OLYMPIC GAMES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 19956, 26 May 1928, Page 1 (Supplement)

OLYMPIC GAMES.

ANCIENT AND MODERN.

BY KOTARE.

The Olympic Games, the most notable classical revival of modern times, have come round again, and already the champions of all the nations are assembling to contest the world's athletic supremacy. Since Greek manhood first found its expression in the original games at Olympia in the eighth century before Christ, the Persian came and went, Greece became a world power and fell back iuto tho obscurity from which it had come, Rome built an empire that still lies at the foundation of the modern world, and all the great modern nations crept out of the mists, and erected the towering structures of nationality that wo know to-day. The present Olympic Games, almost alone in our modern life, link us with tho beginnings of our modern European civilisation. Here tho present and the remote past join hands again. Again as in the great days of Greece tho nations find a common ground in the field of athletics. It is ono of the most remarkablo phenomena of our times, and apart from its historical interest it may be fraught with momentous consequences for modern civilisation. National pride expressing itself in contempt for other peoples is one of tho factors that prevent international understanding and keep alive the smouldering fires of war. A healthy respect for other countries based on personal knowledge will do more than diplomacy to counteract the ignorance and prejudice lying so often at the root of misunderstandings that in the past have culminated in the tragic harvest of the battlefield. In ancient Greece the great national festivals did more than anything else to consolidate the various sections of the Greek race, to fuse scattered tribes into a mighty nation, to break down barriers of local prejudice. Whatever the internal troubles of the land, when the period of the great games came round a truce was proclaimed, enmities were suspended for the time, and under a safe-conduct competitors and their friends travelled from the remotest coasts of the Grecian world to take part in tho great religious and athletic festivals. In Greece they became a symboL of unity in a sadly divided nation, the most potent social and consolidating factor in the life of the Greek states. In Greece. What they did for Greece they may in some measure do for the modern world. Substitute, on a much vaster field of course, the contending national prides and jealousies and hatreds of the world to-day, and you have the counterpart of the con- 1 ditions so familiar to the ancient world, j Whether the Olympic Games as reorganised in the last decade of the nineteenth century will act as a solvent of prejudice and ignorance has yet to be proved. There has been a suggestion that the games have tended more to emphasise nationalism and perpetuate racial enmities than to provide a basis of understanding and friendship. That there must be some difficulties at the start everyone would admit. But if over a period of centuries the games were able to lay a foundation of unity among a keenly intellectual people like the Greeks, a military people withal and one tending constantly to disintegration through the intensity of local prejudices and prides, there is at least a chance that they may be able to render a similar service to the modern world. There were four chief national cycles of games in ancient Greece, each associated with the worship of some popular deity, and in addition the great Athenian celebration of tho Panathenaic games. For the Greeks regarded physical fitness not as a matter of individual whim but as a definite question of social duty. . Every citizen was supposed to keep fit. There were gymnasia provided and each man not disqualified by age or sickness was expected to spend some part of each day, several hours usually, in some form of physical exercise. Behind this was the conviction that one of a nation's chief f lories was the physical strength and eauty of its citizens. A man was failing in his first duty to his country if he permitted his muscles to become flabby. Nearly every man could develop a wellproportioned body, and he was sinning against the Greek love of beauty if ho let his physical condition run to seed. Besides, in the very probable event of war every man must be able to stand the strain of long, swift marches and the hand-to-hand grapple of the fighting line. Universality. This, universality of training that lay behind the great Greek Games is the chief differenco between the ancient view of athletics and our modern practice. The original Olympic Games presupposed a people whose every citizen was a trained athlete. They did not take their exercise by proxy. They were not content to watch the game from the side-line. Until we can get something of their universality we cannot expect to be an A 1 nation physically. 1 suppose we shall realise that some time, probably when it is too late to remedy it. This is liow a citizen of Greece did his daily dozen. During the morning he would hie to the gymnasium. He would throw aside all his clothes, for all Greek athletes trained and competed on the course without a stitch of clothing. Then he was rubbed down with oil—a very thorough massage. Ho covered himself with powder and then scraped off the mixture with the strigil, a practice preserved for us in ono of the most famous of Greek statues. Then came a strenuous round of exercise, a vigorous game or two, ending in a hot bath. Tho whole skin was again treated to an oil massage and the tired business man felt he could face once more the tasks of his office. Behind the Oylmpic and Isthmian Games was this passion for physical fitness and beauty; the competitors strove for the mastery before a crowd of experts. Even if we can supply the athletes, we shall never be able to supply the Greek spectators. Comparisons. It is impossible to say how our athletes compare with thoso of ancient Greece. There were no times kept. The feundial is not adapted to exact measurement of minute fractions of time. You cannot time a hundred yards sprint on it. Tho only record that has come down is sufficiently remarkable to tax even modern credulity. One athlete is said to have covered 55 feet in the long jump. But then the Greeks were as famous for their works of imagination as for their athletic feats, and one of these seems to have found its way into the records of tho games. Tho competitors for the great games had to be of Greek birth, and were required to take an oath that there was no bloodguiltiness upon their souls which might bring the vengeance of the gods. They were running no chances, these shrewd old Greeks. Every competitor had to declare that he had been in training for jthe games for at least ten, months. Tho prize was a crown of leaves from some common herb or shrub. But tho victors became public heroes. There 6eems to havo been no limit to the rewards their friends could bestow on them. Processions, a statue in the public square, large sums of money, the place of honour on the battlefield, free meals for the rest of their lives, an ode by the leading poet of the day—these were a few of th' rewards the record of which survives. Ono fears that it would not re quire the ultra-sensitiveness of a Scottish Rugby Union to suggest some doubts of the amateur status of these athletes of the old world.