This document provides a historical overview of Olympic Games coverage from various newspapers and media outlets from 1980 to 2012. It highlights key moments and stories from each Games, as well as award-winning designs and graphics about the Olympics. Examples are given from papers in the US, Canada, Brazil, Spain, UK, UAE, China, Sweden and more. The document emphasizes the growing scale and sophistication of explanatory graphics and data visualizations about the Olympics over time.

1. 1980
The late Lou Silverstein designed The New York Times’ special section previewing the 1980
Winter Games, which earned an award of excellence in the very first SND annual (the only
Olympic page to win that year). The Winter Games saw the Miracle on Ice U.S. hockey team
upset the Soviets, but the U.S. then boycotted the Summer Games in Moscow.

2. 1984
In 1984, USA Today was still in its infancy
as The Nation’s Newspaper. But its
identity as a visual game-changer was
already established. Its daily viewer’s
guide and explanatory graphics for the
1984 Los Angeles Games were ground-
breaking, earning Gold for SND founding
member Richard Curtis and his staff.

3. 1984
A third SND Lifetime Achievement Award winner, Nan Bisher, spearheaded the Orange
County Register’s design coverage of the 1984 Summer Games in Los Angeles. Mary Lou
Retton earned Gold in L.A., Bisher and the Register staff earned Silver from SND for their
design and photo coverage.

4. 1984
One of the defining moments in Los
Angeles: the fall of Mary Decker in the
3000 meter final. Decker was heavily
favored to win, but in the home stretch she
collided with Zola Budd of Britain and
didn’t finish. Vicki Wiggington of the Long
Beach (Calif.) Press-Telegram captured
the moment.

5. 1988
The 1988 Games in Seoul, South Korea,
saw an explosion of sophisticated
explanatory graphics. Pegie Stark and
Robert Graham designed and art directed
a series of sport previews for the Detroit
News.

6. 1988
One of the remarkable storylines in Seoul:
Diver Greg Louganis smashes his head on
the board attempting a reverse two-and-a-
half somersault, and wipes out. It was his
first mishap in more than 200,000 dives.
After some fast stitches, he came back
with a set of near-perfect dives to win
Gold. Photographer Brian Smith of the
Miami Herald got the image.

7. 1988
Too good to be true: Ben Johnson of
Canada shocks Carl Lewis and the world
with a world-record-setting time in the 100-
meter final. His Gold medal was rescinded
and Johnson’s name became
synonymous with doping. Deborah Withey
and Andrew Hartley led the Detroit Free
Press’ Silver-medal coverage.

8. 1992
Pole-vaulter Sergey Bubka of the Ukraine
had an amazing career, winning Gold in
Seoul and breaking the world record 35
times, but at the 1992 Barcelona Games
he came away empty. Spanish papers,
however, came up huge in 1992: In the
14th Edition of the SND annual, 88 of the
135 international winners came from
Spain.

9. 1992
Historic moment for Spain: race walker
Daniel Plaza Montero won the country’s
first-ever Gold in track & field. Carlos
Perez de Rozas led the design team at La
Vanguardia in Barcelona.

10. 1992
Introducing the ripped nameplate: Ricardo
Bermejo and team won Silver and
numerous other awards for their elegant
design and terrific photo coverage in the
Barcelona ’92 newspaper, which was
based in Pamplona, Spain.

11. 1992
A bold drawing style and expressive use of
color characterized a Gold-medal winning
set of infographics pages from the
Associated Press/El Mundo/El Periodico
de Cataluna. Karl Gude, Jeff Goertzen,
Andrew Lucas, Mario Tascon and others
contributed to the work.

12. 1992
One of the great Olympic headlines:
“Lights, Catalonia, Action” on this Silver-
winning page from Fred Norgaard, Tom
Bodkin and The New York Times staff.

13. 1996
Atlanta is one of just three U.S. cities to host
the Summer Games (St. Louis hosted in
1904, Los Angeles in 1932 and 1984), and
its winning bid to host the Centennial Games
was an upset (Athens was favored but would
have to wait 8 more years). Illustrator Keith
Webb of the Boston Globe designed this
winning special section cover.

14. 1996
Kerri Strug gave one of the 1996 Olympics’
gutsiest performances, sticking her vault on
an injured ankle to help the U.S. to its first-
ever team Gold medal in women’s
gymnastics. Tracy Porter built this page for
the Virginian-Pilot.

15. 1996
Coming off a Bronze-medal finish in
Barcelona, the U.S. women’s basketball
team took Gold in Atlanta. While the U.S.
men’s ‘Dream Teams’ sweep up the bulk of
the publicity, this edition of the women’s
team was no slouch either, featuring legends
such as Lisa Leslie, Rebecca Lobo and
Sheryl Swoopes. Harris Siegel and Andrew
Prendimano directed the coverage for the
Asbury Park Press.

16. 1996
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution went to
town on the Olympics, beginning with the site
announcement in 1990, through to the
closing ceremonies. Tony DeFeria, D.W.
Pine, and many others led the design aspect
of the groundbreaking coverage, which
included multiple daily special sections
during the Games, and which resulted in a
Judges’ Special Recognition from SND.

17. 1996
Birth of the mega-page? This four-page effort
from the graphic artists at El Mundo del Siglo
XXXI magazine in Madrid, Spain, chronicled
the history of the Games, showed incredible
attention to detail, won Gold, and perhaps
spawned a new industry: the tape-together
newspaper poster.

18. 2000
The Olympics went to Sydney, Australia,
in 2000. The Games’ visit to the Southern
Hemisphere gave designers at The Boston
Globe a chance to play with the notion of
‘Down Under.’

19. 2000
Inge de Bruijn of the Netherlands won three
Gold medals in Sydney. Her win over
Therese Alshammer of Sweden in the
100 m freestyle, by a full 2.8 meters, is
depicted here in the Swedish paper
Svenska Dagbladet with the headline,
“How do you reverse this, Therese?” Like
Alshammer in the pool, Rickard Frank and
Tomas Oneborg won Silver for this entry.

20. 2000
The high jump has been an Olympic sport since ancient Greece, and for most of its history
featured a straight-on approach. A series of new techniques (from the roll to the straddle to
the flop) introduced during the 20th century led to raising of the world record by more than 2
feet, a process described on this page from the National Post, art directed by Gayle Grin.

21. 2000
The feud between the American and
Australian swim teams simmered in the
lead-up to the Sydney Games, with
brash American Gary Hall promising
“We will smash [the Australian team] like
guitars,” and Australian star Kieren
Perkins replying “I don’t take a lot of
notice of drug cheats.” Hall won 3 Golds
in Sydney, Perkins won a Silver. I doubt
they shared watermelon and juice boxes
afterward. Simon Pipe of The Australian
designed this page.

22. 2000
Two quintessential Brazilian sports:
women’s beach volleyball won Silver
while the men’s soccer team got knocked
out, medal-less, by Cameroon. Brazilian
paper Correio Braziliense conveyed the
glory and disillusion of the moment.

23. 2000
American Maurice Greene took Gold in the
100 meters in Sydney. Later, like all great
athletes of this generation, he appeared on
Dancing With The Stars. The Sunday
Herald in Glasgow, Scotland, earned a
Judges Special Recognition for their
fearless design approach. But to my
knowledge no Sunday Herald staffers have
appeared on Dancing With The Stars.

24. 2004
Athens was the home of the Ancient
Olympic Games, and the birthplace of the
modern Games in 1896, so the motto for
Athens 2004 was “Welcome Home.” The
1896 Games featured 241 athletes from 14
countries; the 2004 games featured 10,625
athletes from 201 countries. The San Diego
Union-Tribune captured the spirit of Athens
in this Silver-winning preview section cover.

25. 2004
Striking portrait photography of California’s
Olympic athletes by Jim Gensheimer kicked
off the San Jose Mercury News’ coverage of
Athens Games and won Gold from SND. The
U.S. won 35 Gold and 101 total medals to
lead the medal table in Athens.

26. 2004
The triumph is simply in competing, states this
preview section from La Presse in Montreal.
How did the pictured Canadian athletes fare?
Diver Emilie Heymans took bronze, while
Fanny Letourneau and Courtney Stewart
placed sixth in synchronized swimming.

27. 2004
Daiane dos Santos was Brazil’s top
gymnastics hopeful going into Athens, and
Estado de Minas in Belo Horizonte, Brazil,
profiled her with this page. Dos Santos
reached the final of the floor exercise
competition, but tumbled out of bounds and
finished fifth.

28. 2004
Another unhappy ending: The U.S. women’s
gymnastics team went into Athens as the
defending world champions, and were billed as
the best U.S. team ever. But a series of
mishaps and lackluster performances led to a
second-place finish, behind Romania. The
Chicago Tribune captured the disappointment.

29. 2004
The Greek debt crisis can perhaps be
attributed to the amount of gold Michael
Phelps extracted from the country: the U.S.
swimmer won six times. Heading into
London, he has 14 Gold medals, more than
any individual in the history of the Games. In
2004, Michael Currie and the Fort Worth
Star-Telegram marked Phelps’ first Olympic
triumph.

30. 2008
The full potential of the mega-page, realized. This Silver-medal winning infographic/
artistic masterpiece by the newspaper Bayan in Dubai, United Arab Emirates previews
the major events at the Beijing 2008 Games. It’s 36 full broadsheet pages. I asked my
editor for 36 pages once. Guess how that went? Moving along ...

31. 2008
The number 8 symbolizes prosperity in Chinese culture, and the
Opening Ceremonies in Beijing began at 8 p.m. on 8/8/2008.
The Beijing News captured the unprecedented scope and
spectacle of the event.

32. 2008
Moscow-born, Texas-raised Nastia Liukin, the daughter of two champion gymnasts, was
among the American favorites heading into Beijing. Here, the Dallas Morning News team
deconstructs her routine on the uneven bars. Liukin won the all-around Gold in China,
joining Mary Lou Retton and Carly Patterson as the only Americans to do so.

33. 2008
The 29th Olympiad was the first staged in China, and brought
unprecedented media attention to the country. This page from Folha de Sao
Paulo in Brazil focuses on the spectacle and protests surrounding the event.

34. 2008
In China, all eyes were on American swimmer
Michael Phelps, and he didn’t disappoint, winning
an unprecedented 8 Gold medals. This section
front from the Los Angeles Times marked his
seventh triumph and previewed his eighth.

35. 2008
An all-time high of 86 nations won medals in Beijing. Want to know
who won what? This dynamic chart by Douglas Okasaki of the Gulf
News in Dubai, color-coded by continent, makes it easy to find out.

36. 2012
The London Games are sure to generate moments that will live on long after the
closing ceremonies. Come to www.snd.org for coverage before and during the
Games and be sure to enter your best work for consideration in the 35th edition
of the Best of News Design competition.