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The 2008 Summer Olympic Games, officially known as the Games of the XXIX Olympiad, were a major international multi-sport event that took place in Beijing, China, from August 8 (except football, which started on August 6) to August 24, 2008. A total of 11,028 athletes competed in 302 events in 28 sports, one event more than was on the schedule of the 2004 Games. The 2008 Beijing Olympics marked the first occasion that either the Summer or Winter Games were hosted in China, making it the 22nd nation to do so. It also became the third time that Olympic events have been held in the territories of two different National Olympic Committees (NOC), as the equestrian events were being held in Hong Kong.

The Olympic Games were awarded to Beijing after an exhaustive ballot of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) on July 13, 2001. The official logo of the Games, titled “Dancing Beijing”, features a stylised calligraphic character jing (?, meaning capital), referring to the host city. Several new NOCs have also been recognised by the IOC. It was the third time that the Summer Olympic Games were held in Asia and the first since 1988, when the Summer Games were in Seoul. The first Summer Olympics to be held in Asia was in Tokyo in 1964.

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Summer_Olympics