The London Olympics come to an end today with what is expected to be another massive ceremony. The next summer Games will be

held in Brazil in four years’ time. To mark the

end of this spectacular edition,

Colin Fitz takes an alternative look at this ultimate festival of sport

Everyone’s heard of the successes and failures of the 2012 games that started with the well-received opening ceremony on 27 July. As has become usual in the last few editions, our hopes for a first ever medal in Malta were raised somewhat with our participation in the shooting event, only to be dashed – as is often the case when a local sporting hero makes great international strides, only to fall at the final hurdle.

It’s painful to see other small nations, albeit sometimes slightly bigger than us (or perhaps blessed with better resources) win a medal here and there and us left behind. This year, the islands of Cyprus (Silver Sailing Laser) and Grenada (Gold 400 metres) won their first ever medals, and four years ago Iceland won a silver in the Handball competition.

Understandably, the medal-winners in these islands were declared national heroes – in Iceland, the notorious Icelandic Phallological Museum (a museum of penises) even created a sculpture in the team’s honour. Perhaps it’s just as well that our shooters didn’t win anything – we might have ended up with something similar on a roundabout...

Another less-spoken-about aspect of the London Olympics was the number of ‘disappeared’ athletes who went missing from their countries’ bases.

At the time of writing, according to Foreign Policy magazine, Cameroon’s Olympic delegation had confirmed that seven of the African nation’s 37 athletes had disappeared from the Olympic Village. Drusille Ngako, a reserve goalkeeper in the women’s soccer team, is believed to have been the first to disappear in July, escaping the compound while her team-mates travelled to Coventry for a final training match against New Zealand. Swimmer Paul Ekane Edingue, scheduled to compete in the men’s 50-metre freestyle, disappeared with his personal belongings next, followed by five eliminated members of the men’s boxing team.

The news came after the Ethiopian team’s 15-year-old torch bearer Natnael Yemane, a member of the London Organising Committee’s International Inspiration program, disappeared in Nottingham on 27 June.

It is thought that the athletes were motivated to escape for economic reasons and intended to remain within the European Union. Such disappearances are not unusual at international sporting events. Twenty-six athletes sought asylum during the 2006 Commonwealth games in Melbourne, Australia, and nine athletes from Sierra Leon, Tanzania and Bangladesh disappeared from the 2009 tournament.

Not all seek residence however; in 2011, 15 Ethiopian athletes disappeared from the All African Games in Mozambique, a regional hub for illegal immigration. They were rumoured to have fled to South Africa in search of employment.

The Olympic Games are known for numerous political defections. Apparently, the first incident took place in 1948, when Marie Provaznikova, then president of the International Gymnastics Federation, refused to return to her native Czechoslovakia. In a similar protest against the Soviet Union, nearly half of Hungary’s Olympic delegation defected in 1956 after the failed revolution.

Cuba, however, gets the gold for most defections as low wages and political oppression has often pushed many talented athletes to seek new teams abroad. A national soccer team member managed to file for political asylum as recently as April 2012. Making news for his bronze medal in the men’s all-around, US gymnast Danell Leyva is the son of two Cuban athlete defectors.

On a completely different note, may I just correct the great misconception that the first modern Olympic Games were held in Athens in 1896? I learnt recently from the BBC that the modern Olympics owe its original to many sources, not least the ancient games, but the great 19th century revival in Olympic tournaments began years before 1896 in, of all places, Much Wenlock, Shropshire, England.

In 1841, local physician and philanthropist Dr William Penny Brookes founded the Wenlock Agricultural Reading Society (WARS), which, as well as founding a library, set up various local interest groups, known as ‘classes’. It was here in 1850 that the ‘Olympian Class’ was formed to encourage exercise by holding annual village games.

To call them ‘the Olympics’ might be going a little too far, as the ‘cigar and umbrella race’ is notably absent from the modern games, but it was a start. Further momentum came when Brookes heard about the 1859 Olympic Games in Athens. Again, these were not the ‘official’ Olympics, having been founded and paid for entirely by one man, Evangelis Zappas an Albanian of Greek descent.

Zappas had persuaded the Greek king to revive Olympic Games for Greek speakers. So impressed was Brookes that his Olympic committee sent ₤10 as a prize for the best runner in the longest race – the largest prize in the whole competition.

In 1860 the Wenlock Olympian Society split from WARS and the games continued more along the lines of the athletic events at Zappa’s games, and Brookes began planning for an International Olympic Festival in Athens, although the Greek government declined the offer.

Then, in 1889, Brookes saw an advert from the organiser of a physical education congress, one Baron Pierre de Coubertin. The following year he invited de Coubertin to witness a meeting of the Wenlock Olympics held in his honour. It was de Coubertin’s turn to be inspired. Returning home he founded the International Olympic Committee (IOC), appointing Brookes as an honorary delegate for their first congress. The first IOC-recognised games were set for Athens in 1896 but William Brookes sadly died just four months before his dream came true.

Make sure to remember this when the Brazilian Games come around in four years’ time and the 1896 date starts being bandied around.