With the Winter Olympics at Sochi coming up in a few months and my cultural project's focus on sports, I thought it would be interesting to explore Afghanistan's presence at the Olympics over the years. That said, Afghanistan's participation in the Olympics has been rather interesting over the last few decades. Afghanistan first sent athletes - 14 in total - to the Olympics in 1936, when the Summer Games were held in Berlin. However, of the 18 Summer Olympics since 1936, Afghanistan has only participated in 13 due to a variety of reasons. In addition, likely unsurprising to most, Afghanistan has never competed at the Winter Olympics. Afghanistan followed up the Summer Games at Berlin by sending 31 athletes to the next Summer Olympics that was held in London in 1948 - there was a delay between the London and Berlin Summer Games due to World War II; those 31 athletes were the highest number representing Afghanistan across its 13 appearances at the Olympics.
Afghanistan did not compete at the Summer Games in Helsinki in 1952, but the nation returned in 1956 to participate in the Summer Games at Melbourne. Of the first three - 1936, 1948 and 1956 - Summer Games that Afghanistan participated, the only sport that it consistently sent athletes for was field hockey; this was really interesting for me to learn about as I never really knew that the nation had enough exposure to the sport to the point where it could have a national field hockey team. The nation continuously competed at the Summer Games until missing the 1976 Summer Olympics at Montreal. Afghanistan did make a return to the Summer Olympics by competing in the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow. Afghanistan's participation in the 1980 Summer Olympics is quite interesting as many nations chose not to participate at the Summer Games in the Soviet Union due to its recent invasion of Afghanistan.
Afghanistan boycotted the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, primarily due to the nation's Communist rule. Likewise, it also skipped the 1992 Summer Olympics at Barcelona. Furthermore, the nation was banned, due to the Taliban and its treatment of women, from participating in the 2000 Summer Olympics at Sydney. Consequently, Afghanistan's participation in the Olympics alternated heavily (i.e., did appeared in 1972, did not 1976, did 1980, did not 1984, etc.) until recent years. Afghanistan has competed in the last three Summer Olympics (2004, 2008 and 2012), correlating with its progress over the last few years. Even more important, Afghanistan won its first Olympic Medal in the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing with Rohullah Nikpai winning a Bronze Medal in taekwondo. Nikpai returned to the 2012 Summer Olympics at London and repeated his previous feat by winning Bronze in taekwondo, again.
You can read more about Nikpai, Afghanistan's first medal winner, here.
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