LU Athletics

When Baron Pierre de Coubertin founded the International Olympic Committee in 1894 he envisioned gentleman athletes; his lofty ideals of well-rounded amateurs carried over from the games’ ancient forerunners. 80 years later those ideals had been abandoned. True amateurs could no longer compete with specialised state-sponsored athletes. Ever the idealist, the Baron failed to recognise that, even in the ancient world, professional athletes quickly replaced amateurs.
Prior to the earliest Olympic Games athletic events were part of cult expression and performed at weddings and funerals. The event attendees spontaneously became athletes.
Proper sporting events started appearing in the 8th century BCE. In those earliest days there were no athletes, trainers or special diets. As sporting events grew in popularity, and athletes in esteem, further games were instated, some of which came with not only the honour of winning but also a great monetary prizes.

Athletic families emerged. Former athletes encouraged sons and nephews to­ carry on the family legacy, while acting as their trainers. The athletes of this era partook in the diet of an active body, but one that was not very different from the standard Greek diet. They ate whole grains, dry figs and feta-like cheeses. It was a diet high on natural fibres, calcium, minerals and protein, while being moderately slow in terms of carbohydrate absorption, thus promoting all-round good health. And so it continued throughout the 7th century BCE.

Competitions with prizes of monetary value, such as the Panathenaea, continued to emerge in the 6th century BCE, making it possible to earn a good living winning games. Former winners could in turn make money training hopefuls. Towards the end of the century athleticism was in full swing with specialised diets, training regimes, and sleeping patterns.

One runner had acquired great fame on a diet of only red meat, and so started the diet game. Some athletes ate copious amounts of red meat, some swore by pork, some trusted only in goat, and others sought to eat very little and harden the body in that way.

By 449 BCE the Persian Wars had come and gone and the Greek world had changed. A new education system discouraged athleticism, considering it detrimental to both body and mind.

The prejudice of the ‘dumb jock’ was thus firmly established, but that did not stop people from attending the games. Plato himself enjoyed the Olympic Games, ventured far to see them, and gladly spent time with other sports fans. Meanwhile, he also accused athletes of being a sleepy, useless, and unintelligent lot. Diets became more extreme, training became more extreme, and sleeping became more extreme.

So it continued for centuries, the public view of athletes steadily deteriorating. They were best known for their appetites. One athlete was said to have eaten 1.8 stones of meat, 1.8 stones of bread and drank 19 pints of wine, whereas another ate a bull single-handed in one day, a third ate a Persian feast for nine all by himself, a fourth won a great eating and drinking contest, and a fifth was so proud of his overeating that he had it inscribed on his grave stone. Needless to say, ancient athletes often died young.
Under the Roman Empire athletes became unionised in guilds. Overeating was a major problem, which was to be aided with various prescription massages and white meat diets. Many athletes demanded and received state pensions for their winnings, which allowed them to live comfortably on fewer winnings and did nothing to improve their reputation for gluttony and useless excess. Nor did it help that many athletes became involved in illegal activities in order to maintain their lifestyles of luxury.

What took the ancients centuries may have taken us less than 100 years, but the patterns of evolving professional athleticism remain the same. Then again, perhaps so do our lofty ideals of sportsmanship and love for the game, or ‘amateurism’ as it is called in Latin.