1st Summer Olympics

The Games of the I Olympiad were an international multi-sport event celebrated in Ashford, Casari, a city located on the Silver Coast adjacent to the Nemyan Strait. Held under the auspices of the NationStates Olympic Committee, it was the first succesfully-completed summer edition of the Olympic Games.

While several sports roleplaying attempts at emulating the (summer) Olympics had been made over the years, the immense amount of resources and work needed to hosting them had until this point caused worthy tries such as Kaza 08 held in Kaze Progressa to be left incomplete, or fail to even successfully begin. For more information on these and other abortive attempts to found the Olympic Games on NationStates, see here. The eventual success of the Olympics in Ashford could reasonably be attributed to the experience of Casari in hosting a similar multi-sport event, the Ylompic Games, and the precedent set by the success of the 1st Winter Olympics in Aeropag, UCS.

The tiny nation of San Adriano, which sent only two athletes to the Olympics, celebrated a remarkable accomplishment early on when swimmer Sabrina Vannucci won a gold medal in the women's 200-metre freestyle. On the final day of the Olympics, Qazox women's soccer player Risa Klyn was killed when a compatriot who had missed out on the Olympics when Qazox opted not to send a gymnastics team opened fire on the Qazox team as they received their gold medals during the medal ceremony. A potential political controversy also occurred at the end of the Games when Ariddian runner Aey Mendez applied to immigrate to Casari instead of returning to Ariddia.

Host selection
A total of 18 bids were made, most consisting of little more than an expression of interest in hosting the Games. From these applicants, the Olympic Upper Council members nominated four bids to advance to candidacy status. The Bedistani bid was withdrawn prior to the final vote of all Olympic Council members, which awarded the Olympics to Casari.

One notable bid was the ultimately unsuccessful regional bid from the International Democratic Union, which proposed to hold events in 18 different cities across the region, spearheaded by the Olympic committees of Malabra and Antrium. A base Olympic Village would have been sited in the regional capital, the Free Land of the IDU. Although a two-nation bid did ultimately succeed in hosting the 10th Summer Olympics, as of the 11th cycle no bid of similar scope has since been attempted.

Events
There were two main divergences from the programme of the real-life 2004 Summer Olympics: rugby sevens and one-day international cricket were held as medal events. With the convention and later formal rules limiting medal events to those with the same status at the real-life Olympics, rugby sevens would not be a medal event again until the 11th Summer Olympics, and cricket has not been played as a medal event again.

Furthermore, flatwater canoeing was not held, and there were only three weight classes in judo and taekwondo, and four weight classes in boxing and weightlifting.

Venues
The Ashford City Stadium was constructed for the 1st Summer Olympics and hosted the opening ceremonies, which were incredible and stirring.