Transcription
[Music] [Applause] Come back with us to ancient Greece. 2,500 years ago, to the original Olympic Games. [Music] [Applause] The ancient games, like our modern Olympics, included champions and cheetahs, glory and scandals, bitter rivalries and contests of strength, speed, shudders, combating. The spectators went there for blood, and blood is what they got. This is the birthplace for when there is our hailed as sons of the God. Losers are disgraced and forgotten. [Applause] What's more emphatic than standing over somebody with your arm raised in the air? Knocked them up. A caveman can understand that. Then as now, it is the ultimate athletic competition. The emotions are eternal and unforgettable, a reflection of our own humanity at the ancient Olympic Games. [Music]
Oh, a gymnasium in southwest in Greece, 2,500 years ago. Two men are at war in the pit of sand in a brutal combination of boxing and wrestling called pankot e'en. A wildly popular and sometimes stable a sport. Closely watching the fighters in these elimination boats are their trainers, official judges, and professional poets, the sports writers of their day, who can make or break a star's reputation. [Applause] Thirty miles away, a sacred valley called Olympia has been waiting for the past four years. There are dozens of shrines and temples here dedicated to Zeus, king of the Greek gods. Now, this holy ground is about to come alive as the home of the Olympic Games. Imagine you're a Catholic going to St. Peter's. Imagine you're a baseball fan going to Yankee Stadium. Imagine you're a patriotic American going to the White House. And roll it all together, and you would have part of the sensation that they would feel as they approach the Olympics. In the months before the games, careers have gone on to the cities, states, and colonies of the Greek-speaking world, proclaiming a sacred truths, a brief pause in the region's unending wars so that competitors and spectators may safely travel to Olympia. Well, Olympia, I think, where is the place that everybody what it's exhibits at least once in their lifetime. Some of them would go for the religious aspects as a kind of cool ganache. I think the sports fans would go there too. They the best athletes in the world.
By 448 BC, the Olympic Games are already at least 300 years old. There are other athletic festivals, but the games of Olympia are by far the most important. The World Cup and Super Bowl of ancient Greece. The earliest recorded games day included only a brief footrace, but the games grew, and by 448, more than a dozen events for men, boys, and horses have been added. We know about the ancient Olympics from various sources. This is almost like a jigsaw puzzle for the Greek historians. From vase paintings, we can see the pictures of athletes. [Applause] From statues, we can see example what a discus sure would look like. Many of the events are familiar to us because our modern games have copied them: the javelin and discus, wrestling, boxing, and sprinting. Others are unique to the ancient world: the race for athletes in helmet and armor, the spectacular school boards. Cheering Greeks are sports fans because they were all practicing these sports. Our boys grew up wrestling, boxing, on running. All of these sports were in their blood, as it is in today. We, the Western civilization, in the Greece of the only two people who put sports so central in our culture.
In 448 BC, Greece is entering a golden age. Construction is about to begin on the magnificent Parthenon in Athens, and the bold new experiment in government called democracy is taking root. For the warrior culture lies at the core of Greek manhood. The brakes were perhaps more violent than we are, but I think the real reason behind that is because the Greeks were so involved with warfare. The many of these Greeks, many of these Greek athletes, actually participated in warfare, and therefore violence was very much part of everyday life. The city-states of the Greek world clash constantly on the battlefield, and every four years, through the strongest sons, they confront each other again at Olympia in sport. As in war, all that matters is women. At the gymnasium, the tan Katya start training to earn their place in the Olympic final. This is demo ketose from the island of Rhodes, son of a great Olympic champion. The father is diagur's. Thanks to the poetry of a writer named Pindar, his fame has endured for 2,500 years. Pindar is a poet for hire. He'll praise any athlete willing to pay him. A few sweet words from Pindar, and fans start to believe that a man like digress is more than human. The IRS was very much thought of as godlike because it was believed if you're going to be a great athlete like die gross, the only way you could achieve the success was if you were descended from the gods. The sons of dye agus, like all Olympic athletes, are required to spend one full month before the games in training and elimination rounds. [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music]
This noble panel of officials is the International Olympic Committee of the ancient world. They hold supreme authority, but just like today, their rules are not always invented. In the ancient world, there was no sense of fairness. There was no joy of participation, which is a modern concept. The Greeks went to the entrance for one reason, and that was winning. There are examples of primary, there are examples of collusion, hometown judging. It was not the good old days as people think. As the Olympic Games grow in importance, cheating become so rampant that a row of statues to Zeus, paid for by discrete cheaters, is erected at Olympia. Only the pedestals remain. I've walked down that hall shame and I've looked at what's left of the little stumps and pedestals where the footprints from the statues were, and thought about the feeling I would have if I had been the athlete who's cheated, whose statue would be there for that, whose parents were named, the city that they came from, name, and the eternal shame of that.
About two to three hundred men will compete in these games. Women are not included. This is a young man named Chris on, a sprinter from a Greek colony in Sicily. Price on his desire to win is so strong, he vows not to touch a woman or another man until after his race. You can have the greatest body, you can have the greatest coach, you can have the greatest technical equipment, but if you don't have that flame, that desire, and that will to overcome everybody else, to be there, to be the best, you won't succeed at Olympia. That desire is sometimes mixed with pure greed, especially when the wealthiest men in Greece enter their finest horses in the chariot races. Some owners are ready to cheat and bribe their way to victory. The ancient Greeks invented sport, but not sportsmanship. Mckessie layoffs of Sparta, however, is ready for anything. He will drive his own chariot to ensure that no one intemperate it. Cheating is a high-risk game because not only the judges, but the gardens are watching. It's helpful to remember that for the Greeks, religion and sports, whether it's Chariot Racing or boxing, were not separate activities. The Greeks believed that the Greek gods were very much like human beings, more powerful, but generally with the same likes. And if the Greeks liked sports, and they thought that the gods would like sports performed in their honor as well. Greeks believed that Olympic champions are so strong and brave that they must be more than mere humans. When the a giris won his Olympic title, he was proclaimed son of Hermes, the god of athletics. He leads his sons to the altar of her mace in the Sacred Valley as they prepare for their own battles at Olympia. [Music]
One more ritual remains before the action can begin. An old Scissors of honesty and fair play. You did not come as a team. You did not come as Team USA. You should not come as the Canadians of for a particular event. You came as an individual. You paid your own way. Your father came with you, along with presumably your brothers as well. I lost on what day nein nein nein time ago now that died and also get cold. [Music] You. The ancient Greeks believed in dozens and dozens of God, but the greatest of all of them was Olympian Zeus. So he, in his power, could strike with lightning bolts. He could uphold the idea of justice among men. A worthy God to come to dedicate your finest energies in Olympic competition. An August moon rises over the Sacred Valley. The power and the pain of Olympic Games will begin at dawn.
In 448 BC, Olympic competition begins with the four-horse chariot race. It is the Formula one event of the ancient game. [Music] The resources required to become a successful chariot racer were very much similar to people who undertake yacht racing today. Ted Turner, for example, or anyone who is in auto racing. We can estimate that one race course might cost you thirty, thirty-five thousand dollars. Much of our knowledge of Chariot Racing comes from the richly detailed pottery that formed part of the wins reward. We have base paintings which are very useful for technique because putting a series of vases together to depict the sport will often tell us a lot about equipment. The chariots are flimsy and fragile design, perceived not safety. The charioteer controls his team with a whip in one hand and leather reins in the other. The middle horses are yield to the chariot for maximum pulling power. The other horses are attached only by fence traffic. Their role is to steer the rest of the team around the tight and dangerous turn. The horses are barely larger than our modern Pony. Protective horseshoes won't be invented for hundreds of years. The millionaires who own the teams have come to strut their wealth and power. In some ways, it was about politics, oddly enough, because it was aristocrats who raise chariots, and therefore tyrants who wanted to be considered aristocrats in their own cities would enter chariots to become a member of that same class.
In 448 BC, the rivalry between war-hungry Sparta and democratic Athens is intense and all-consuming. These city-states have just begun a series of wars that will last a hundred years. For a few tenth days, the Olympic Truths transfers the regression to the games. The race will come down to a contest between two teams: an aristocrat of Athens and our Castle EOS of Sparta. [Music] Most chariot owners left the actual driving to hired men or slaves, but the power-hungry our Castle arrows will guide his own team. One of the reasons I think they were so involved in horsemanship was very much part of warfare. They believed in the concept of winning at all cost, the concept of arattai, athletic excellence. They hated to lose, and therefore, I think people like our Casa Luis in 448 wanted to compete himself for the good of the state, for the good of Spartan. In Sparta, boys are taken from their mothers at the age of seven and immersed in athletic and military training. This is the origin of state-funded sport. The Spartans are the East Germans of the ancient Olympic Games. A love of fast horses runs deep in their national soul and is crucial to their military triumph. I think when you see in the rivalry between Athens and Sparta, perhaps with the modern analogy is the difference between the USA, the Western democracy, and the Eastern Bloc countries.
At Olympia, even the wealthiest horsemen are not immune to a common superstition. They will do anything to get an edge. What they did was to take a tablet fly. They would write a message on it. They would variate perhaps in the ground, maybe in a well, and several of these have survived, especially from later times. Some tablets carried prayers for good fortune. Others called them a curse on the opposition. They are the performance-enhancing drugs of the ancient world. The lust for victory is overwhelming. Bribery is one of the most common tactics, paying off a groom to poison a rival man's horse. Ollis trainers look down on such crude behavior. More important, so to Zeus, the carvings of his temple alluded to a mythical chariot race marred by cheating. It's a not very subtle warning to mortals not to try the same thing with juice in the house. The racecourse itself is just a rough past year, about 600 meters long and perhaps 300 meters wide, with no central barricades to prevent a head-on crash. You would be looking essentially at a field. There was an embankment on one side, and embankment on the other, and a basic track that was probably cleaned up a little bit, but not much before the racing would start. The Greeks were obsessed with not giving an opponent any advantage. They designed a starting gate to prevented any team from getting a head start toward the all-important first turn. This invention is the origin of the staggered start, still used in Olympic distance running. The gate is arranged with the stalls recessed in order from the outside lane. As the teams are loaded into the gate, stiff ropes hold them back. In the center, a statue of an eagle with outstretched wings, the symbol of the god Zeus, is connected to a lever in the starter's box. As the lever is flipped, the eagle will appear to take flight. The ropes are lowered in order, and the race is on. [Applause]
There seems to be a rule that in mid-start of the race, you had to keep your lane, as you do in an 800 meters race, but after that, it seems that anything would go. For the Spartan attention a us, this is the point of knowledge on his way to his fortune, his political teacher, and his own life talking skills as a charioteer. Some of the comparable to American automobile racing, arm in the sense that there was a sense of danger. You would not know that you were going to crash in every race, but very few safeguards, so death was in the air. Racing headlong down the straightaway is a matter of sheer speed, but turning the four-horse team around the barrel column is a tricky and potentially deadly challenge. Here, the skill, the horseman comes into play. The number one danger point is the kerning code because it was not a bank track. You had to get as close to it as possible. Your axle could catch up against the post. You yourself could catch up against the post, potentially and turn over. But if you veer truly wide, then you would lose the race. It was always a choice at that point. [Applause] [Music] The wrong decision let's another team take the lead, but there are 11 more left to the race. Many [Applause] there's also no central barrier between the two coasts. The Romans decided that they needed central barrier between the two posts to keep chariots from crossing over from one lane to the other, and we do have a description of a head-on crash. [Applause] You know that you're coming to the end because you hear the trumpet that announces the last lap. If you did not already know if you'd lost count, everyone raced all out because everything would stay. This is your chance to win the Olympic Games. You are going all out, and hopefully, of course, attend your chariot would hold together until the finish line. [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] You [Music] [Applause]
The gamble by our cassoulet offs pays off. He is draped in the red ribbon of victory. He has earned the prize he came for: victory for Sparta, a shameful defeat of Athens on sacred Olympic ground. When the horses leave the Hippodrome, the crowds move on to the stadium where forty thousand voices will hail the contenders for the most coveted title of all: fastest man on earth. In modern Olympic Games, no event carries more prestige or more excitement than a sprint to determine the fastest man in the world. 2,500 years ago, the ancient Greeks felt the same way. [Applause] You would be assembled in the stadium, perhaps some 40, 45,000 people strong, not sitting in comfortable seats, not having paid tickets, but standing on the green banks around a very humble Stadium by any modern standard. The excitement would be palpable. There would be sweat and dirt. What you're smelling is tremendous stems from the people there. There would be a lack of hygiene among the people. There will be no bathrooms as we call them today. Only one woman is allowed to enter the stadium grounds: a priestess of the goddess Demeter. The stadium is located on the site of her tribe. Nobody wants to make juices sister feel unwelcome, according to one account. And the other female caught at Olympia would be thrown off a cliff. Many people have debated the issue of gender at the games, why women were not allowed, and there's no one answer, but the one that makes the most sense to me is going back to the religious context. This was an all-male celebration to a male God. The women, it's awkward to say it, but we would be perceived as polluting the site, especially mature women coming into this situation. Females did have their own competition at Olympia, and it's known as the Hirai abhi cuz. This is a festival in honor of hero, wife of Zeus, and a her aya. There was only one athletic events now, one athletic event was have stayed, or more correctly, it was one-fifth of the state, and therefore, this is more of a religious festival, more of festival concerned with ritual, and indeed with initiation. [Applause]
In ancient Greece, each Olympiad itself is linked forever with a man who wins this race. Right up a wet day with a spilling beer consumed from Sicily, and seven models were running today's fun dashing straight down the 200 meter dirt track. Eight million carrying the prayers of their families and years of dedication and training. The begin the race for me. You don't really think about a lot of things. I think that all the work that you've done, you should have already done all the network before you got there. So there really not a whole lot to focus on other than the things that you've done in the past to get you there. A striking aspect of the ancient games was the total nudity of the athletes. In the stadium, charioteers wore sort of a costume, a--quite on, but the other athletes were completely nude. No sandals, no jock straps, nothing. Well, in the year 720, we have a famous athlete called our suppose, who took part in a race. His shorts fell off. He finished the race without them, finished first, and all his rivals thought that was the secret to his success. So in the next race, they all ran naked. Some people suggest that athletes could run faster without the loincloth. Aerodynamically tests at the University of Michigan have shown that this is not entirely true. Running naked probably wouldn't wouldn't work just because, uh, you know, I wouldn't want to go down the track flogging your your quadriceps, you know, that might hurt a little bit. Some runners favor another tactic: a string attached to the foreskin, sometimes tied around the waist, a practice known as infibulation. Some of the older commentators suggested that part of this, that is part of the leash, and it was called a dog's leash, which is attached to the penis, part of it was held by the, and if the trainer one to the attention of a runner in practice or somebody else, he would give it a tug, and I guess that would really get the attention of the athlete. At the starting line, the cord keeps the runs from taking off before the start is calm. [Applause] The penalty for a false start is a shameful whipping by the judges, a punishment for reserved only for slaves. She frogged is a terrible disgrace for a free Greek man in front of 40,000 citizens and mighty Zeus. I wouldn't find a demeaning because I think that you get slog now, you get punished. It, I think it's just we're in a different place, a different time. So long, I think being flawed then is equal to you being penalized for a false tartan, and if you get two of them, you you're out of the race.
At the modern Olympic Games, the winner of the 100-meter dash can expect to earn millions of dollars in bonuses and endorsements. In 448 BC, the rewards are just as great. All the starting line that into the Olympia, there is a lot more at stake for pricing and his rivals than a red ribbon and Halloween. They could expect to receive an enormous amount of money from their home city. Now, this is something like 500 drachma, which doesn't so much to us, but this would be the equivalent of several years' pay for the average person. It has been said that if you want at the angel Olympic Games, you were set for life. There were material benefits, it definitely came with it. In ancient Athens, for example, you go to the town hall and get a free meal, basically, as long as you live. There will be cash prizes. It would be seats of honor at the theater. In other places, in different times, you might get relief from taxation. You might get a special parade into town. [Music]
Now, the moment has come. 20 seconds of running to crown an Olympic champion, to make a man of God. The athletes were especially motivated by competition. There was great shame at finishing second. That's one of the basic differences between the modern world and the ancient world. It's winning or nothing. [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] I expected the way I wanted to win. I had already beaten my opponents mentally leading into the game, so I knew exactly what their their weaknesses were, and and I still hadn't shown all my strengths. [Applause] [Music] [Applause] And it is fantastic. Being the Olympic champion was something that defined me as an athlete. Olympic champions like Christ on our sports first millionaires. The other men take home nothing but shame. The losers would sneak home by back streets, and mothers might be embarrassed by them. The victor would come in with a great parade, and everybody would celebrate. But there's nothing like the modern notion that just being there is enough. That's really how it is in society now. If you're very good at what you do, then you're and you're applauded for it, and if you're if you're so-so, then, you know, you get the sympathy vote.
Also held in the stadium is the pentathlon, the first multi-sport event in Olympic history. The name of the events are familiar, but the techniques are different. The triple jump is performed with hand weights to increase distance. There are examples of athletes in the fifth century who could jump over 55 feet. In the modern world, nobody can come close to there. Some of the experiments have shown that if you start the jump by throwing these weights forward in front of them to give the added distance, and then bringing them behind them for the balance, that would achieve the approximate just good. [Music] It was believed that the athlete did not turn a revolution. This was based on the famous discover lots of Myra. The javelin is thrown with the aid of a loop of leather for added force. Would be ramped around the javelin, would also be wrapped around the two fingers of the hand, and the purpose behind it was to give an added momentum to the javelin. If one man wins all three field events, the pentathlon is over. If not, then a foot race and wrestling break the time. To the ancient Greeks, the pentathlete are the ultimate examples of manly beauty, grace, and power. In 448 BC, a man named Keaton wins the pentathlon with such magnificent form as he may have been a model for the sculptor Myron. Myron was at the height of its career at this time. It is a possibility, but many of the artists took their models now from single athletes, that may be from the group of athletes. It took the best qualities from use. The charioteers and the runners have had their moment of glory. Now it is the fight his turn. Three men enter the Olympic spotlight: the great champion dye Agora, sent his two sons, a new generation come to battle for the honor of their family and the glory of the island of Rhodes. We are 2500 years back in time, on the verge of a completely familiar event: Olympic boxing, perhaps the most primal of all forms of human combat today. In diagnose, the former Olympic champion will watch his son, a Casillas, fight for his first Olympic week. I think if you're talking about the modern Olympics, in the Olympics, boxing would be much more violent. It would be much more violent. The class, there were no time limits. The blows we're largely at the head. There's no padding. The blows were at the nose. From vast paintings, we can see the blood spouting out of there. You could gouge out the eyes, you could knock out the teeth, and some of the athletes pretended to be tough there and swallowed their teeth so it's not to encourage their opponents. The fighting is very basic. It's kill or be killed. I'm, it's that's what gives you that edge, that's what gives you that adrenaline flow. The very fact that you know that he's going to do his best to beat you into submission, and of course, you have to contract that or make sure that you don't get beaten into submission, you have to beat him into submission, as simple as that. What about tier charts are ancient commentaires? Now, these are not the gloves that you are familiar with. These are not the eight ten ants large padded gloves. These are long strips of leather, and this is the ancient form of boxing glove from about 2500 years ago. The idea is to wrap it around the hand. It is largely protection. What I'm going to do is try and demonstrate it here on your left hand. If you can hold onto that right there, we will do several cross pieces. We will go to the rest order a cup of Luther across Pisa, a second crossed case. We're going to put a couple of minutes around here. You can even manage a third one, and then we're going to hold it underneath and try and tighten it up a little bit. Pull this in, and they've gotten answers from 440. We know about this from vase paintings, and there is an example behind me there from approximately the same time period. So what do you think about that church? So these cross pieces going to help you much? Well, they will help you, but to a limited degree. Today, they use gauze bandage and tape, yeah, much for the same purpose, essentially, try to protect your hands from getting broken, from the bones in your hand behind the knuckles getting broken, right? When people break their hand in boxing, especially because of the impact here on the knuckles, but the bones back here are the little small bones that break. It popped up like so and break. So the idea is to keep these bones as flat as you can. How wide your hands could absorb hitting some money on the head that have to be a great concern? Yeah, I mean, it's easy to be very easy to bust your hand. If you got a busted hand, hard to hit some people. The next shot. [Applause]
2,500 years ago, there is no ring, no ropes, no Bell, no limit to the amount of punishment that a man can absorb or deliver. Victory comes by knockout or by raising a single finger as a sign of surrender. But surrender is far from these men. If you have an overriding fear of getting hurt, it would limit you in a lot of ways. You would have that free flow of things, and you'd be too uptight to be very difficult to be a good fighter and have a fear that kind of cripples you. [Applause] The contest is intense, exhausting, and savage. After more than an hour, both men remain standing. You can't allow yourself to think that I can't win. Can't allow something I can't. You always, I think, you only want punch away from from knocking the other guy out. Only one punch away for winning the fight. That's what we have to think. They are surfing around that would Gates's is a little bit weird. Its father died a gross. He seems more worried. I would like to been a worry on those days, you know, when you know the FICA go on virtually forever. I think I would like that, but I don't think it's for everyone. But for someone like myself, who was a pretty durable guy, it would been right up my alley. As the hours grind on, the judges force of final showdown by decreasing the dimensions of the fighting zone. You have to move to the next event, and therefore, to make a move quickly, you bring in the ladders or the measuring rod. Now, these are set between the two athletes. They make space much smaller. They're held by two officials on either side. This will bring a decision, and often it will end in a kind of downward time where the victor will not be component. [Applause] [Music] [Applause]
At last, after three hours, a cou serious wins the final crushing blow. Not the fight is over, and the son of the great diagonalization so and Olympic challenge. [Applause] [Music] Boxing is the most onerous fortune, in most ways, and it's the clearest way, I think, that you can launch yourself as a winner. What's more emphatic than standing over somebody with your arm raised in the air? You knocked him off. A caveman can understand that. Next, it will be the turn of dumb Iquitos as he enters the arena to compete in the most savage event of the ancient Olympic Games, the Pancrazio, fighting for his father's name, his brothers' honor, and his own life. [Music]
The Olympic Games are for 48 BC. Only one of them remains: calm Katya, the most brutal and the most popular of ancient Greek combat sports. The pressure now is on the second Sunday migitus. His father's when sixteen years earlier, died a gross and goosal air would be on the bed. There would be extreme emotions as they circled the room. This is sport and war combined, hand-to-hand combat to the brink of death. [Applause] [Music] Bank radio was very brutal sports today. You can can tear it. It was Ultimate Fighting. Virtually everything was allowed, except for gouging out the eyes and fighting. Victory is gained by knockout or surrender, and the tactics range from kicking, the bone cracking, from toe holds to strangulation. When you enter the stadium, you accepted the responsibility of death. So if you were killed by a legal blow, then there was no legal responsibility against the person committed that one. [Music] The object is not to kill the other man because if the victim has fought nobly, the olive wreath may be awarded to his corpse. Lots of grappling and pulling and punching and twisting, and also does this nasty habit of breaking the fingers, and this was very much part of the pen query on. And one athlete in particular had this nasty habit of breaking his opponents' fingers, and was no new semester clay as Mr. Fingertip. The poet Pindar describes one of the classic moods of pankot young like this: the athlete who falls on his back stretches out his arms in front of him and draws up his feet, kicking a powerful just like a fox who, when the hook clawed wild eagle rushes on him, turns on his back to the friends himself. [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] Ah [Applause] [Music] [Applause] Yeah [Music] For the giant dumber, he chose the way to destroy a smaller, quicker man. If you concentrate on the leg, twisting your ankle until the practice and the pain becomes unbearable. [Music] [Applause] The loser's name is lost to us. The gardens have no gifts for him now. De mogi toss is no longer merely the son of Diagoras. He is the family's third Olympic champion. The bank Clarion was the most famous sport. It was the sport which everybody likes. So to win in the bank Clarion was often considered to be the ultimate victory.
The symbolic race of athletes in Armour marks the end of olympic competition, and the sacred truth soon Olympia will fall quiet again. But first, all must assemble for the spectacular ceremonies of the final day, when the champions will be honored in the presence of the gods. A humble wreath of olive leaves crowns the sons of Diagoras. Far greater riches await them on their return to Rhodes. [Music] When it's all over with, and that wreath is being placed on his head, that is the moment of satisfaction. When he must tell himself, he didn't do it all himself. He aspires to be more than mortal. Zeus will strike him down. I remember when we bought our metals, and I remember what it was like standing on the podium. Do you go through that in your mind on us every day of practice and visualize being there, doing that, living that? That's your drive. From a modern point of view, these wreath prizes don't seem like much, but to an ancient Greek, they had tremendous symbolic quality. The wreath, after all, is composed of olive leaves, leaves associated with Zeus, and it represents, in effect, divine favor. What that wreath will bring you is the notion of class or fame, enduring fame. You could live on in two ways: one is through your family, and I agus had done that, two fine sons would go on to Olympic victory, and his grandchildren would wander Olympic victories. The other way was to win a victory yourself so that your name would be remembered. At this moment, legend holds that someone in the crowd calls out, "Die now, die Agora, see there is nothing left for you but to ascend to the realms of the gods." The name of diagnosis of Rhodes still echoes as champion and father of champions. A Casillas has chosen his father's sport of boxing and won the sacred crown. De mogi toss has triumphed in the savagery of the Pancrazio. They saw the mortal fame, and they achieved it, for we still remember them. Together, try some of himera will belong to win two more Olympic sprinting titles, a feat no modern man has ever equalled. [Music] And the triumph of our Castle a us in the four-horse chariot race begins a streak of seven Spartan victories in eight Olympia, broken only when Sparta is thrown out of the games for violating the sacred truce. The heroes are crowned, the crowds depart, and the games are over. The Sacred Valley of Olympia will lie quiet for four years, only to reawaken yet again for another five days of ritual and sport. This will continue for 800 years, until Roman emperors, having conquered the Greeks, order the games and the worship of Zeus abolished. Through the Middle Ages, the Sacred Valley is destroyed by floods, the stadium buried, the Hippodrome washed away, the site is abandoned, but the dream endurance. I think it's a magic place. I mean, a lot of people to see dust and dirt in crumbled stones. Ooh, who wants to see the ruins again? I could go back and go back and go back. It's a, it is like a touchstone. It really is. It's about who we are, where we come from. In 1896, Baron Pierre de Coubertin revives not only the sports of the ancient Greeks but the spirit. Every other year, a procession of priestesses comes to this sacred Valley, lighting a torch that will be carried to a new Olympic city as millions cry, as in ancient times, but the games begin. [Music] [Applause] [Music]