How many alternative or ‘spin-off’ olympic games are there at the moment. I can think of the paralympics, winter olympics, gay olympics and Jewish olympics.
Are there any others?
The Special Olympics, which for some reason people get mixed up with the Paralympics.
Note that some of these are officially sanctioned by the IOC (e.g. the Paralympics) and some aren’t.
Ed
There’s the Special Olympics, and I believe that is the only one that’s actually authorized to use the name Olympics – not that others aren’t refered to with that word. (The Winter Olymipcs are, of course, officailly recognized as a part of the Olympics though I’m not sure that “part” is the right word here.
I’ve also heard of Office Olymics
Isn’t there the “junior Olympics”?
There’s the “Olympics of the mind”
Brian
In the Buffalo area, every year there’s the Volunteer Fireman’s Olympics, where they play games like bucket brigade, hose unrolling, and so on.
Oops, thats “Oddyssey of the Mind”
cartoon spinoofs:
Laff-a-lympics
Smurf-a-lympics
Brian
There is also a Senior Olympics. I think the Gay Olympics had to change their name because the IOC doesn’t like people using “Olympics”. I’m guessing that the Senior Olympics are scantioned because they do them by state, then I think region, then country.
Thanks for the suggestions. After further investigation, I found the following.
It seems the only other ‘games’ to be endorsed by the IOC are the Special Olympics and the Winter olympics.
The IOC sucessfully protested the use of the following names, summarised from here.
1910 “Centennial Olympic Games” in Buenos Aires
1913 “American Olympic Games” and “First Asian Olympic Games”
1919 “Olympiade Catalan” in Barcelona
1922 “Jeux Olympiques Feminins” for women
1923 “University Olympic Games”
1924 “Deaf Olympics”
1928 “Hispo-American Olympiade”
1937 “Olympic Bridge Club” in New York and “Workers Olympiad” in Antwerp
1949 “Musical Olympiad” in Austria
1959 “Chess Olympiad”
1950 “Olympic Games for Israel”
1976 “Olympics for the Disabled” in Toronto
1985 Paralympic movement agreeing never to use the word Olympic
1986 “Gay Olympics”
1987 “Senior Olympics”
There have been many other games that have tried to use, or use without permission, the term ‘olympic’. There have been court cases e.g. Gay Olympics. Usually the term is renamed the ‘Xxxx Games’. I expect the terms Jewish Olympics and Asian Olympics are also frowned apon by the IOC.
In my younger years, I always viewed the Winter Olympics as another spin-off of the real Olympics. I guess that’s because it didn’t seem like sports that any real people could hope to participate in - I didn’t even know any other kid who had ever been ice skating, much less snow skiing. How the hell can normal people be expected to participate in that?
They are a ‘spin-off’. Despite initial resistance by the IOC to the Winter Olympics, it was finally sanctioned (unlike the Deaf Olympics, Frog Olympics* and University Olympics).
From InfoPlease
“Despite the objections of Modern Olympics’ founder Baron Pierre de Coubertin and the resistance of the Scandinavian countries, which had staged their own Nordic championships every four or five years from 1901-26 in Sweden, the International Olympic Committee sanctioned an “International Winter Sports Week” at Chamonix, France, in 1924”
- There was a Frog Olympics in South Africa
Odd it is. I’ve looked up the “senior olympics” and you can still find places, mostly states using that name. Hell Michigan uses it in their web site as do other states. But they are called the National Senior games when people qualify after each state. Wonder why they don’t go after these people as well since they’ve been having them for 20+ years.
I could never figure out as a kid (I grew up in Russia) how people got into those summer sports, they seemed so distant. I didn’t understand how you could train for the marathon or javelin if you only get 2-3 months of useable weather a year. However, ice skating and skiing is a year-round thing. 