The Wuhan coronavirus is threatening to claim yet another victim: the 2020 Olympics. The 2020 Summer Olympics are slated to be held in Tokyo, Japan, in July and August. However, last month, Dick Pound, the longest-serving member of the International Olympic Committee, acknowledged the possibility that the games could face “cancellation” if the coronavirus epidemic is not contained by May.
The Summer Olympics have been held every four years in different cities around the globe for more than a century. The first “modern” Olympics were held in Athens in 1896. Since that time, the games have only been canceled on three occasions: 1916, 1940, and 1944, all of which were due to the outbreak of world war.
Of course, the modern Olympics are based on the ancient Olympic Games held in Olympia, Greece, beginning in the eighth century B.C. For four centuries, the ancient Greeks held a festival featuring sporting games every four years in honor of the god Zeus. According to the Greek historian Herodotus, Heracles (Hercules) himself first ordained the five-day festival.
Modern Olympic games do take their inspiration from those of antiquity, yet ours is a much more secular, milquetoast affair. For starters, we have half-functional light displays and Cirque du Soleil imitators in place of ritual sacrifices of 100 oxen. When Russia’s national team was caught doping, the country was subjected to a five-year ban on international competition. In ancient Greece, athletes caught cheating in the Olympics were subject to public whipping and a fine and even had their names inscribed on statues lining the entrance to the stadium. And let’s not forget the Greek tradition of gymnos, or athletic nudity, which was introduced and adopted into the games around 720 B.C.
The games differed themselves, as well, primarily for their martial focus. The hoplitodromia, or race in armor, was a favorite. The event involved 25 athletes dressed in full armor, including bronze greaves, helmets, and shields, running two lengths of the stadium at Olympia, roughly 210 yards long.
Another favorite was the chariot race. The Roman Emperor Nero even competed in the event in the Olympics in 67 A.D. Ever a despot, Nero ran a team of 10 horses in a four-horse race, only to be eventually thrown from his chariot. Rather than suffer a whipping, however, Nero was declared the winner, on the grounds that he would have won had he finished.
Some things never change.
