Winter Olympic Games Winter Olympic Games The Winter Olympic Games () is a major international sporting event held once every four years for sports practised on snow and ice. The first Winter Olympics, the 1924 Winter Olympics, were held in Chamonix, France. The modern Olympic games were inspired by the ancient Olympic Games, which were held in Olympia, Greece, from the 8th century BC to the 4th century AD. Baron Pierre de Coubertin founded the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in 1894, leading to the first modern Summer Games in Athens, Greece in 1896. The IOC is the governing body of the Olympic Movement,
LGBT athletes in the Olympic and Paralympic Games the 2010s, Olympic organizers have often included a Pride House facility for LGBT athletes. Alongside the Olympics, international multi-sport events have also been organized specifically for LGBT athletes, including the Gay Games and World OutGames. Since 2014 the International Olympic Committee has listed sexual orientation as a protected category in the Olympic charter. In the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, only 14 athletes out of the 10,708 participants were openly gay, lesbian or bisexual, including: Of them only two, including Matthew Mitcham (who also won a gold medal, making him the first openly gay Olympic champion), were male. Mitcham gained