The 1948 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XIV Olympiad, were an international multi-sport event which was held in London, England, United Kingdom. After a 12-year hiatus because of World War II, these were the first Summer Olympics since the 1936 Games in Berlin. The 1940 Games had been scheduled for Tokyo, and then Helsinki; the 1944 Games had been provisionally planned for London. This was the second occasion that London had hosted the Olympic Games; the city had previously been the venue in 1908. The Olympics are scheduled to return to London in 2012.

The event came to be known as the Austerity Games due to the economic climate and post-war rationing. No new venues were built for the games and athletes were housed in existing accommodation instead of an Olympic Village. A record 59 nations were represented by 4,104 athletes, 3,714 men and 390 women, in 19 sport disciplines. Because of their roles as aggressors in World War II Germany and Japan were not invited to participate; the USSR were invited but chose not to send any athletes. The United States team won the most total medals, 84, and the most gold medals, 38. The host nation won 23 medals, three of them gold.

The Summer Olympic Games or the Games of the Olympiad are an international multi-sport event, occurring every four years, organized by the International Olympic Committee. Medals are awarded in each event, with gold medals for first place, silver for second and bronze for third, a tradition that started in 1904. The Winter Olympics were also created due to the success of the summer Olympics.

The olympics have increased from a 42-event competition with fewer than 250 male athletes to a 300-event sporting celebration with over 10,000 competitors from 205 nations. Organizers for the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing expected approximately 10,500 athletes to take part in the 302 events on the program for the games.

The United States has hosted four Summer Olympics Games, more than any other nation. The United Kingdom will have hosted three Summer Olympics Games when they return to the British capital in 2012, all of them have been (and will be) in London, making it the first city to hold the Summer Olympic Games three times. Australia, France, Germany and Greece have all hosted the Summer Olympic Games twice. Other countries that have hosted the summer Olympics are Belgium, China, Canada, Finland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, South Korea, Spain, the Soviet Union and Sweden. In the 2016 Summer Olympics, Rio de Janeiro will host the first Summer Games in South America. Four cities have hosted two Summer Olympic Games: Los Angeles, London, Paris and Athens. Stockholm, Sweden, has hosted events at two Summer Olympic Games, having hosted the games in 1912 and the equestrian events at the 1956 Summer Olympics—which they are usually listed as jointly hosting. Events at the summer Olympics have also been held in Hong Kong and the Netherlands (both represented by their own NOCs), with the equestrian events at the 2008 Summer Olympics being held in Hong Kong and two sailing races at the 1920 Summer Olympics being held in the Netherlands.

Alice Marie Coachman (born November 9, 1923 in Albany, Georgia) is an American former athlete. She specialized in high jump, and was the first black woman to win an Olympic gold medal. In 2002 she was designated a Women's History Month Honoree by the National Women's History Project.

Coachman dominated the AAU outdoor high jump championship from 1939 through 1948, but was unable to compete in the Olympic Games as they were cancelled in 1940 and 1944 because of World War II.

In the high jump finals of the 1948 Summer Olympics, Coachman leaped 1.68 m (5 ft 6⅛ in) on her first try. Her nearest rival, Great Britain's Dorothy Tyler, matched Coachman's jump, but only on her second try. Coachman was the only American woman to win an Olympic gold medal in athletics in 1948.

Coachman also excelled in the indoor and outdoor 50 m dash and the outdoor 100 m dash. Representing Tuskegee Institute, Coachman also ran on the national champion 4 x 100-meter relay team in 1941 and 1942. Coachman is an honorary member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, inducted in 1998 during the sorority's international conference.

New Zealanders, colloquially known as Kiwis, are citizens of New Zealand. New Zealand is a multiethnic society, and home to people of many different national origins. Originally comprising solely of the indigenous Māori, the ethnic makeup of the population has been dominated since the 19th century by New Zealanders of European descent, mainly of British and Irish ancestry, with smaller percentages of other European ancestries such as French, Dutch, Scandinavian and South Slav. New Zealand has an estimated resident population of around 4.37 million as of August 2010.

Today, the ethnic makeup of the New Zealand population is undergoing a process of change, with new waves of immigration, higher birth rates and increasing interracial marriage resulting in the New Zealand population of Māori, Asian and Pacific Islander descent growing at a higher rate than those of European descent, and are projected to make up a larger proportion of the population in the future.

While most New Zealanders live in New Zealand, there is also a significant diaspora, estimated in 2001 at over 460,000 or 14% of the international total of New Zealand-born people. Of these, 360,000, over three-quarters of the New Zealand-born population residing outside of New Zealand, live in Australia. Other communities of New Zealanders abroad are concentrated in other English-speaking countries, specifically the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada, with smaller numbers located elsewhere. This diaspora has reportedly surged as of 2010, with well over 650,000 New Zealanders living abroad (with 566,815 estimated to live in Australia alone in June 2010).

Vincent George Rhoden (born December 13, 1926 in Kingston) is a former Jamaican athlete, winner of two Olympic gold medals in 1952.

Rhoden, who lived in San Francisco, was one of the successful long sprinters from Jamaica in the late 1940s and early 1950s, along with Arthur Wint and Herb McKenley. He competed in the 1948 Summer Olympics, but did not win a medal, being eliminated in the heats of the 100 m and the semi-final of the 400 m. He was also a member of the heavily favoured Jamaican 4 x 400 m relay team, but when Wint pulled a muscle in the final, their chances at a medal were gone. On August 22, 1950 at Eskilstuna, Sweden, Rhoden set a new world record in 400 m of 45.8 s. He also won the AAU championships in 400 m from 1949 to 1951 and as a Morgan State University student, won the NCAA championships in 220 yd (200 m) in 1951 and in 440 yd (400 m) from 1950 to 1952.

At the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki, George Rhoden was more successful. He was one of the pre-race favourites in the 400 m as a world record holder. He won a close battle with his compatriot McKenley, who had also been second in the 1948 Olympic 400 m. As the anchor runner of the Jamaican relay team, Rhoden added a second Olympic gold, edging the United States by a tenth of a second, and setting a new world record (3:03.9).