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The Summer Olympic Games is a major international multi-sport event held every four years, with the first Games taking place in Athens in 1896. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) is responsible for organising the Games, and the most recent Games were held in 2021 in Tokyo, Japan. Gold, silver, and bronze medals are awarded for first, second, and third place, respectively. The Summer Olympics have grown from a 42-event competition with fewer than 250 male competitors from 14 different nations in 1896 to 339 events with 11,420 competitors (almost half of whom were women) from 206 nations in 2021. The Games have been held in 19 different countries over five continents, with the United States hosting the Games four times and London being the first city to host the Games three times. The United States leads the all-time medal count, followed by the USSR, France, Great Britain, Germany, China, and the ex-Soviet 'Unified Team'. The 1900 Paris Games marked the first time women were allowed to compete, and the 1936 Berlin Games saw the introduction of the Torch Relay. The 1940 and 1944 Games were cancelled due to World War II, and the first post-war Games were held in 1948 in London. Cassius Clay, later known as Muhammad Ali, won a gold medal in boxing at the 1960 Rome Games.A Brief History of the Modern Olympics

• The 1964 Tokyo Games were the first to be broadcast worldwide on television, enabled by the recent advent of communication satellites.

• Judo debuted as an official sport, and Dutch judoka Anton Geesink caused a stir when he won the final of the open weight division, defeating Akio Kaminaga in front of his home crowd.

• Performances at the 1968 Games in Mexico City were affected by the altitude of the host city.

• Věra Čáslavská turned her head down and away from the Soviet flag while the national anthem was played during the medal ceremony to protest against the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia.

• Politics again intervened at the 1972 Games in Munich, but this time with lethal consequences. A Palestinian terrorist group named Black September invaded the Olympic village and broke into the apartment of the Israeli delegation.

• The 1976 Summer Games were the most expensive in Olympic history (until the 2014 Winter Olympics), costing $1.5 billion and being boycotted by many African nations as a protest against a recent tour of apartheid-run South Africa by the New Zealand national rugby union team.

• Following the Soviet Union's 1979 invasion of Afghanistan, 66 nations, including the United States, Canada, West Germany, and Japan, boycotted the 1980 Games held in Moscow.

• The 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles saw the Soviet Union and 13 Soviet allies retaliating by boycotting the games.

• The 1992 Barcelona Games featured the admittance of players from one of the North American top leagues, the NBA, exemplified by but not limited to US basketball's "Dream Team".

• The 1992 games also saw the reintroduction to the Games of several smaller European states which had been annexed into the Soviet Union during World War II.

• The 2008 Summer Olympics was held in Beijing, People's Republic of China. Several new events were held, including the new discipline of BMX for both men and women.

• London held the 2012 Summer Olympics, becoming the first city to host the Olympic Games three times.

• The 2020 Summer Olympics were originally scheduled to take place from 24 July to 9 August 2020 in Tokyo, Japan, but were delayed until 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.Overview of Summer Olympics

• Nations qualify for team sports through continental tournaments.

• Each nation can only be represented by one team per competition.

• Sports are divided into five categories (A-E) based on popularity.

• Popularity is gauged by six criteria.

• Category determines the share of Olympic revenue received by that sport's International Federation.

• New sports added to the 2016 Olympics are placed in Category E.

• Aquatics encompasses four sports: artistic swimming, diving, swimming, and water polo.

• The table uses official data provided by the IOC for all-time medal count.

• The IOC has never decided which events of the early Games were "Olympic" and which were not.

• Pierre de Coubertin ceded that determination to the organizers of those Games.

• Medal leaders by year can be found in the article.

• List of Summer Olympic Games is included in the article.