| Host city | Helsinki, Finland |
|---|---|
| Nations participating | 69 |
| Athletes participating | 4,955 (4,436 men, 519 women) |
| Events | 149 in 17 sports |
| Opening ceremony | July 19 |
| Closing ceremony | August 3 |
| Officially opened by | President Juho Kusti Paasikivi |
| Athlete's Oath | Heikki Savolainen |
| Olympic Torch | Paavo Nurmi and Hannes Kolehmainen |
| Stadium | Olympic Stadium |
The 1952 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XV Olympiad, were an international multi-sport event held in Helsinki, Finland in 1952. Helsinki had been earlier given the 1940 Summer Olympics, which were cancelled due to World War II. It is famous for being the Olympic Games at which the most number of world records were broken, before the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. [1]
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Helsinki was chosen as the host city over bids from Amsterdam and five American cities at the 40th IOC Session on June 21, 1947, in Stockholm, Sweden.
The voting results, in a chart below, comes from the International Olympic Committee Vote History web page.
| 1952 Summer Olympics bidding results[2] | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| City | Country | Round 1 | Round 2 | |||
| Helsinki | Finland | 14 | 15 | |||
| Minneapolis | United States | 4 | 5 | |||
| Los Angeles | United States | 4 | 5 | |||
| Amsterdam | Netherlands | 3 | 3 | |||
| Detroit | United States | 2 | — | |||
| Chicago | United States | 1 | — | |||
| Philadelphia | United States | 0 | — | |||
A total of 69 nations participated in these Games, up from 59 in the 1948 Games. Thirteen nations made their first Olympic appearance in 1952: The Bahamas, the People's Republic of China, Gold Coast (now Ghana), Guatemala, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Israel, Netherlands Antilles, Nigeria, Soviet Union (USSR), Thailand, and Vietnam.
Japan and Germany were both reinstated and permitted to send athletes after being banned for 1948 for their instigation of World War II. Due to the division of Germany, German athletes from Saar entered a separate team for the only time. Only West Germany would provide athletes for the actual Germany team, since East Germany refused to participate in a joint German team.
These are the top ten nations that won medals at these Games.
| Rank | Nation | Gold | Silver | Bronze | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States | 40 | 19 | 17 | 76 |
| 2 | Soviet Union | 22 | 30 | 19 | 71 |
| 3 | Hungary | 16 | 10 | 16 | 42 |
| 4 | Sweden | 12 | 13 | 10 | 35 |
| 5 | Italy | 8 | 9 | 4 | 21 |
| 6 | Czechoslovakia | 7 | 3 | 3 | 13 |
| 7 | France | 6 | 6 | 6 | 18 |
| 8 | Finland | 6 | 3 | 13 | 22 |
| 9 | Australia | 6 | 2 | 3 | 11 |
| 10 | Norway | 3 | 2 | 0 | 5 |
| Preceded by London |
Summer Olympic Games Helsinki XV Olympiad (1952) |
Succeeded by Melbourne |
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