第16届奥运会于1956年11月22日在可容纳10.4万人的墨尔本主体育场正式开幕。宣布盛会开幕的是澳总督爱丁堡公爵。来自奥林匹亚的火种首次利用飞机传递，行程共约2万多公里。这是历届奥运会举办时间最晚的一次，多数国家运动员仍要适当地调整自己的训练计划。

KEY FACTS

Opening date: 22 November 1956

Closing date: 08 December 1956

The Host City: Melbourne (Australia)

Sports: 17

MELBOURNE 1956 Games of the XVI Olympiad

Melbourne won the right to host the 1956 Olympics by one vote over Buenos Aires. Australian quarantine laws were too severe to allow the entry of foreign horses, so the equestrian¹ events were held separately in Stockholm in June. The Melbourne Games were the first to be held in the southern hemisphere. Laszlo Papp of Hungary became the first boxer² to win three gold medals. American Pat McCormick won both diving events, just as she had in 1952.

Two athletes dominated the gymnastics competition. On the men's side, Ukrainian Viktor Chukarin earned five medals, including three gold, to bring his career total to eleven medals, seven of them gold. Agnes Keleti of Hungary brought her career total to ten medals by winning four gold medals and two silver.

The U.S. basketball team, led by Bill Russell and K.C. Jones, put on the most dominant³ performance in Olympic history, scoring more than twice as much as their opponents and winning each of their games by at least 30 points. U.S. weightlifter Paul Anderson weighed 137.9kg. In weightlifting, ties are broken by awarding the higher place to the athlete with the lower body weight.

Do You Know? 奥运会上出现了第一次的联合抵制事件？

The Soviet⁴ invasion of Hungary provoked protests from numerous western countries and some of them, such as Spain, Switzerland and the Netherlands, withdrew from the Games. On another matter, Egypt, Lebanon and Iraq refused to participate in protest of the Franco-British Suez intervention⁵. And the People's Republic of China refused to participate because of the presence of the Republic of China (Taiwan). This conflict would take 28 years to be resolved.

苏联入侵匈牙利引起了许多西方国家的不满，它们纷纷退出了本届奥运会，这些国家包括西班牙、瑞士和荷兰。另一方面，埃及、黎巴嫩也拒绝参加比赛；而由于台湾要以独立身份参赛，中国也拒绝参与。这一冲突在28年后才能以解决。

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