1956 Summer Olympics

The 1956 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XVI Olympiad, were held at Melbourne in Victoria, Australia.Sports Reference.com (SR/Olympics),  "1956 Melbourne Summer Games" ; retrieved 2012-7-23. 

Melbourne was chosen as the host city over instead of Buenos Aires, Mexico City, Montreal and six American cities on 28 April 1949 at the 43rd IOC session.

The equestrian events were not held in Australia because of quarantine regulations. These events were held five months earlier in Stockholm, Sweden, making it the second time that events of the same Olympics were held in different countries.In the Antwerp, Belgium Olympics of 1920 one sailing event had been held in Dutch waters.

 Participating nations 
A total of 67 nations sent athletes to compete at the Melbourne games.Taking part in the games for the first time were Ethiopia, Fiji, Kenya, Liberia, Malaya, North Borneo and Uganda.

Five nations competed in the horse riding events in Stockholm; however, athletes from these nations did not take part in the Games in Melbourne.  The five were Cambodia, Egypt, Netherlands, Spain and Switzerland.Egypt did not compete in Melbourne because of the Suez Crisis. The Netherlands, Spain and Switzerland did not participate because they wanted to protest at the Soviet invasion of Hungary.

Related pages
 List of IOC country codes

Notes

References 

Other websites

 IOC page on the 1956 Summer Olympics


Category:1956 in Sweden
Category:1956 in sports
Category:1950s in Australia
Category:History of Melbourne
Category:History of Stockholm