OLYMPIA

Ancient Olympia - A brief history of the Olympic Games

According to legend, this area was inhabited by the Pisans. Their King was Oinomaus, whose daughter Hippodameia had married Pelops. There are indications that already by 1000 BC, games were being held in honour of the couple. In 776 BC, the leader of the Eleians, lphitos, rededicated the games to Zeus.
This date marks the first Olympiad; afterwards every four years contests were held attracting athletes from all the Greek city-states. During the Games, the Olympic Truce was in force and all wars were suspended. The victor's prize was a crown made from a wild olive branch, which was always cut from the same tree, the Kallistefano.

"Tinella kallinike" "Well done, glorious victor " shouted the crowd in praise of the winner. Back in his birthplace people would knock down the city walls.

The Olympic Games, which included the foot-race, wrestling, the Pankration, the Pentathlon, chariot racing and horse racing, as well as artistic and literary competitions, came to an end in 393 AD, with the prohibitory edict of Theodosios I.
Fifteen centuries later, in 1896, they were revived where they had been born, in Greece, by the French historian and educator Pierre de Coubertin. Since then every four years a torch- bearer, like the ancient heralds, starts out from Olympia bearing the sacred flame to the place where the Games are held. To oversee the organization of the Games, an International Olympic Academy was founded, in 1961 with its headquarters in Olympia.

   

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