Here is a brief history of what gave rise to the summer Olympics. Read on to know them all.
An ancient religious celebration in honor of Zeus, the Olympic Games were originally held on the Greek island of Olympia. Olympia, a rural sanctuary site in the eastern Peloponnesos hosted the feast and the games. People from all across Greece congregated in Olympia to worship at the Temple of Zeus because they all believed in the same gods and spoke identical languages. The athletes represented the male population of Greek city-states who lived as far away as Iberia (modern-day Spain) there in the west and indeed the Black Sea (modern-day Turkey) in the east. Mount Olympos, the highest peak in mainland Greece, was the inspiration for the ancient name of the sanctuary. According to Greek mythology, the most powerful deities of the Greek pantheon resided atop Mount Olympos. In 776 BC, Koroibos, a chef from the adjacent city of Elis, finished the stadion race, a 600-foot-long foot race, marking the beginning of the ancient Olympic Games. Olympia's stadion track is depicted here. For most of the first 13 Olympics festivals, or until 724 BC, this was the only sporting event, so the legend goes. Olympia hosted the Games for approximately 12 centuries, beginning in 776 BC when they were held every four years.
Nevertheless, there is contradictory literary and archaeological evidence suggesting that the games may have been held in Olympia considerably earlier than this period, maybe as early also as the 10th or 9th century BC. The marathon did not feature in the first Olympiads. The contemporary event of the marathon was originally featured in Modern Olympic Games, which took place in Athens in 1896. It consisted of a 40-kilometer run from the city of Marathon toward the Olympic Stadium in the city of Athens.
Pheidippides, an ancient "day-runner," ran 149 miles to deliver the word of the Persian arrival at Marathon in 490 B.C. to Sparta, where reinforcements might be mustered for the next conflict. Herodotus, an ancient Greek historian from the fifth century B.C., claims that Pheidippides brought the news to Spartans the following day.
In 1908, during the Olympic Games in London, the distance of both the modern mile was set at 26 miles 385 yards, or 42.195 kilometers. This was the precise distance between the starting line at Windsor Castle and the final stretch within White City Stadium.
