![]() The actual length varied depending upon where the event was held. First included in the Olympics in 680 B.C., drivers raced in both four and two-horse chariot races.Īccording to Miller, the race consisted of 12 laps around a hippodrome, or horse track, and then 12 times in the opposite direction. Greek hero and king of Argos n Amphiaraus depicted competing in a chariot race in a relief dating to the 4th century B.C.Ĭhariot races were one of the oldest Greek sports-artistic evidence on ancient pottery suggests that the event dates back to the Mycenean Period from 1600 to 1100 B.C., and the poet Homer describes a chariot race held at the funeral of Patroclus in the Iliad, Giannopoulou notes. Here are some of the sports in which ancient Greek athletes competed. “Her life was spared, but in the aftermath the trainers were required to attend the Games in the nude.” “When caught, she defended herself by saying that she of all women should be allowed to attend having had a father, three brothers, a son, and a nephew who had among themselves won eight times,” says Giannopoulou. There was one legendary exception- Kallipateira of Rhodes, who disguised herself as a male trainer so she could watch her son’s boxing match. The Greeks didn’t have team sports, only individual competitions, and they didn’t allow women to compete in events-or even, in the case of married women, to attend the games. “If you wanted to compete in the Olympics, you had to show up at least a month early to train under the watch of the officials, who presumably would weed out anybody who wasn’t up to the level of competition,” Lunt says. The athletes who competed in these events most likely were well-to-do Greeks who could afford to train instead of having to work for a living. The Crown Games, as these competitions collectively were known, featured a range of events, from chariot races to track and field events and combat sports. In addition to the Olympics every four years, they held games at other religious festivals-the Pythian Games for Apollo at Delphi, the Isthmian Games for Poseidon and the Nemean Games, which honored Zeus. ![]() The Greeks also simply loved to watch competitions. “Physical strength and prowess were also signs of moral strength, denoting self-discipline, hard work, and dedication to winning.” Athletes were seen as the epitome of arete, a Greek word that means virtue or excellence. “The Greeks valued physical and athletic prowess, and the toned male body was sought after as aesthetically pleasing,” says Zina Giannopoulou, an associate professor of classics at the University of California, Irvine who has compared the ancient and modern Olympics. As Lunt notes, every Greek city had its own gymnasium, where local males took off their clothes and competed in the nude at various sports, such as wrestling and foot races. The ancient Greeks may have loved sports because males grew up participating in them. As Lunt says, “They were pretty crazy for these athletes.” Lunt cites the example of Theagenes of Thasos, a champion boxer, runner and competitor in Pankration, the ancient equivalent of mixed martial arts, who was so idolized for his athletic prowess that archaeologists in the 1930s found an altar at which he was venerated, centuries after his death. “They commissioned poems to be sung about them, and they told stories about statues of athletes that could heal people." “The Greeks believed that athletes had special powers,” explains David Lunt, an associate professor of history at Southern Utah University who is an expert on ancient Greek athletics and author of The Crown Games of Ancient Greece: Archaeology, Athletes and Heroes. ![]() More than that, they were the first culture in which people idolized their favorite athletic superstars, to a level that even today’s most fanatical sports fans might find extreme. The ancient Greeks, who staged the first formal Olympic Games in 776 B.C., gave the world the idea of organized big-time sports events as entertainment for arenas full of spectators. ![]()
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