Read the text and match the missing words 1-6 to the gaps A-E. There is one extra word you do not need. 1. both 2. closing 3. Winter 4. symbol 5. ice hockey 6. international

The Olympics truly took off as an (A) sporting event after 1924, when the VIII Games were held in Paris. Some 3,000 athletes (with more than 100 women among them) from 44 nations competed that year, and for the first time, the Games featured a (B) ceremony. The (C) Olympics debuted that year, including such events as figure skating, (D) , bobsledding, and the biathlon. Eighty years later, when the 2004 Summer Olympics returned to Athens for the first time in more than a century, nearly 11,000 athletes from a record 201 countries competed. In a gesture that joined (E) ancient and modern Olympic traditions, the shotput competition that year was held at the site of the classical Games in Olympia.