th Summer Olympic Games
| Where? | Los Angeles |
| Which Olympics? | The tenth (summer) |
| How long was it? | From 30 July till 14 August |
| Joining countries: | 37 |
| Athletes: | 1408 |
| Whereof women: | 127 |
After that Los Angeles tried to get the Olympics of 1924 and 1928, they got the Olympics of 1932. There was some hesitation, but the IOC (International Olympic Committee) said in 1923 in Rome; "Los Angeles organize the Olympics of 1932." The hesitation came through the Olympics of 1904, which were organized through Sint Louis (the only city that organized the Olympics outside Europe!), and didn't were organized very well. The countries which joined the Olympics didn't like the idea to bring their athletes to the west coast of America, but when Los Angeles promised that the transportation, food and homes would be subsidized, the countries liked the idea.
This gave occasion to an Olympic village. The idea was there earlier, but it was at these Olympics for the first time. The sexes were strictly separated. The Olympic Village was only for men. Cowboys patrolled around the Olympic Village. The women lived in a hotel.
This year were a few incidents (two of them were with the Finnish team), but four of them were very remarkable. At the 5000-meter run (track-and-field) had the winner Lauri Lehtinen 2 times expressly kept off Ralph Hill (at the end of the race!). This wasn't a strange thing to do in Europe, but the audience in America didn't found this good, so they booed. The commentator in America said: "Remember, these people are our guests." He tried to keep order. These words went down in history as legendary words.
The second was that the Brazilian Water Polo team went calling names the referee, after they lost with 7-3 from Germany. They were disqualified for the rest of the Olympics.
At high jump was the third incident. Ella Didrikson and Jean Shiley jumped even high. After the extra jumps, they still had jumped even high. The jury had placed Didrikson as second, because she jumped with the 'Western Roll', so she was first with her head over the lath and than with her body, and the 'Western Roll' was suddenly invalid. That was why she was second.
The last was at 400-meter hurdles. The winner had run the 400-meter hurdles in 51.8 seconds, but the World Record was for number two with 52 seconds, because number one had overturned the tenth hurdle.
Small facts:
The medals of these Olympics
Previous Olympics
Next Olympics