic Indoor Hall arenas in Athens.
The modern Olympic Games were founded in 1894 when Pierre de Coubertin sought to promote international understanding through sporting competition. He based his Olympics on the Wenlock Olympian Society Annual Games, which had been contested in Much Wenlock since 1850. The first edition of de Coubertin's games, held in Athens in 1896, attracted just 245 competitors, of whom more than 200 were Greek, and only 14 countries were represented. Nevertheless, no international events of this magnitude had been organised before. Female athletes were not allowed to compete, though one woman, Stamata Revithi, ran the marathon course on her own, saying "If the committee doesn't let me compete I will go after them regardless".