This is a simple question, but either I'm missing something or the setter has got the answer(s) badly wrong. I don't know how anyone can claim that Great Britain has ever missed an Olympic Games; and we are not the only country that this applies to. What's more, both Greece and Australia, while they've both attended every Summer Olympics, missed several of the early Winter games.
I did find a site called ISSWater.com (about which I know nothing, and could find nothing regarding its purpose or ownership) which asks the same question: "Which two countries participated in every modern Olympics?" This is the bizarre answer it gives:
"Yes. Three nations have had athletes at every Olympic Games – winter and summer – since 1896: France, Great Britain, and Switzerland. Australia and Greece have attended every summer games. In most cases before about 1908 athletes were not from official 'teams' as we now know them."
IDSWater points out that "in 1896 Great Britain competed as part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, while Australia participated in 1908 and 1912 as part of a combined Australasia team with New Zealand. Therefore, out of these five nations only Greece has participated under its own flag in all modern summer Olympic Games."
I don't know anything about the person that wrote this, but I think they may misunderstand the distinction between Great Britain and the United Kingdom. The fact that it's still, to this day, the United Kingdom that competes under the guise of Great Britain will not help; but unless I'm missing something, the Union Jack (as it was in 1896) was as much the flag of Great Britain as its modern version is today.
Wikipedia has a List of participating nations at the Summer Olympic Games, and a List of participating nations at the Winter Olympic Games; Great Britain is credited with attendance at every one on both pages, and so is Switzerland.
Regarding France, Wikipedia has a note: "France did not send a team to the 1904 Summer Olympics, however, Albert Corey, French immigrant to the United States, who won two silver medals in athletics, was a French nationality. The IOC attributes his medal in the marathon to the France and the medal in the four mile team race to a mixed team composed of athletes from multiple nations."
In view of IDSWater's comment (above) about there being no official national teams before 1908, we should surely count Corey's presence as French participation.
Note that the MQL question doesn't mention either Summer or Winter Olympics; we have to assume that it means both. Australia attended only one of the first five Winter Olympics (before 1952), and Greece missed the first three (1924, 1928 and 1932) and the eighth (1960). So the two answers given (Australia and Greece) are both wrong, and there are three correct answers: Great Britain, France and Switzerland.
Another website I found – paralympicanorak.wordpress.com – suggests that Great Britain is "the only nation to have competed at every summer and winter Olympic and Paralympic Games". It appears to lack the confidence to state it definitively, but sets out a pretty convincing case.
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