big business

Tight training schedules, special diets and preparations, physiotherapy, massages and the latest scientific developments. It sounds like the preparation of top athletes for this sports summer. Yet all this was not strange to the ancient Greeks. Sport – and with it the athlete – took an even more important place in society than it does now.

Be better than the rest. A well-known motto from classical Greek culture, with which fathers raised their sons. This also applied to sport, perhaps correct for the sports. In Homer's early Greece, sport and competition were seen as good training for the battlefield.

The infamous Spartans had perfected the concept:boys were ^e from the age of 7. years with an iron hand for the army in special training camps. These well-trained boys did well during official sports competitions and won many prizes.

Olympia

The first Olympic Games were probably held in 776 BC. This is by no means certain, but is generally assumed, since the later writer Hippias of Elis (5^e century BC) mentions this year. The Olympic Games were the oldest and most important Games. In the 6^e century BC. the places Delphi, Nemea and Isthmos joined the list and together with the Olympic games they formed the 'Periodos' or Game Round. In a four-year period, the athletes were able to compete once in the Olympia and Delphi Games and twice in the rest. They organized the competitions in honor of the gods and the sacrificial rituals took up a large part of the tournament.

For example, the Olympic Games lasted five days, of which only two days were reserved for the competitions. To win these oldest Games was the greatest honor an athlete could achieve. The prize for the champions was a wreath made from branches of the sacred olive tree. The holy wreath was a better motivation than a large sum of money.

The Olympic Games would hold on to this reward until the last Games in Antiquity. Athletes could earn their money in another way:they were richly rewarded by their city when they took home victories. Certainly Olympic champions could count on a high reward when they returned home.

Gymnasion

The city of Athens probably already performed in the 5^e century BC. into compulsory military service. Boys aged 18 and 19 received their military training in the gymnasium. This training place developed into a meeting place where athletes not only trained but also received lessons. Well-known philosophers such as Aristotales and Socrates taught in the colonnades of the gymnasion.

When the Hellenistic period (323 BC–146 BC) arrived, the gym moved from the suburbs to the city center and became a social meeting place par excellence. Boys of all ages and levels now trained here, alongside older men who wanted to keep in shape.

Boxing against a punch bag, sparring with other athletes and having the tired muscles massaged after training:the gymnasium and training sessions became more professional and focused more and more on sport for competition than on military training. For example, in order to be well prepared for the Olympic Games, the specific training started already 10 months before the start of this event. A month before the Olympics, the players then had to report and train until the start of the games according to the organization's policy.

Crazy Bodies

Professionalization and specialization:a development in sport that sounds familiar to us. While the early Greeks still relied on mysticism to improve their sports performance, that changed with the arrival of the gymnasium.

Training would make the boys better. The cities appointed trainers to do this job, and poor boys with talent were subsidized. The prestige of a city increased enormously if they had a sports hero within their walls and preferably an Olympic one.

The trainers therefore did everything to improve the performance of the boys. They supervised the athletes in all facets and not only had knowledge of physiotherapy, diet and physical science, but also of technique and tactics of the sport.

During the heavy training sessions, the trainer showed how he wanted a certain hip throw or grip. He looked at the physique:heavier boys were suitable for wrestling and slender boys with long limbs went for a run. When this was established, they gave nature a helping hand by training specific muscle groups.

This could sometimes go too far:vases show not only athletic bodies but also the disproportionate bodies of martial artists, with huge torsos and small heads.

Meat and handbooks

In addition to professional training schedules, special diets were developed. The early sportsmen lived on a diet of cheese or dried olives, but this changed in the fifth century. The Arcadian Dromeus was the first to switch to a meat diet and he promptly became an Olympic long-distance champion twice, in 484 and 480 BC. After it was discovered that meat had a positive effect on the strength of athletes, the trainers switched to the meat diet for their players. And that in a society in which meat was expensive and hardly accessible to the common man.

In addition to the right food, the trainer also had an arsenal of miracle cures at his disposal. Drugs did not exist yet, but they did use medicinal and stimulating herbs to, for example, prevent side stabbing when running.

Science was also important to trainers and went hand in hand with developments in the sport. Scientists studied subjects that were of great importance for the performance improvement of the athletes.

Physiology of the muscles, the consequences of eating certain foods and the effect of cold or hot steam baths on the body. The trainers often had direct contacts with the scientists, or otherwise got their knowledge from books, and applied the discoveries directly in the gymnasion. Trainers also wrote down their experiences, knowledge and advice, so that from the 5^e century, several manuals have been in circulation to improve training.

Champions

The trainers had to be at home in all markets and were therefore always former top athletes. The city appointed trainers and paid them, not out of its own pockets but by collecting money from wealthy citizens. They liked to give because of the prestige that good athletes brought with them. When an athlete came from a wealthy family, and therefore had enough free time and financial resources to train, he left the sports world after his sports career.

The elite generally did not allow themselves to be paid for their work. But when a poorer boy with talent was subsidized by the city during his career, he often tried to become a trainer afterwards. It paid well:more than a soldier's pay and the profession was a lot less dangerous. In addition, the prestige of the champions also radiated on the trainer.

Champions were real heroes among the Greeks. The worship of top athletes is centuries old! The Olympic champions were especially loved and the stories that circulated about them often had mythical proportions. The famous wrestler Milon from Kroton in the 6th century BC won the Olympic Games six times and many other competitions. He was not only a sports hero but also a kind of Jerommeke:incredibly strong with an enormous appetite. He would have paraded around with a whole bull on his neck.

But not only power was applauded, clever tricks were also popular. Sostratos from Sikyon, Olympic champion of the Pankration (combination of wrestling and boxing), used to force his opponents to give up by breaking their fingers. He was praised for having won so many victories without having to fight.

Incidentally, this was not seen as cheating, although that also occurred frequently, despite the presence of umpires.

Loukianos, a writer from the 2^e century AD, when he saw so many athletes fighting unfairly and breaking the rules of the game by biting instead of behaving like pankratiasts, he describes it this way:“No wonder today's athletes are called 'lions' by their supporters. ” And about the runner:“The wicked, unsportsmanlike runner, who has lost all confidence in his speed, resorts to vicious tricks and all he cares about is how to beat his opponent by hindering or pawing at him. can bring it to a stop. Because if he doesn't succeed, he will never win.”

Boxing match

Theokritos, a poet from the 3^e century BC, describes the tactics used during a boxing match. The big and strong Amykos is tricked by the less stronger but faster Polydeukes. The latter maneuvered so that Amykos faced the sun and saw nothing. Polydeukes dodged Amykos's powerful blows until his arms were exhausted and he lowered them more and more. Polydeukes eventually knocked out the poorly defending giant. An athlete learned these kinds of tactics from his trainer in the gymnasion.

From the 3^e century, more and more cities across Greece started organizing their own Games, in addition to the prestigious Periodos. They gave away considerable sums of money as prize money. And not only that:an entry fee was paid to attract Olympic champions. The largest payout ever, as found in the sources, is 30,000 drachmas. An astronomical amount compared to the annual salary of a Roman soldier, which was between 225 and 300 drachmas. The most common cash prizes were between 500 drachmas for the pentathlon and 3000 drachmas for the pankration. Enough to live on and that is what happened:sport had already become a profession then and remained so until the end of Antiquity.