Olympic History Page  1

The Olympic Games were originally restricted to freeborn Greeks. The competitors, including those who came from the Greek colonies, were amateur in the sense that the only prize was a wreath or garland.

In ancient times, four great games festivals were held in Greece: The Isthmians, The Nemeans, The Pythians and The Olympic Games. The Olympic Games in 
honor of Olympian Zeus was by far the greatest event. Greek games were celebrated in the belief that the spirits of the departed were grateful observing such spectacles, as they did during their earthly life.

During the Homeric age, such festivals were simply sacrifices followed by followed by games at the tomb, or before the funeral pyre. Gradually they grew into religious festivals observed by an entire community and celebrated near the shrine of the god in whose honor they were instituted. The idea then developed that the gods themselves were present but invisible and delighted in the services and the contests.

The competition of a single foot race, called the "Stade", was held for the first 13th Olympiads. The word Stadium arrived from the word Stade.

The first recorded victor, 776 B.C.  from the games was Coroebus of Elis a cook. The athletes from Elis were undefeated at the games until the 14th Olympiad when a second race was added. The second race was 2 stades, double the length of the stadium. An endurance race in the 15th Olympiad, were athletes run 12 times around the stadium, approximately 4 ½ kilometers. The athletes competed in groups of four, which were determined by drawing lots with the winners meeting the other winners until a final race was run. The track was composed of shifting sand which gave way under the athletes' feet.

At this time the Pentathlon and Wrestling events were introduced, and later in 688 B.C., Boxing; in 680 the Four Horse Chariot Race; in 648 the Pancration (a fierce combination of boxing and wrestling), and in 580 the Armed Race where the men traversed the stadium twice while heavily armed. 

In the Pentathlon, those who jumped a certain distance qualified for the spear throwing; the four best then sprinted the length of the stadium, the three best then threw the discus, and the two best then engaged in a wrestling match to the finish.

At the early games, rewards were simple crowns of wild olive, later, by the 61st Olympiad, permission was granted to erect statues for the victors. A victor had to win three times before a statue would be erected in his likeness. Later, it was often the practice to make a breach in the walls of the city through which the victorious athletes returned.

During this period the games reached it climax and started to show the first signs of decay. Thriving  for records and specialization to keep the interest of the crowds was only a short step away from professionalism. 

When Macedonian troops invaded Greece, it put an end to Greek city-states. Greece now relieved of the political controversy, devoted themselves entirely to the Olympic Games. They stopped training their growing youth and just hired professional athletes and granted them citizenships. During the middle of the second century B.C., Romans conquered Greece, and even so they had little interest in the games, they let them continue.

The Romans looked on athletics with contempt--to strip naked and to contend in public was degrading in the eyes of the Roman citizen. The Romans realized the value of the Greek festivals, however, and Augustus, who had a genuine love for athletics, staged athletic games in a temporary wooden stadium erected near the Circus Maximus. Nero was also a keen patron of the festivals in Greece. By the 4th century AD, Rome, with its population of more than 1,000,000, had well over 150 holidays for games. There was chariot racing in the hippodrome and horse racing in the Circus Maximus, with room for more than 250,000 spectators. In an amphitheatre with accommodation for 50,000, animals and human beings were maimed and slaughtered in the name of sport.

During the next centuries, the games continued but the high ideals were discarded for profit. 

In 393 A.D., the Emperor Theodosius forbade the Games altogether but they had survived a period of nearly 300 Olympiads or approximately 1200 years.

Pierre, baron de Coubertin, who was born in Paris, Jan. 1, 1863 and who died at Geneva, Sept. 2, 1937, receives full credit in reviving the Olympic Games. As a young man he was intensely interested in literature and in education and sociology. Family tradition pointed to an army career or possibly politics, but at the age of 24 Coubertin decided that his future lay in education.

At the same time, he had the idea of reviving the Olympic Games, and he propounded his desire for a new era in international sport when on November 25, 1892, at a meeting of the Union des Sports Athlétiques in Paris, he said:

"...Let us export our oarsmen, our runners, our fencers into other lands. That is the true Free Trade of the future; and the day it is introduced into Europe the cause of Peace will have received a new and strong ally. It inspires me to touch upon another step I now propose and in it I shall ask that the help you have given me hitherto you will extend again, so that together we may attempt to realize, upon a basis suitable to the conditions of our modern life, the splendid and beneficent task of reviving the Olympic Games."

After many speeches and debates in which no one had a real interest in the revival of the games. Nevertheless, and to quote Coubertin again, "a unanimous vote in favor of revival was rendered at the end of the Congress chiefly to please me."

At first they agreed to hold the Olympic Games in Paris in 1900. Six years seemed a long time to wait, however, and it was decided to change the venue--what better site than Athens, the capital of Greece--and the date, to April 1896.