Musings on the Greatest Olympian Victor

(Photo by Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images)

As you have probably guessed, all of my posts this week have been about Brazil because I have been fixated on the Olympics, the worlds’ foremost sports competition.  The 2016 Brazil Summer Olympics are the 31^st Olympics (or I should maybe write “XXXI” Olympics) of the modern era.  That last phrase is significant.  There were Olympics of the ancient classical past and today’s Olympics were deliberately created in homage to these Greco-Roman games.  The ancient Olympics were held every four years at the sanctuary of Zeus in Olympia Greece.  According to myth, the Olympics were founded by Heracles in honor of his father Zeus.  After he completed his twelve great labors and thus freed himself of the taint of murder and madness, Heracles built a beautiful stadium in honor of his father, the king of heaven. He then walked 200 heroic paces and proclaimed this distance to be a “stadion” one of the principle units of distance in Greek society.  The Panhellenic games were held every four years (a unit of time known as an “Olympiad”).  Although the origins of the games are shrouded in epic myth, the games basically lasted from 776 BC until 393 AD–when they were suppressed and ended by Theodosius I in a bout of anti-pagan Christian fundamentalism.

The ancient games featured running, jumping, discus, javelin, wrestling, pentathlon, boxing, pankration (a nightmarish no-holds barred ultimate fighting event), and equestrian events including riding and chariot races.  Art and poetry competitions were also held at the Olympics—a notable difference from these modern games!

The athletic events were held in the nude with a few notable exceptions (which I will get to shortly). Only freeborn Greek men were allowed to participate.  Some of the greatest athletes of the ancient games are still remembered to this day:  Varazdat, the peerless Armenian boxer; the famously handsome Melankomas; the jumper Chionis of Sparta whose distance records held until the modern Olympics; Milo, the greatest wrestler of history (who was also a poet and mathematician); and, perhaps greatest of all, Leonidas of Rhodes–champion runner of 4 Olympiads.

Leonidas of Rhodes competed in four successive Olympics games (164BC, 160BC, 156BC and 152BC). He was peerless at sprinting the stadion (which was about 200 meters).  Leonidas was also gifted at running the fast “diaulos” which was twice as long as the stadion.  Both of these races were fleet nude foot races which would be more-or-less familiar today (although modern athletes must wear little loincloths or smallclothes and sundry plastic placards branded with the name of rich patrons and sponsors).   Leonidas was the victor at the stadion and the diaulos in each of the four Olympics he attended (in the classical Olympics, the winner of an event received a crown made of laurel and there were no silvers and bronzes).  What set Leonidas apart from other great runners was that he could also win the hoplitodromos—the race in armor!

The hoplitodromos was a long distance race meant to approximate the rigors of classical infantry maneuvers. Participants raced in 50 pounds of bulky equipment including heavy bronze helmet, breastplate, greaves, and a wooden shield (although the exact details are lost in the mists of history).  The runners had to carry all of this kit and execute fast turns in blazing 90 degree heat.  It was thought that a light swift runner capable of winning the stadion and the diaulos could not also win the grueling hoplitodromos—but it turned out that conventional wisdom was wrong.  Leonidas won the laurel in all three events in all four Olympics he ran in.  His record of 12 individual victories—laurels in three distinct events over 16 years–has stood the test of time well.  It endured 2168 years until Michael Phelps surpassed it yesterday (August 11^th 2016) in the pool.  But who can say what deeds of athletic prowess might have supplanted Leonidas’ accomplishment during the dark ages when the Olympics lay dormant? If only Theodosius and grim-mouthed Christians had not ruined the fun for everyone for 1500 years, some Lithuanian lancer or Burgundian coustillier or Scottish yeoman could have won 12 gold medals at jousting or barrel dancing or monk-hurling lo