29. The Contrast Between the Original Olympic Games and Today’s Would Astonish the Ancient Greeks
Today, the Olympic Games are a mega global event – the mega global event – rivaled perhaps only by soccer’s FIFA World Cup. As this article is being written, the 2020 (or 2021) Tokyo Olympics are in the process of hosting 11,326 athletes who hail from 205 nations, plus the International Olympic Committee’s Refugee Olympic Team. All of them eager and primed to compete over a seventeen-day stretch for glory and medals in 339 events, divided between 33 sports and 50 disciplines.
The difference between the scope and scale of the current Olympics and the original event would probably astonish and amaze ancient Greek participants and audiences if they knew what their competition would one day become. When the Olympic Games were first inaugurated in 776 BC, and for over half a century through 724 BC, there was only one athletic event: the stadion. It was named after the building in which it was held, which became stadium in Latin, and from which the English word stadium is derived.