An Olympic medal is awarded to successful competitors at one of the Olympic Games. There are three classes of medal to be won: gold, silver, and bronze, awarded to first, second, and third place, respectively. The granting of awards is laid out in detail in the Olympic protocols.
A gold medal is a medal awarded for highest achievement in a non-military field. Its name derives from the use of at least a fraction of gold in form of plating or alloying in its manufacture.
A silver medal, in sports and other similar areas involving competition, is a medal made of, or plated with, silver awarded to the second-place finisher, or runner-up, of contests or competitions such as the Olympic Games, Commonwealth Games, etc. The outright winner receives a gold medal and the third place a bronze medal. More generally, silver is traditionally a metal sometimes used for all types of high-quality medals, including artistic ones.
The 1896 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the I Olympiad, were a summer multi-sport event held in Athens, the capital of Greece, from 6 to 15 April 1896, and were the first Olympic Games of the Modern era.
Baseball at the 1988 Summer Olympics was a demonstration sport for the seventh time. Eight teams competed in Jamsil Baseball Stadium in the baseball tournament. The format used was the same as the tournament of four years earlier. Five teams that had competed in the 1984 tournament returned.
The United Kingdom has been represented at every modern Olympic Games, and as of the 2020 Summer Olympics is third in the all-time Summer Olympic medal table by both number of gold medals won and overall number of medals. London has hosted the Summer Olympic Games three times: in 1908, 1948, and 2012.
Many sports playoffs and knockout tournaments include a third place playoff, third place match, bronze medal game, or consolation game to decide which competitor or team will be credited with finishing third and fourth. This game is typically competed by the competitors or teams that lost in the semi-finals of the tournament that they competed in. Some tournaments may use the third place playoff to determine who wins the bronze medal, while other tournaments need to hold a third place playoff for seeding purposes if three or all four semi-finalists advance to another tournament. Social psychology studies have found that bronze medalists who had won a third place playoff were significantly happier than silver medalists who had lost a championship final.
Undoing is a defense mechanism in which a person tries to cancel out or remove an unhealthy, destructive or otherwise threatening thought or action by engaging in contrary behavior. For example, after thinking about being violent with someone, one would then be overly nice or accommodating to them. It is one of several defense mechanisms proposed by the founder of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud during his career, many of which were later developed further by his daughter Anna Freud. The German term "Ungeschehenmachen" was first used to describe this defense mechanism. Transliterated, it means "making un-happened", which is essentially the core of "undoing". Undoing refers to the phenomenon whereby a person tries to alter the past in some way to avoid or feign disappearance of an adversity or mishap.
The United States competed at the 1912 Summer Olympics in Stockholm, Sweden. 174 competitors, took part in 68 events in 11 sports. Out of the 174 athletes who had participated, 63 won medals.
By 1954, a new trend was beginning to emerge for the Royal Canadian Numismatic Association as annual meetings evolved into annual conventions. Working with the Toronto Coin Club as host, the first such convention was held in Toronto in 1954. The conventions offered an agenda of educational forums, bourse activity, competitive exhibits with awards to the winners, and a closing banquet, with the highlight being a special guest speaker.. It was also in 1954 that the association issued its first ever medal to commemorate the event. The tradition of an annual convention and a convention medal continues to this very day.
The Equestrian events included three disciplines: dressage, eventing, and show jumping, and were held at the Deodoro Military Club.
Alex Shagin is a coin designer.
Counterfactual thinking is a concept in psychology that involves the human tendency to create possible alternatives to life events that have already occurred; something that is contrary to what actually happened. Counterfactual thinking is, as it states: "counter to the facts". These thoughts consist of the "What if?" and the "If only..." that occur when thinking of how things could have turned out differently. Counterfactual thoughts include things that – in the present – could not have happened because they are dependent on events that did not occur in the past.
Beach volleyball was introduced at the Summer Olympic Games in the 1992 Games as a demonstration event, and has been an official Olympic sport since 1996. The United States is the only country to win medals in every edition.
The following medal table is a list of National Olympic Committees (NOCs) and one non-NOC team ranked by the number of gold medals won by their athletes during the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, from 5 to 21 August 2016.
Giuseppe Cassioli was an Italian painter and sculptor known for his Summer Olympic Games medal design. Many of his paintings are on display at the Museo Cassioli di Pittura senese dell'Ottocento in Asciano, Tuscany.
The less-is-better effect is a type of preference reversal that occurs when the lesser or smaller alternative of a proposition is preferred when evaluated separately, but not evaluated together. The term was first proposed by Christopher Hsee.
Great Britain participated at the 2015 European Games, in Baku, Azerbaijan from 12 to 28 June 2015. As this was the inaugural Games, this was Great Britain's first appearance.
The women's singles badminton tournament at the 2020 Summer Olympics took place from 24 July to 1 August at the Musashino Forest Sport Plaza at Tokyo. A total of 43 players from 37 nations competed.
The wrestling competitions at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris are scheduled to run from 5 to 11 August at Grand Palais Éphémère in Champ de Mars. 288 wrestlers are expected to compete across eighteen different weight categories at these Games. The men will wrestle against each other in both freestyle and Greco-Roman events, whereas the women will only participate in the freestyle wrestling, with eighteen gold medals awarded. Wrestling has been contested at every modern Summer Olympic Games, except Paris 1900.
