Juan Antonio Samaranch, who was head of the IOC from 1980 to 2001, died in Barcelona on Tuesday at age 89. His condition started to go downhill on Sunday, when he was admitted to the hospital.

Samaranch oversaw the Olympics during a time of upheaval; many changes were made during his time as IOC chair. In 1980 and 1984, boycotts kept several countries away. During his watch, professionals started to be allowed to compete. The Olympic schedule changed as well; rather than having a winter and summer Olympics every four years during the same year, the Olympics are now staggered. Several events were also added to the Olympics.

I personally started watching the Olympics during his term… although I was in preschool before that time, so I wouldn’t have remembered much anyway. My earliest Olympic memories were from the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics; I carried the American flag for the torch relay kickoff in Los Angeles for the 1996 Atlanta games, and I was able to visit the 2000 Sydney Olympic site while it was being built.

Olympic fans owe a debt of gratitude to this man, who brought the Olympics closer to where they are today.

The 2008 Beijing Olympics were definitely one that you did not want to miss. The two-week event started off with an unforgettable opening ceremony. China, with a population of over a billion people, was able to amass a huge number of volunteers and put together an event that you would never forget.

Some of the highlights of the Beijing Olympics include Michael Phelps achieving a record-setting eight gold medals in one Olympics, Shawn Johnson and Nastia Liukin’s performances in gymnastics, and Usain Bolt, with his insanely fast runs.

What would a good Olympics be without a little controversy? In 2008, there were several. Many questioned the Chinese gymnast’s ages. Although one googler found documents to prove otherwise, the IOC accepted the girl’s passports, which said they were 16 (they need to maintain this facade for the rest of their lives, or they might find themselves losing their medal, even eight years from now). Usain Bolt showboated at the end of a run and caused an uproar. Both the men’s and women’s US relay teams dropped their batons (argh!).

In all, the 2008 Beijing Olympics were quite memorable. While the athletics are likely to be good in 2012, London is unlikely to be able to produce the same kind of spectacle that Beijing did. They are already having financially difficulties, mainly due to the recession.

If you’re planning on a trip to a future Olympics, money may be one of your top concerns. Another consideration that you may want to keep in mind is the language barrier.

If you can read this blog without the extensive use of a dictionary or google translator, then you don’t really have to do a lot of language study. Most tourist areas have employees that speak at least a little bit of English. If you’re planning on a London trip, nearly everyone will speak English. One of the primary languages used in the Olympics is English. If you’re traveling to the London games, or just want to get to the Olympics, see a few sports and go home, you’ll be okay.

However, if you plan on going to Russia or Brazil, and don’t want to be confined to the touristy areas and want to venture out a bit, you may want to start looking into learning Russian or Portuguese. In particular, the average Russian does not speak English.

Don’t let the Russian Cyrillic alphabet scare you off. While the different letters look intimidating, every Russian letter has an English-sounding equivalent, and you can learn to read it in an hour or so. From then on, it’s like learning any other language (I’ve taken a year of Russian). Portuguese is not the same thing as Spanish, but a background in Spanish could help.

You don’t have to be an expert in a language in order to get by in a foreign country. I lived in Italy for three years, and although I do speak and read some Italian, I am certainly not fluent. I do know enough to go places, order at a restaurant, and leave the impression that I’m at least trying to speak their language. In order to engage in conversations with the locals, you’ll want to learn more; but if your main goal is to get out a bit on a once-in-a-lifetime trip, you’ll want to learn at least some of the language.

My favorite language program is Rosetta Stone. I’m currently using it to brush up on my Russian, in the hopes that I might get the chance to go to Sochi in 2014. It really makes learning any language fairly easy. Even my seven-year-old is using it to learn Chinese.

While knowing a foreign language is not a prerequisite for visiting, it certainly helps. I have seen firsthand how attempting to speak in a foreign language will earn you more respect than just speaking English. While it does take a little bit of effort, it can make your Olympic experience more enjoyable.

As you may remember, Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili was killed a month ago today, while making a luge training run hours prior to the opening ceremonies of the 2010 Vancouver Olympics. Aside from a few minor glitches, his death seemed to be the one black spot of the otherwise well-done games.

I know that many people around the world are having difficult financial times right now. Not only are we in the middle of a global recession, but places like Haiti and Chile have been hit with devastating earthquakes. We want to give, but it seems like we don’t have much.

The International Luge Federation (IFL) is collecting donations for the family of Nodar Kumaritashvili. His family could use their help. They lost their home to fire a few years ago, and I guess they have never fully recovered. I know what it’s like to have my house catch on fire, it happened to me in 2008… it was not a fun experience, and I had fire insurance. I’m not sure if they have that kind of security in Georgia.

If you have a little extra money, please consider making a donation to the Kumaritashvili family. While the majority of us will go on with our lives, his family has been altered forever. If you don’t, that’s understandable, but if you could, then that’s wonderful. Thanks.

Probably the most memorable event of the 1994 Olympics, for many, was the attack on Nancy Kerrigan, just prior to the Olympic games. It later was discovered that Tonya Harding’s bodyguard was the man involved, in an attempt to take Kerrigan out of competition. It didn’t work, and Kerrigan went on to win the silver. Harding, on the other hand, not only didn’t win a medal (she came in eighth), she seemed to turn to the scandalous after that. Harding became better known for sex tapes and celebrity boxing than skating well.

Lillehammer was also the year that Dan Jansen took his victory lap with his daughter, Jane, now made famous by those Visa commercials. He won the 1000 meter speed skating event this year, two Olympics after getting the bad news during the 1988 Olympics that his sister had died the morning of the competition.

Most of the 1994 competitors have long since retired, but a few are still hanging around. Luge’s Armin Zöggeler won the bronze medal for Italy, and Mark Grimmette, the flagbearer for the US Olympic team this year, were part of the Lillehammer games.

He really is. Even though he has a hereditary condition (sickle cell anemia) that has drained his ability to have a lot of endurance, and as a result has never really had much to do with sports, he can still call himself an Olympian… but not exactly in the way that most people think.

My husband is an Olympian in the same way that I can call myself a Trojan, or my husband can also call himself a Sun Devil. His high school mascot is an Olympian, and as an alum of the school, he is an Olympian.

He’s one of the few people that can call themselves Olympians due to where they graduated from high school, because his high school, Leuzinger High School in Lawndale, California, is the only high school that is allowed to use the Olympian as a mascot.

The Olympians of Leuzinger are able to call themselves that because in 1932, the Olympics were held in Los Angeles. The first graduating senior class at Leuzinger was graduating that year, and the school was allowed to use the Olympic rings and the Olympic name. In return, the Leuzinger Olympians allowed the actual Olympics to use their facilities to host some of the events.

The IOC wants to protect its Olympic brand. That’s understandable. They don’t want people using the word “Olympic” because they make a lot of money off of official endorsements, and they also don’t want their name to be tainted. That’s understandable.

Naturally, the IOC didn’t want businesses popping up in Vancouver to cash in on the “Olympic” name. They started to sue local businesses that had the word Olympic in their name.

That might work fine in many parts of the world, but there’s one big problem with that in Vancouver: geography.

Vancouver is located in Canada, just North of the United States border. Specifically, the State of Washington. Even more specifically, Vancouver is just north of the Olympic Peninsula (pictured in the photo).

I grew up on the Olympic Peninsula. I spent my summers camping at Olympic National Park. It was never unusual to see businesses with names like “Olympic Dry Cleaning” or “Olympic Realtors”, because in that area, “Olympic” is just a place designation, just as “Desert” or “Valley” is used to describe some businesses in Phoenix. It has nothing to do with the athletic competition.

The Olympic Committee later decided to only go after businesses that were trying to imply a connection between their business and the athletic competition called the Olympics. Good choice.

My internet name is Brooke Lorren; I’ve been a fan of the Olympics since somewhere around the 1980s… pretty much for most of my life. Although I’m not much of an athlete myself, the Olympics inspire me to get out and run, do crunches, and become more athletic. I have written several different pages on the Olympics; primarily on Squidoo. You can visit my “lensography” to see many of the pages that I have written. Please note: 100% of the profits from that page goes to the nonprofit group Hope for Haiti.

I’ve never actually been able to go to an Olympics, but I did go to college at USC, where many of the 1984 Summer Olympics events were held, and I have spent several hours in the Olympic pool there. I was able to carry the American Flag during the torch relay kickoff for the 1996 Atlanta games; the torch relay kickoff was held in Los Angeles and I just happened to be in the right place to volunteer at the time. I also was able to visit the site of the 2000 Sydney Olympics while it was still under construction, and I was able to run around the track that the athletes would later compete on.

Other than that, I’m an Olympic fan, like many other people are. I prefer the individual Olympic sports to the team sports. I’m fairly bummed that my finances didn’t allow me to visit the 2010 Games in Vancouver, especially considering that I have family that live nearby. My goal is to get a chance to see the 2016 games in Rio de Janiero… while that sounds like it could be expensive, my husband starts law school this fall, and I’m guessing that a lawyer with three years of experience will be able to afford the trip. Outside of the Olympics, I don’t watch too many sports.

Other than being an Olympics fan, I’m a homeschool teacher, content producer, and gymnastics mom. I’m hoping that this blog will be useful to you.