Best Behavior Trivia Quiz

Answer:

The words of the Unified Olympic Oath, previously known as the Athlete's Oath, have changed over the years to reflect the changing times. For example, compare the above with this, the first oath, which was read at the 1920 Games in Antwerp by the Belgian fencer Victor Boin.

"We swear. We will take part in the Olympic Games in a spirit of chivalry, for the honour of our country and for the glory of sport."

A pledge on behalf of the athletes had been called for by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) since 1906, in particular by its president and founder Pierre de Coubertin. It would de Coubertin who would pen the above declaration. The idea was drawn from the Ancient Olympic Games where athletes were called upon to pledge their fidelity to fairness beneath the statute of the king of the Greek gods, Zeus.

In present times, instead of making the vow to the statue of Zeus, the oath was sworn on the host country's flag, however, since 1984, it has been pledged upon the Olympic flag in an effort to remove the aspect of nationalism from the ceremony.

It's plain to see most of the differences between the above-described oaths. The most obvious ones are the inclusion of judges and coaches and the addition of a vow not to gain an advantage via the use of drugs. Not all of the changes, though, are as overt as some. Look closely and you may note that the word "swear" has been altered to "promise".

The call for judges to take an oath was first installed for the 1972 Winter Olympic Games in Sapporo, but this was taken separate to the one declared by the athletes. Likewise, noting the influence a coach has on an athlete, it was decreed that coaches should also swear an allegiance to fairness. The first time this was announced at an Olympic event was at the 2010 Youth Summer Olympic Games in Singapore. The three oaths were combined into the unified one, seen above, at the 2018 Winter Olympic Games in PyeongChang. The format of recital had an athlete reading the first line, a judge the second and a coach the third. From that point on, the athlete would take over and read the rest.

In an effort to highlight the IOC's "war on drugs" and its creation of WADA, the World Anti-Doping Agency, the drugs clause was added to the oath in 1999. Finally, two other changes were made in 2020 and invoked at the Summer Games in Tokyo the following year. One was the inclusion of words to recognize the need for inclusion and equality and the other was that the number of representatives called upon to read out the oath was lifted from three to six, two athletes, two judges and two coaches.