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There are actually two themes. The one you're probably referring to was written by Hollywood composer John Williams. It's called Summon the Heroes. TV stations don't play it when athletes win medals, but they do blast it whenever the host network goes to commercial, comes back from commercial, or airs a commercial about their stellar Olympic coverage. The official Olympic Anthem was written by a Greek composer named Spyros Samaras and it's played far less often. Details on Samaras are sparse, but this page from the 2004 Summer Games in Athens includes a few interesting tidbits. Samaras, already well-known for his operas, worked with Greek poet Costis Palamas on the anthem. As far as we can tell, Palamas wrote the words first and Samaras added the music later. Perhaps we shouldn't admit this, but we didn't even know there were lyrics. The anthem was first performed at the Summer Games in Athens in 1896. In 1958, the International Olympic Committee named it the official anthem of the Olympics, and it's been played at every opening ceremony since 1964 (according to Wikipedia). Not bad. Though in terms of royalties, we'd rather be John Williams. Ca-ching!
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