Thursday, 12 August 2004  
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Greatest sports event of the year: 

Athens Olympic Games start tomorrow

On 13th August, one of the greatest sports events of this century will take place in Athens, Greece with the participation of sports men and women from over 200 countries. It will be the 28th since Olympic Games started in 1896 in the same country.

If we are to consider the largest number of stamps issued in respect of one theme over the years, it is Olympics and no other.

Throughout the years since the first Olympic Games (of the modern times) was held in Greece, commemorative stamps have come out from almost every country including Sri Lanka.

In all these stamps all kinds of sports are shown in such a way that stamp collectors are tempted to acquire them even at great expence. Illustrated here are just a few of them. We give below the years and the places where the Games were held.

1. 1896 Greece, 2. 1900 Paris, 3. 1904 St. Louis, 4. 1908 London, 5. 1912 Stockholm, 6. 1916 Berlin, 7. 1920 Antwerp, 8. 1924 Paris, 9. 1928 Amsterdam, 10. 1932 Los Angeles, 11. 1936 Berlin, 12. 1940 Helsinki, 13. 1944 London, 14. 1948 London, 15. 1952 Helsinki, 16. 1956 Melbourne, 17. 1960 Rome, 18. 1964 Tokyo, 19. 1968 Mexico, 20. 1972 Munich, 21. 1976 Montreal, 22. 1980 Moscow, 23. 1984 Los Angeles, 24. 1988 Seoul, 25. 1992 Barcelona, 26. 1996 Atlanta, 27. 2000 Sydney and 28. 2004 Athens (Greece).

Apart from Olympic sports stamps there are also other stamps issued for other occasions. In these stamps no Olympic symbol of 5 rings are shown. Therefore, stamps issued in respect of Olympic Games can easily identified.

Olympic flag in pure white shows in its middle the five rings mentioned earlier and under that these three words, CITIUS, ALTIUS, MORTIUS which means Foster, Higher, Stronger.

It is a famous idealist by the name Pierre Fredy, Baron de Courbertin who revived the modern Olympic Games.

Four attractive stamps were issued in Sri Lanka in honour of the Olympic Games on August 6, 2004. They are shown here separately so that their beauty can be better appreciated. It is after a very long time that such an attractive set of stamps was issued to win praises from collectors.

The four stamps are by V. Srinath Kurukulasooriya who thought it better to bring out diamond shape for them with his art-work which is most creditable indeed.

- Francis P. Gunasekera

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