A tale as old as time

MIKE ROWBOTTOM CHIEF FEATURE WRITER, INSIDETHEGAMES

A tale as old as time

Doping and other forms of cheating generate numerous headlines these days, but, as Mike Rowbottom reports, it’s nothing new.

As the Association of National Olympic Committees prepares to hold its latest, rescheduled, General Assembly in Crete in October, the reverberations of that other postponed event - the Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games - are still being felt throughout the world of sport.

While the financial fall-out from the 1976 Montreal Olympics remains a salutary marker, it is hard to think of a nation that has had such an ambivalent experience in hosting the Games as Japan, thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic which has disfigured and distorted the usual benefits.

The absence of fans focused attention more closely on the essence of the Games - the contest.

Things went back to basics and this will be fresh in the minds of ANOC as it converges, aptly, in the country where the Ancient Olympics originated.

That halcyon age produced the essential Games, involving noble struggles between high-minded individuals competing for nothing other than the glory of victory. Or did it?

Athletes then had to compete without clothes, to prevent any possibility of foul play, but it really wasn’t that simple.

Money and doping, the two most influential elements of cheating in sport, were both potent forces. Although, in fairness, what we might now describe as doping was not expressly forbidden.

Eupolos of Thessaly has the fame, or infamy, of being the first recorded wrongdoer in the history of the Ancient Games.

According to Pausanias, writing in the second century AD, Eupolos was guilty of bribing boxers at the 98th Olympiad.

Fourteen Olympiads later, Callippus of Athens was up to no good, apparently buying off his competitors in the pentathlon.

It was a few years on, admittedly, but at the 226th Olympics more misdeeds were recorded from two Egyptian boxers, Didas and Sarapammons, who were fined for fixing the outcome of their bouts.

Pausanias gathered this information from the bronze statues of Zeus erected on the road leading into the stadium at Olympia.

These were paid for using fines extracted from Olympic competitors who had cheated and were inscribed with the names of the guilty parties along with the details of their misdeeds.

Had he been operating now, Pausanias could have found all he needed to know at insidethegames…

The information was accompanied by messages warning others not to cheat and insisting that victory was to be earned through skill and effort, rather than by underhand means.

Here, then, was early graphic evidence of cheating. But while filthy lucre was behind so much that was unseemly at the Ancient Games, some performances were also bolstered by what we would now regard as doping.

Athletes were accustomed to boosting their performance by all manner of methods, with sheep testicles - heavy on the testosterone - helping with strength and endurance.

Galen, a physician in the third century AD, wrote about Olympians drinking large quantities of herbal teas. These both hydrated and stimulated with their high content of caffeine - but the drug is only allowed within restricted limits today.

He also reported that certain Olympic competitors had sought to enhance performance by drinking “the rear hooves of an Abyssinian ass, ground up, boiled in oil and flavoured with rosehips and petals”.

Whether this concoction would find its way into the World Anti-Doping Agency code today is a moot point. But the code would surely have little to say about another of the reputed performance-enhancers of ancient sporting times - the practice of drinking sweat, oil and dust scraped from the skin of Olympic champions immediately after their moment of glory.

The Ancient Olympics also embraced other elements that have become key factors in controversial sporting incidents. At the Games of 420 BC, the Spartans were banned from competing, having violated the Olympic Truce imposed to allow peaceful passage for all athletes.

Historian Thucydides describes how Lichas, a prominent Spartan, passed off his winning chariot under the name of a neighbouring state, only for his subterfuge to be detected. Lichas earned himself a flogging for this early sporting manipulation.

Then again, if you believe one of the ancient myths, the Games themselves sprang from deception. This version of the Olympic genesis holds that Pelops, a hero who lived in Olympus, fell in love with Hippodamia, the daughter of the King of Pisa, Oenomaus.

According to an oracle, the King was fated to be killed by his daughter’s husband. Therefore, he decreed that any young man who wanted to marry Hippodamia was required to drive away with her in his chariot, and Oenomaus would follow and spear the suitor if he caught up with them.

His confidence in succeeding was supreme, given that his horses were a present from the god Poseidon and thus supernaturally fast. Deified doping? Neigh-ified doping?

Anyway, before the day of the big race, Pelops, we are told, persuaded Oenomaus’ charioteer, Myrtilus, to replace the bronze axle pins of the King’s chariot with wax.

So when, during the heat of the chase, the wax melted, the wheels literally came off the King’s pursuit and he crashed and died.

After his victory, Pelops organised chariot races at Olympia in honour of the King, to be purified of his death. From this, the Olympic Games were inspired.

Pelops became a great king and Oenomaus remained dead. Although had he been able to witness it he would no doubt have been honoured by a competition set up to expiate his murderer.

The Ancient Olympics was not free from cheating and manipulation.

Photo: Getty Images

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