While official report was actually the summary of the sporting events held at the 1900 Exposition Universelle and so can not be considered as reliable source,[7] the IOC states that 24 nations participated in the 1900 Summer Olympics in Paris,[8] but additional sources list up to 28 nations, with Haiti, Iran, Luxembourg, and Peru being the additions.[9][10] The 1904 Games, held in St. Louis, were poorly organized, with participation of only 12 nations,[11][12] and many events contested only by athletes from the host United States. Although the Intercalated Games of 1906 are no longer considered official Games of the Olympiad by the IOC, they helped restore the Olympic movement. Participation at subsequent Games grew steadily, with 22 nations in London for 1908[13] and 28 nations in Stockholm for the 1912 Games.[14] At these two Games (only), one of the delegations was actually a combined team of athletes from Australia and New Zealand, designated Australasia. The Games of 1916, planned for Berlin, were cancelled due to World War I.
Inter-war years
After the First World War, the Olympic Games resumed in 1920, in Antwerp. Twenty-nine nations participated,[15] but not Austria, Bulgaria, Germany, Hungary, or Turkey, none of which were invited because of their roles in the war. Several newly created European states, such as Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, made their Olympic debut.
The Games grew rapidly for the 1924 Summer Olympics, in Paris, with 44 nations present,[16] even though Germany was still not invited back to the Games. This situation would change for the 1928 Games, in Amsterdam, where Germany returned to join a total of 46 participating nations.[17] Because of the economic effects of the Great Depression, competitors from only 37 nations—with less than half the number of participants that competed in Amsterdam—travelled to Los Angeles for the 1932 Summer Olympics.[18] The 1936 Summer Olympics, in Berlin, were attended by 49 nations (a new high) but were highly politicized.[19] The scheduled Games of 1940 in Tokyo and 1944 in London were each cancelled due to the outbreak of World War II in 1939.
Post-war years and Cold War era
Participating nations at the Opening Ceremony of the 1952 Games in Helsinki.
Twelve years after the previous Games, the 1948 Summer Olympics, in London, attracted competitors from 59 nations, including 14 that made their Olympic debut; once again, Germany was not invited to take part, and neither was Japan.[20] The 1952 Games, in Helsinki, again set a new high, with 69 nations participating, including the first appearance by the Soviet Union and the return of Germany and Japan.[21] The 1956 Summer Olympics, attended by 67 nations in Melbourne, were the first to be marred by a boycott.[22]Egypt, Iraq, and Lebanon withdrew in response to the Suez Crisis, and the Netherlands, Spain, and Switzerland withdrew in response to the Soviet invasion of Hungary. Interestingly, because of Australian quarantine restrictions, the equestrian events were held five months earlier in Stockholm, with a total of 29 participating nations, including five nations that did not compete in Melbourne.[23]
The next three Games were each marred by significant boycotts. At the 1976 Summer Olympics, in Montreal, only 92 nations were represented.[29] Twenty-nine African nations (Ivory Coast and Senegal being the only two exceptions) boycotted the Games because of New Zealand's participation, as New Zealand maintained other sporting relations with apartheid South Africa.[30] The largest Olympic boycott took place at the 1980 Games, in Moscow, when only 81 nations participated.[31] The United States led the boycott in protest of the December 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and were joined by more than 60 other nations. In response, the 1984 Summer Olympics, in Los Angeles, were boycotted by the Soviet Union and many of their allies, yet a total of 140 nations did participate.[32] The 1988 Games, in Seoul, marked a new high, with 160 participating nations.[33]
The Centennial Olympics, in Atlanta, were attended by athletes from 197 nations,[35] including 24 nations making their Summer Games debut. Czechoslovakia had split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia, and all ex-Soviet republics competed as independent nations. The Games continued to grow, with 199 nations represented in Sydney, for the 2000 Summer Games,[36] and 201 nations in Athens, for the 2004 Summer Olympics.[37]
A record number of nations (204) were represented at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing,[38] with Marshall Islands and Tuvalu making their Olympic debut. After competing together as Serbia and Montenegro in 2004, Serbia and Montenegro sent independent teams to Beijing. Only Brunei failed to participate in the Games, after failing to register any athletes for competition.[39] The 2012 Games in London increased this record to 206 nations, even though only 204 NOCs were represented.[40] Brunei returned to the Games, but athletes from the former Netherlands Antilles competed as Independent Olympic Athletes, after the Netherlands Antilles Olympic Committee's membership in the IOC was withdrawn in 2011 as a consequence of the dissolution of the Caribbean country. One athlete from South Sudan also competed as an independent athlete, since the nation had not yet formed a National Olympic Committee after its independence in 2011.
List of nations
Description
This list includes all 204 current NOCs[41] and 20 obsolete NOCs, arranged alphabetically. The three-letter country code is also listed for each NOC. Since the 1960s, these codes have been frequently used by the IOC and each Games organizing committee to identify NOCs, such as within the official report of each Games.[42]
Several nations have changed during their Olympic history. Name changes due to geographical renaming are explained by footnotes after the nation's name, and other changes are explained by footnotes linked within the table itself. A select number of obsolete nations are also included in the table to more clearly illustrate past Olympic appearances for their successor nations:
Soviet Union — now represented by fifteen successor NOCs
^ Some sources[9][51] consider Freydoun Malkom, a fencer who competed at the 1900 Games, of Persian nationality and therefore the first Olympic appearance by Iran.
ab Sources are inconsistent regarding Albert Corey's participation for France in 1904. Although the Games report refers to Corey as a "Frenchman wearing the colors of the Chicago Athletic Association",[52] the IOC attributes his medal in the marathon to the United States instead of France, and in contradiction, the medal in the four mile team race to a mixed team composed of athletes from multiple nations instead of just the United States.[45]
abcdCameroon, Egypt, Morocco, and Tunisia competed for the first three days of the 1976 Games before withdrawing in support of the boycott by most African nations.[29]
abcdeSuriname at the 1960 Games, Libya at the 1964 Games, Liberia at the 1980 Games, Brunei at the 1988 Games, Djibouti at the 2004 Games took part in the Opening Ceremony, but neither athlete competed, so they are not counted as the participation nations at the IOC Olympic Games web site. Suriname's lone athlete withdrew from 1960 Games due to a scheduling error. Libya marched in the opening ceremony of the 1964 Games,[25] but then withdrew from competition. Liberia's athletes withdrew from 1980 Games after marching in the Opening Ceremony and took part of the boycott. Brunei's participation in the 1988 Games consisted only of a single official, but no competing athletes.[33]Djibouti marched in the Parade of Nations 2004 Games, but neither athlete competed.
^ For athletics at the 1900 Summer Olympics, Adolphe Klingelhoeffer was the son of a Brazilian diplomat. Although he was born and raised in Paris, he had Brazilian citizenship in 1900 and maintained this citizenship until at least the 1940s per French athletics historian Alain Bouille. As this was discovered in late 2008, his participation is usually attributed to France.
^ For tug of war at the 1900 Summer Olympics, Francisco Henríquez de Zubiría, living in Paris in 1900, had Colombian citizenship but has played with French team of tug of war.
^De Coubertin, Pierre; Philemon, Timolean; Politis, N.G.; Anninos, Charalambos (1897). "Second Part: The Olympic Games in 1896". The Olympic Games: BC 776 – AD 1896(PDF). Athens: Charles Beck. Retrieved 2008-02-04.
^Mallon, Bill; Widlund, Ture (1998). "1896 Olympic Games — Analysis and Summaries"(PDF). The 1896 Olympic Games: Results for All Competitors in All Events, With Commentary. McFarland. pp. 22–23. ISBN 0-7864-0379-9. Retrieved 2008-03-11.
^"Paris 1900". International Olympic Committee. Retrieved 2014-02-02.
^ abcdefgMallon, Bill (December 1997). "1900 Olympic Games — Analysis and Summaries"(PDF). The 1900 Olympic Games: Results for All Competitors in All Events, With Commentary. McFarland. pp. 10, 23–26. ISBN 978-0-7864-0378-3. Retrieved 2008-02-04.
^Mallon, Bill (February 1999). "1904 Olympic Games — Analysis and Summaries"(PDF). The 1904 Olympic Games: Results for All Competitors in All Events, With Commentary. McFarland. pp. 23–24. ISBN 978-0-7864-0550-3. Retrieved 2008-02-04.
^"St. Louis 1904". International Olympic Committee. Retrieved 2014-02-02.
^ abc(ed.) Berlioux, Monique (July–August 1975). "The Federal Republic of Germany and Olympism"(PDF). Olympic Review (Lausanne: International Olympic Committee) (93–94): 290–306. Retrieved 2008-02-08.