The World Team Olympiad was a contract bridge meet organized by the World Bridge Federation every four years from 1960 to 2004. Its main events were world championships for national teams, always including one open and one restricted to women ("Open" and "Women" categories in WBF terms). A parallel event for seniors was inaugurated in 2000.
Although the Olympiad has been discontinued, its main constituent championships continue within or beside the World Mind Sports Games, first held October 2008 in Beijing, China, and the subsequent results are listed here.
The 1960 "Olympiad" was the first meet organized by the WBF, although the organization has adopted one older event that now confers the title World Champion, the Bermuda Bowl competition.
The Olympiad championships differed from other world-level championships for "national" teams primarily by inviting every WBF member country to enter a team in each tournament. Other world championships, including the older Bermuda Bowl for open teams that is now contested every odd-number year, require qualification at a "zone" level. For example, about 40 national open teams from European Bridge League member countries may compete biennially for about six entries in the Bermuda Bowl tournament.
Over the twelve World Team Olympiad cycles, the fields grew from 29 open and 14 women teams in 1960 to 72 open, 43 women, and 29 seniors teams in 2004. For the first World Mind Sports Games there were 71 open and 54 women entries. The seniors international cup continued as a non-medal event with 32 entries.
Read more about World Team Olympiad: Open Teams, Women Teams, Senior International Cup, World Mind Sports Games, See Also
Famous quotes containing the words world and/or team:
“As our actual present world ... shows itself more clearly—our world of an aristocracy materialised and null, a middle-class purblind and hideous, a lower class crude and brutal—we shall turn our eyes again, and to more purpose, upon this passionate and dauntless soldier of a forlorn hope.”
—Matthew Arnold (1822–1888)
“I also heard the whooping of the ice in the pond, my great bed-fellow in that part of Concord, as if it were restless in its bed and would fain turn over, were troubled with flatulency and bad dreams; or I was waked by the cracking of the ground by the frost, as if some one had driven a team against my door, and in the morning would find a crack in the earth a quarter of a mile long and a third of an inch wide.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)