As we celebrate the fifth anniversary of the Winter Youth Olympic Games Lillehammer 2016 – and the 27th anniversary of the Olympic Winter Games Lillehammer 1994 – we look at how the Lillehammer Olympic Legacy Sports Centre has carried their legacy on, helping drive the growth in winter sports at home and abroad.

The remarkable Hungarian former gymnast, who survived the Nazis and went on to win 10 Olympic medals, 5 of them gold, turns 100 today.

Olympic.org picks out some of the most impressive performances from former Youth Olympic Games (YOG) athletes in recent weeks, as more and more elite sporting events return in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Denmark’s women’s handball team reigned supreme for the decade straddling the turn of the millennium, winning Olympic gold in 1996, 2000 and 2004. Katrine Fruelund was at the heart of the latter two teams – and battled confidence issues to become one of her country’s greatest ever Olympians.

In the Sydney Aquatic Centre, from 16 to 23 September 2000, the Australian swimmers enjoyed massive support from an enthusiastic home crowd. An inside account of the days when teenager Ian Thorpe and his team-mates were motivated by an enormous wave of support to produce a series of memorable performances at the Games of the XXVII Olympiad.

Gary Hall Senior won medals at three Olympic Games and held numerous world records, but on one late-August day in 1972, it was Hall’s friend, clubmate and fellow competitor, Mark Spitz, who set the sporting world alight, as Hall explains…

Following the initiative of Pierre de Coubertin, who wanted to combine “muscles and mind” at the Games, seven editions, from 1912 to 1948, included Olympic events in painting, sculpture, literature, music and architecture. After these were dropped, the cultural programmes created for the Games successfully continued the vision of the man who revived the Games.

Erica Wiebe knows how it feels to doubt and question yourself. Being female in a traditionally male-dominated sport comes with several challenges, and women often have to fight to be respected or valued at a competitive level. In some countries, where traditional gender roles are systematically reinforced, deviating from societal norms is seen as an act of rebellion.