Olympism 2

The victorious athlete was, therefore a harbinger of good fortune. Significantly, the classical Greeks abandoned the practice, apparent in Homer's epics, of awarding second, third, and subsequent prizes. Many poleis, and especially those in south Italy and Sicily, made strenuous efforts to obtain athletic victors. They recruited athletes and trainers, investigated the scientific principles of high performance, built luxurious training facilities, bribed judges, sacrificed lavishly, and prayed. There was an uninterrupted tendency from the sixth century onward for training to become more intense and for aristocratic amateurs to abandon participation in the major meets to single-minded, paid specialists - in short, professionals.

As the generations passed there was also a tendency for religious festivals with athletic meets incorporated in them to proliferate wherever Greek culture had penetrated. The various festivals were dedicated to many gods. The victors' crowns were of laurel, pine, wild celery, or other herbs. Some festivals, in addition to the conventional athletic events, had accompanying competitions in poetry, music, or other arts. The hosts, sacerdotal and civil, assumed that a festival brought prestige to local temples and pleased the Panhellenic and local gods. A class of itinerant, professional athletes and trainers became increasingly sought after ( as well as painfully arrogant). The stadiums, gymnasiums, and palaestras (wrestling schools) of Greece became ever more numerous, larger, and more the focal points of public life. The presentation of individual athletic events, as well as the festivals themselves, became more theatrical and lavish. For centuries the Greeks were the most sports-minded people the world has ever known (9).

-The First Modern Olympics, Richard D. Mandell