Figure skating at the Olympic Games in London, United Kingdom. As this traditional winter sport could be conducted indoors, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) approved its inclusion in the Summer Olympics program. It was featured a second time at the Antwerp Games, after which it was permanently transferred to the program of the Winter Olympic Games, first held in 1924 in Chamonix, France. In London, figure skating was presented in four events: men's singles, women's singles, men's special figures, and mixed pairs. The special figures contest was won by Russian Nikolai Panin, who gave his country its first ever Olympic gold medal. He remains the event's
Doping at the Olympic Games drink "magic" potions and eat exotic meats in the hopes of giving them an athletic edge on their competition. If they were caught cheating, their likenesses were often engraved into stone and placed in a pathway that led to the Olympic stadium. In the modern Olympic era, chemically enhancing one's performance has evolved into a sophisticated science, but in the early years of the Modern Olympic movement the use of performance-enhancing drugs was almost as crude as its ancient predecessors. For example, the winner of the marathon at the 1904 Games, Thomas Hicks, was given strychnine and brandy by his