Ancient Olympics


The first Ancient Olympic Games was held in 776 B.C. Instead of being held in different places like the Modern Olympics, they were always held in Athens, Greece. In total their were 9 events. The first event was the Stadion. It was the first and only event for a while. It was a race that was between 180 or 240 meters(590 and 790 feet). Runners had to pass 5 stakes, 1 at the beginning, 1 at the end, and 3 inbetween. Basically it was like hurdles. The next event was the Dialous, or two stade race, was introduced in  724 B.C. The race was a single lap(400 meters or 1,300 feet). A third race, the Dolichos, was added in 720 B.C. It was about 3 miles long and the track went throughout Olympic Grounds. In 708 B.C. they added boxing, wrestling, and pankration(a mix between boxing and wrestling). The last running event added was the Hoplitodromos was introduced in 520 B.C. The runners would have to to run a single or double  dialous with amour, weapons, or even both. The next event was the penthalon, a contest having 5 events including  long jump, javelin throw, discuss throw, stadion, and wrestling. The very last event was chariot racing, but instead of the driver declared the winner the owner of the chariot team wa sdeclared the winner. The last Ancient Olympic Game was held in 394 B.C.  If you won you would receive an olive branch and you were often honoured throughout Greece especially in their hometown. They would also receive money and large vats of olive oil. They might even have statues made of them. Basically winning the Ancient Olympics was pretty awesome.

I got this information from http://en.wikipeda.org/wiki/Ancient_olympics. Thank you wikipedia for your information.