We had a question about the Olympics in a trivia game on Wednesday, and it sparked an argument about how many points to wager on it. I have a guy on my team named Brad who is “generally” pretty decent at Olympics questions, and I’m not a slouch, either! Which is why I was so puzzled about why Brad and Mike wanted to wager zero on this (I’m still kind of teasing him about this one…). Well, I do know some of the host cities pretty well, if you asked me who won the gold medal in the luge in the 1988 Calgary Olympics, I’d be like…huh? I do love Olympic cities that are cool to say, like Lillehammer, Innsbruck, Sarajevo (that one really rolls off the tongue), Grenoble, Chernobyl. Just kidding about that last city, they didn’t have an Olympics, just a massive nuclear incident in 1986.  Did I already mention Calgary? I like that name. It sounds kind of like “cavalry,” which means soldiers on horses. Which aren’t really used in battle anymore because horses are expensive, need to be battle trained, and get mowed down by automatic weapons just like humans do. But a cavalry charge must have been a thing to see!

A scene from the 2003 film The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. The Rohirrim galloping into battle.

Nonetheless, the Olympics is a big, broad category. And trivia fodder, for sure! So here’s a list of Olympic years and the cities in which they were hosted. Summer Olympics will be in orange, and winter will be in blue. Yay, this is my first color blog! It’s the Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs of blogs! Canceled Olympics will be in purple. I will only include country names if they are not capitals of their respective countries or are otherwise well known enough cities to not need clarification (I’m going to assume anyone bothering to read this is smart enough to know that Los Angeles is in the United States, for example). But seriously, if you don’t know that, you have no business trying to compete in a pub trivia game, now shoo, you! Also, I will include state names with any Olympic host cities from the United States. 

Just a few stats…

Olympic Cities Hosting Multiple Times

Athens – 1896, 2004

Paris – 1900, 1924, 2024

London – 1908, 1948, 2012

St. Moritz – 1928, 1948

Lake Placid – 1932, 1980

Los Angeles – 1932, 1984, 2028

Innsbruck –  1964, 1976

Tokyo – 1964, 2020

Beijing – 2008, 2022

Summer/ Winter Olympics

1896

Athens

1900

Paris

1904

St Louis, (MO) U.S.A. 

1908

London

1912 

Stockholm

CANCELED OLYMPIC GAMES

1916 – Berlin

1920

Antwerp (Belgium)

1924

Chamonix (France)

Paris

1928

St. Moritz, Switzerland

Amsterdam

1932

Lake Placid, U.S.A.

Los Angeles

1936

Garmisch-Partenkirchen (Nazi Germany)

Berlin (Nazi Germany)

CANCELED OLYMPIC GAMES:

1940 – Sapporo/Garmisch-Partenkirchen (winter)

1940 – Tokyo/Helsinki (summer)

1944 – Cortina d’Ampezzo (Italy, winter)

1944 – London (summer)

 

1948

St. Moritz, Switzerland

London

1952

Oslo

Helsinki

1956

Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy

Melbourne, Australia (Melbourne is NOT the capital city)

1960

Squaw Valley, (CA) U.S.A.

Rome

1964

Innsbruck, Austria

Tokyo

1968 

Grenoble, France

Mexico City

1972

Sapporo, Japan

Munich

1976

Dorothy Hamill in the 1976 Winter Olympics in Innsbruck, Austria. Her haircut was an inspirational one!

Innsbruck, Austria

Montreal, Canada

1980 

Lake Placid, U.S.A.

Moscow

1984

Gymnast Mary Lou Retton at the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. Which you all know is in California. What can I say about her? She made everyone feel like they weren’t perky enough!

Sarajevo, Yugoslavia (now Bosnia/Herzegovina)

Los Angeles

Now to bring all of your moods down a notch or two after having to see Mary Lou Retton and that grin (shudder). The Sarajevo Winter Olympics site in decay…this actually happens to lots of former Olympics sites, apparently.

1988

Calgary

Seoul

1992

Albertville

Barcelona

1994

Lillehammer, Norway

1996

Atlanta (GA), U.S.A.

1998

Nagano, Japan

2000 

Sydney, Australia

2002

Salt Lake City (UT), U.S.A.

 2004

Athens

2006

Turin, Italy

2008

Beijing

2010

Vancouver, Canada (British Columbia)

2012

London

2014

Sochi, Russia

2016

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

2018

Pyeongchang, South Korea

2020

Tokyo

2022

Beijing

2024

Paris

2026

TBD

2028

Los Angeles

2030

TBD