From the Games of old to now »

From the Games of old to now

THE ANCIENT Olympic Games laid the foundations of almost everything we understand about today's modern Olympics.

The first Olympic Games can be traced back to at least 776 BC and were held in the mystical and sacred plains of Olympia in the western part of the Greek Peloponnese.

The ancient Olympic Games lasted for a staggering 1,169 years until the Christian Roman Emperor Theodosius brought them to an end in 393 AD when he decreed 'pagan cults' such as the Olympic Games should be banned.

The Olympics were revived by Frenchman Pierre de Coubertin when, upon searching for a reason for the French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71), he came up with the explanation that the French youth had not received a proper physical education.

motivation

The other motivation for him setting up the Games was to bring nations closer together and have the world's youth competing in sports rather than in war. Between June 16 and June 23, 1894, at a congress in Paris, he presented his idea of reviving the Olympic Games, as a means of affecting his aforementioned goals. Pierre de Coubertin had set the ball rolling and, by 1896, the Olympic Games were held once again in Athens, the country of their birth, after an interlude of almost exactly 15 centuries.

The original Olympic Games were based around ideals of athletic excellence, peace, unity and religious reverence, most of which the modern Olympics strive to emulate.

The religious reverence of the ancient Games cannot be seen directly in the modern equivalent. However, it was perhaps the most important aspect of the ancient Olympics.

Olympian gods

The Games were dedicated to the Olympian gods, above all Zeus - the father of the gods. A 12-metre gold and ivory statue of Zeus, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, dominated the site of Olympia.

There are aspects of the religious ceremony that translate to today's Olympics, the most renowned being the Olympic flame. The ancient Greeks kept a fire burning throughout the ceremony to commemorate the theft of fire by Prometheus from Zeus and this tradition is the origin of today's Olympic flame.

The modern convention of transporting the Olympic flame from Olympia to the Olympic venue was a Nazi invention, designed for the 1936 Olympic Games. Hitler exploited the Olympic flame to illustrate his belief in the supremacy of the Aryan race and show that classical Greece was an Aryan forerunner to the Third Reich. Hitler's belief in Aryan supremacy was to be ridiculed when African-American Jesse Owens won four gold medals at the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

Athletic excellence was prized so much in ancient times that the athletes would complete nude in order to celebrate the achievements of which the human body is capable. A notable ancient athlete was Milon of Kroton, who was Olympic champion six Olympiads in a row, an achievement that is yet to be equalled in the modern era. Representing one's hometown in the Olympics was as important back then as it is today.

house turned prison

Astylos of Kroton won six victory olive wreaths in three Olympiads and, after he ran for Kroton in his first Olympiad, his compatriots glorified and honoured him. However, in the next two Olympiads, he took part as a citizen of Syracuse and the people of Kroton subsequently punished him by tearing down his statue and converting his house into a prison.

The ancient Olympics were comparatively as popular as they are nowadays, with the ancient stadium in Olympia having a capacity of 40,000 people. Women were allowed to watch the Games but only if they were unmarried and, theoretically, no woman could participate in the Olympics. However, in the equestrian events it was the owner, not the rider of the horse who won the victory wreath. Therefore, Kyniska of Sparta was able to compete because of this loophole and became the first woman to be listed as an Olympic victor in antiquity when she won the four-horse chariot race in 396 BC.

Women did not take part in the first Olympic Games after its revival in Athens in 1896. The next Olympiad, Paris 1900, saw 22 women compete out of a total of 997 athletes.

All free, male Greek citizens could compete in the ancient Olympics regardless of their social status. A Greek citizen in ancient times could be anyone from a Greek city-state, which ranged from Spain to Turkey. People would thus travel from far and wide to attend the Olympic Games and this led to a remarkable tradition known as the 'Olympic Truce'.

During this truce period, any Greek could travel to and from the Olympics in total safety. This truce was proclaimed and announced immediately prior to the Games, held every four years as they are today.

At the Olympic Games, warring cities would reaffirm their Greekness and realise they had much in common. The ideal of the Olympic Truce even survived the Peloponnesian War, a conflict that consumed the whole of Greece for almost 30 years in the fifth century BC, with the Olympics still being held despite hostilities.

strenuous test

In contrast, the modern Olympics could not survive such a strenuous test on the Olympic ideals of peace and unity and, consequently, three Olympiads passed without Olympic Games. The Games were cancelled in 1916, 1940 and 1944 due to World Wars I and II.

In this day and age, we can see the International Olympic Committee (IOC) attempting to emulate the concept of the Olympic Truce with the IOC stating its four main aims as: raising awareness and encouraging political leaders to act in favour of peace; mobilising youth for the promotion of the Olympic ideals; establishing contacts between communities in conflict; offering humanitarian support in countries at war.

Just like the Beijing Olympics, the original Games were not immune from being submerged in political controversy. Control of the Olympic Sanctuary, and the Games themselves, brought a great deal of prestige as well as economic and political advantages. As early as 668 BC, there were disputes over the control of the Olympic Sanctuary between the city of Elis and the neighbouring town of Pisa. Nowadays, with the Olympics being held in different locations across the globe, there is the modern phenomenon of different nations vying with one another in order to host the Olympics, and thus receive economic, political and prestige benefits.

political event

The ancient Olympic festival itself was a political event for Greeks across Europe, which saw the discussion of political issues, the celebration of shared military victories and the formation of political alliances.

Although the IOC tries to keep the modern Olympics an apolitical international forum free of domestic political statements, it cannot always succeed, as it found out on October 16, 1968 at the Olympic Games in Mexico City. This was the occasion of the Black Power salute by the black athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos. After this brave, overt political gesture, the athletes were ostracised by their sporting establishments and the media.

Nevertheless, although these actions caused ostracism at the time, they are now seen as heroic and an integral part of the Civil Rights Movement, with Smith being given a 'Sportsman of the Millennium' award in 1999.

The 696th Olympiad in Beijing seems set to uphold the long-standing Olympic traditions of elaborate ceremony, political machinations and, above all, athletic excellence.

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