S10E10 - Ancient Olympics Part Deux

Greeking Out from National Geographic Kids - National Geographic Kids

This episode explores legendary figures from the ancient Olympics, highlighting athletic triumphs, cultural quirks, and groundbreaking moments—especially for women. From mythical origins to real-life champions, the stories blend history, myth, and humor.

Key takeaways

• Theagenes won 1,400 matches and was honored with a vengeful statue.
• Diagorus celebrated his sons' victories, dying in joy after their triumph.
• Kyniska became the first woman to win Olympic chariot races through strategy and loopholes.

Transcript preview

The stories featured in Grecing Out are original adaptations of classic Greek myths. This week's story features groundbreaking athletes, pioneering villains, statue lore, the rage of fandom, and a sporting event which shall not be named. Breaking out, the greatest stories in history, we're told in Greek mythology. Grecing out, gods and heroes, amazing feats, blisened and you'll see it's Greek. We're back with this season's final episode of Grecing out the podcast where we talk a lot about Greek mythology but today we're gonna talk about something coming up right around the corner something sporty something that happens every few years in different places all over the world something which we will not name we are not naming this big global sporting event for legal reasons right so in celebration of nothing in particular, we're going to talk about a series of games held in the ancient world called the ancient Olympics, which are legally distinct from anything that may or may not be happening in the world right now. That's right, we're back with more ancient Olympic legends. The first known ancient Olympic Games were held in the summer of 776B-C-C-E in honor of Zeus. 13 years it only consisted of one foot race. Now we've already talked about the mythical beginnings of the ancient Olympics a little bit but here's a quick recap in case you don't remember. King Pilops, whose dad tried to feed him to the gods and who was super cursed, entered a chariot race to win the hand of the beautiful hippodamia. Hippodamia's father already had a prophecy that if his daughter got married it would mean his own death so he made all of her suiters race him and he would kill all the losers. Pilops cheated to win and it resulted in the death of Hippidamia's father neatly fulfilling the prophecy. He also killed the person who helped him cheat just heaping more curses upon his already cursed family. But some ancient people credit Pilops with organizing the first olympian games. Another competing story is that Heracles organized the games in honor of his father after completing his 12 labors. Olympics were just one of four different quadrenial ancient games happening in the Greek world. That's right. That's why the Olympics were originally every four years, because there were three other games going on the rest of the time that formed kind of a circuit, the Nemean games, the Pythian games, and the Isthmian games. Our first ancient Olympic champion is Theagenies of Thasos. As a child, Theaines was so strong that he actually, picked up a statue from the town square and just decided to carry it home. Since this was the statue of a god, the town's folk weren't very happy with him. Some of them actually wanted to put the kid to death for such an insult. Fortunately, a wise town elder intervened and simply asked Theogenes to put it back. The kid was just nine years old after all. He needed some guidance. The people of Thausos would eventually go on to witness this former juvenile delinquent become one of the greatest sports figures of the ancient world. He apparently won 1,400 matches over the course of his 22-year competitive career. In the ancient Olympics, Theogenes became the first athlete to win in both boxing and Pancration in the years 480 and 476 BCE. And yeah, I just said Pancration in the last sentence, but in our previous Olympics episode, I pronounce it as Pancration. As it turns out, both are right. I'm just mixing it up a little bit. You decide which one you like better. Anyway, in addition to that, Theogenes also claimed victory in some 21 other games in the circuit. But that's not all. Just for variety's sake, he decided to try running, and he even won a long-distance race in the city of Phythia. He was a legend and a formidable presence, but not everybody loved him. I mean, for every victory you achieved, that means somebody else takes a loss, right? With a career like Theogenies, there were a lot of losers, so that means a lot of losers, so that means a lot. lot of people probably resented him at least a little bit. Maybe this is why when they built a giant bronze statue to honor the fighter after his death an old rival decided to vandalize it. But the agonies was victorious even in death. As the legend goes, while the criminal was attempting to deface the statue, the bronze structure came loose from its base and actually fell upon the vandal, killing him instantly. That would be victory number one thousand four hundred and one and that's when things get wacky because the heirs of the dead guy sued the statue like petitioned the court that the statue had wronged them the statue was then judged guilty and sentenced to be thrown in the sea which it was the statue only killed in self-defense I think this was a little bit of an overreaction myself The people of Thausus experienced a famine. They didn't have anything to eat and their crops were failing. Someone thought to consult the Oracle of Delphi and the answer was clear, bring the statue out of the sea and put it back just like Theogenes did when he was a kid. After that, the famine ended and the people erected more statues to Theogenes believing that they had healing powers. Our next legend is an Olympic champion in his own right, but he might actually have preferred to be known as a proud dad. His name was Diagorus of Rhodes and he won the boxing crown twice in the ancient Olympics. In the ancient Olympics, competitors were given a crown of leaves from a laurel tree to celebrate their victory. In the modern day, Olympic athletes get medals. Deagorus was not only an Olympic champion, he was also a champion in the other three games in the circuit as well. A poet named Pindar, commemorated one of his victories. with a poem