This is an article I did leading up to the 2016 Rio Olympics. It covers the ancient games and the creation of the modern Olympic movement. Click below to see the article as it appeared in the magazine or scroll down to see a text only version
The Olympics – A brief History : Text only version
The first recorded Olympics were held in 776BC, but the games were being hosted long before that. As time went by the Greek’s recorded important historical events according to the Olympiad, or 4 year period, in which they took place. Games were often held within individual city states as a means of honing fitness and battle skills, and Greek warlords would usually host a series of games on the eve of a war; with prizes such as swords, helmets and armour being awarded to the winners. These prizes would usually be jewelled and embossed with precious metals that would identify champions and were prized dearly.
At that time, the Greek nation was divided up into a number of ’Polis’ (city states) with bitter rivalries, like Athens and Sparta. It is amazing that all of these states could put their differences on hold when an Olympic Truce was announced, a truce that would endure for a month. But as the games were held in honour of Zeus, the deeply superstitious Greeks would not want to incur the God’s wrath. Events in these Ancient Olympics included boxing, wrestling, chariot racing, javelin, discus and running events. Every event had a martial theme and athletes competed naked. In fact, there was an event very much like the UFC fighting of today, pankration, a fight where only biting and eye-gouging were forbidden. The aim was to make your opponent submit.
In honour of Zeus, on the third day of the games a procession of competitors, judges and dignitaries made it’s way to the Altar of Zeus where 100 oxen were sacrificed. The Temple of Zeus held a 43M tall statue of the God, decorated in gold and ivory, one of the wonders of the ancient world. Olympic Champions were universally respected and acclaimed, in fact, an Olympic Champion could comfortably live off his success. He would be an honoured guest and could travel from house to house and polis to polis to be wined and dined by royalty. They would often be employed as ambassadors to carry news or to help negotiate treaties. In many regards they were equivalent to today’s sporting heroes, living off their exploits and it only stands to reason that there would have been early sponsorship. There can be little doubt that a tailor would be very happy to brag that he had clothed a particular athlete, understanding that his clothing would be seen in the highest circles of Greek society.
The last recorded ancient Olympic winners were in 261 AD. The games’ decline coincided with Rome making Greece part of it’s empire. In 393 AD it was Christian Emperor Theodosius I who decreed that all pagan centres be closed down, Thus it was that Olympia was abandoned and slowly reclaimed by the Earth.
It was in the 1700’s that interest began to gather momentum and the search for ancient Olympia started in earnest. But it took over a century for archaeologists to actually find the site. Finally, in the 1870’s a team unearthed around 130 statues, 6,000 clay, gold & bronze objects and almost all of the ancient buildings, including the Palaistra. The Palaistra was a low building around a central courtyard. It contained dressing rooms, baths and a washroom. This was usually where athletes warmed up and practised jumping or combat events. Olympia’s discovery led to a renewed interest in the whole concept of a new and modern Olympic event.
Aside from wearing his hat at a jaunty angle, Baron Pierre de Coubertin was instrumental in the revival of the Olympics. He launched the idea at a Paris conference for international sport in 1894 where his own enthusiasm was matched by the assembly. The level of goodwill can be measured by the speed of progress; the 1st modern Olympics took place in Athens only two years later. De Coubertain was president of the International Olympic Committee from 1896 up to 1925, and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1920. De Coubertain’s dying wish was for his heart to be kept forever at Olympia. Today, his heart is buried beneath a monument there. This memorial badge was struck to remember ‘the reviver of the Olympic Games’.
The revival of Olympic traditions has evolved since the 1896 Athens games and we will look at some of these, however, despite the best intentions of all involved, tradition has often been overshadowed by controversy and politics. Not least the upcoming Rio Olympics and the apparent systematic doping of Russian athletes. After decades of boycotts and drug cheats it is little wonder that many sports fans are disenchanted with the ‘Spirit of the Olympics”. SPONSORSHIP AND POLITICS have warped Pierre De Coubertain’s vision of what an Olympics should represent. Huge Global audiences have meant that the games are a target for those who want to publicise their own agenda and of those wanting to sell. The amount of wealth on offer has seen an explosion in the number of competitors willing to do anything to succeed. All in all, it is the fans of sport and the honest athletes who feel disconnected and cheated. Many a great athlete has seen their life’s work culminate in nothing as their nation either boycott’s or is uninvited to the games.
There were no games in 1916, 40 & 44 due to war. In the 1920 Belgium games, Germany, Austria, Hungary and Turkey were not invited as a result of their part in World War 1. It took over 20 years (1964) for Japan to be re-admitted after World War 2.
There was tragedy in Munich in 1972, as a group of Palestinian terrorists burst into the Olympic village. They shot and killed two Israeli athletes and took 9 others hostage. They demanded a helicopter to fly them and the hostages away from the scene, but a botched rescue attempt saw all 9 athletes, a German policeman and 5 of the Palestinian gunmen killed in a shoot out.
Uganda’s Idi Amin awarded himself dozens of medals at his own games when his nation was banned from the 1976 Montreal Olympics for Human Rights Violations. He is alleged to have had over 100,000 people killed, including swimmers who beat him in races at his palace.
The 1970’s & 80’s saw a number of ‘Tit-For-Tat’ boycotts between the USA, the former Soviet Union and others that saw thousands of athletes missing out on their chance to compete and in many people’s eyes, demeaned the value of medals won against ‘weakened’ competition.
South Africa returned to the Olympics in Barcelona 1992 after a 25 year absence during the Apartheid regime. It was invited back as a result of the 1990 release of Nelson Mandela and the dismantling of the old regime announced by then president F.W. De Klerk.
Mexico 1968 saw American athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos finishing in First and Third places respectively in the men’s 200m. At the medal ceremony, they showed their support for the Black Power movement’s racial equality campaign in America, by raising black-gloved clenched fists during the playing of their National Anthem. They were subsequently expelled from the Olympic Village.
Emil Zatopek was the hero of the 1952 Helsinki Games, this Czech army officer became the first – and is still the only man in Olympic history to have won gold medals in: 5000M, 10,000M and Marathon in all the same games
After the opening ceremony the teams parade into the stadium. The Greek team are always the first to enter, with the host nation last. The competitors will then speak the oath: “In the name of all the competitors, I promise that we shall take part in these Olympic Games, respecting and abiding by the rules which govern them, in the true spirit of sportsmanship, for the glory of sport, and the honour of our teams”
The torch symbolises a call to the games, it was actually the 1936 Berlin games that saw the torch being lit at Olympia for the first time. The ceremony takes place at the altar of the goddess Hera where the flame is ignited using a concave mirror to concentrate the light of the Sun. Before the flame begins it’s journey to the host country, it is used to light a flame in the Coubertain grove in honour of the Olympics’ founder. The flame remains lit throughout the duration of the games, however, the torch relay has become an increasingly popular target for protesters trying to promote their own agendas.
HITLER’S ATTEMPT TO USE THE OLYMPICS TO PROMOTE HIS ARYAN ATHLETES’ SUPERIORITY.
In 1936 the world had no idea how reviled and repugnant the Nazi imagery on display at the Berlin Olympics would become. But there was tension in the air as Adolf Hitler’s Aryan athletes were meant to demonstrate German superiority. But Herr Hitler had not counted on a small group of Black American athletes, including the legend that was Jess Owens. Jesse Owens was part of the ‘Magnificent 10’, 10 black athletes from the USA who took home a medal haul including 7 gold medals, 3 silver and 3 bronze. Owens himself won 4 gold medals in the 100m, 200m, Long Jump and the 4x100mm relay. On the first day of the Olympics, 4 Gold medals were won, 2 by Germans, 1 by a Finn and the 4th by Cornelius Johnson, a black US athlete who won gold in the high jump. Hitler congratulated the Germans and the Finn and then left his box, snubbing Johnson. Hitler was told that in the future he must either meet all of the victorious athletes or none. He chose to meet none. Hitler is reputed to have stated to ‘Baldur von Schirach’, the Reich youth leader, that ’The Americans should be ashamed of themselves, letting negroes win their medals for them!’ Even today, the Berlin Games are better remembered for Jesse Owens’ prowess and quiet dignity; for how he carried himself, as he made a mockery of Hitler’s Aryan propaganda.
So before the Olympic torch reaches Rio, it is worth looking again at the hope that De Coubertain’s vision expounded. That athletes from every race and religion could compete in sport, that a nation’s differences could be put aside in a temporary truce. The last words go to Jesse Owens, who summed this sentiment up better than I ever could. Up to his death Jesse Owens remained an avid fan and supporter of the Olympics, even while undergoing chemotherapy. Later in life, Owens was to comment on his ‘snub’ by Hitler. He said, ‘I came back to my native country after winning in Berlin to all those stories about Hitler’s snub, but I couldn’t ride in the front of the bus. I couldn’t live where I wanted. I wasn’t invited to shake hands with Hitler – but I wasn’t invited to shake hands with the President either.’ One of his last stands, in early 1980, was against the proposed US boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics because of the Soviet invasion of
Afghanistan. Owens went on to say, ‘The road to the Olympics does not lead to Moscow. It leads to no city, no country. It goes far beyond Lake Placid or Moscow, ancient Greece or Nazi Germany. The road to the Olympics leads, in the end, to the best within us’.
