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Olympic Games
' By MADELEINE JACOBS
Smithsonian News Service
It is midsummer, and the Olym-
pica Games are about to begin.
From all over, spectators and politi-
cal leaders are arriving to witness
the spectacle promoted for months
nearly nonexistent, roads are
jammed and athletic facilities are
strained to capacity. It is hot and
dusty and people are complaining
about the fierce heat and noise.
Everywhere are booths and stalls
with vendors selling snacks and
hawking souvenirs. Musicians pro-
vide further diversion.
Having trained for months, even
years, the athletes are nervous,
aware that all too soon their events
- and the chance for fame and
perhaps fortune - will be over. News
of the winners will travel fast, and
victors will be feted in their home-
towns with parades and sought for
personal appearance at other festi-
vals.
This is how it was at the Olympic
Games in ancient Greece circa 300
B.C. In many ways, not much has
changed.
“We don’t know if the ‘ancient
Greeks had an officials cheesebur-
ger of the games, but they probably
had an equivalent,”’ says Dr. David
G. Romano, a classicial archaeolo-
gist specializing in ancient athletics
at The University Museum of the
University of Pennsylvania in Phila-
delphia. ‘In fact, almost every
problem and situation we face in the
modern Olympic Games existed in
antiquity.”
“Policits, including boycotts and
other politically motivated actions,
were always a part of the games,”
he says. ‘In the fourth century
B.C., for instance, Athens unsuc-
cessfully threatened to boycott the
Olympic Games because one of its
athletes had been fined for cheating
in the pentathlon. Earlier, in 420
B.C., the Spartans were refused
permission to come to Olympia to
participate in the game.”
But the ultimate in olitics may
have occurred at Olympics in 364
B.C. ‘““At those games,” Romano
says, ‘‘a military battle actually
took place in the middle of the
pentathlon, when the people of Elis,
who had usually been responsible
for the games, fought a battle with
the Arcadians and Pisatans who had
tried to seize control.”
And yet, Romano says, there are
several important differences
between the ancient Olympics,
which endured for almost 1200
years, and the modern Olympics,
first held in 1896 and scheduled this
year in Los Angeles from July 28 to
Aug. 12.
“From the beginning, the Olym-
pic Games, in fact all the Greek
athletic contests, were primarily
religious festivals,” Romano says.
The religious nature of the games
may account for their longevity
despite wars and political upheavals
as well as for their demise: The
Roman emperor Theodosius I, a
Christian, put an end to the
‘pagan’ games in A.D. 393.
“Most important, the ancients
didn’t have to deal with the question
of ‘amateur’ status,” Romano says.
“The Greeks did not even have a
word for ‘amateur,’ only a word for
‘athlete’, meaning ‘one who com-
petes for a prize.””’
The prizes at the four Panhellenic
(‘‘all-Greek’’) games were only
wreaths - an olive crown at Olym-
pia, laurel at Delphi, pine at Isth-
mia and parsley at Nemea. “But
when the athletes got home from
these ‘vegetable games,”” Romano
says, “they often became rich and
famous. Some received subsidies,
pensions or free meals for life from
their home cities or wealthy patrons
and politicians.”
In short, Romano says, ‘‘the ideal-
istic image of an ‘amatuer,’ which
our modern athletes are told to
emulate, did not exist in ancient
Greece.”
That we know so much about
games originating nearly 3,000
years ago is a tribute to the work of
classical historians and archaeolo-
gists. “Think of a civilization thou-
sands of years from now,” Romano
suggests, “trying to reconstruct our
modern game of baseball from the
excavations of a few stadia around
the country where Baseball, amont
other sports, was played. Add a few
fragmentary newspaper clippings
mentioning a player’s batting aver-
age and salary and you have an
idea of the dimensions of the prol-
bem.”
Athletic facilities stadia and
dromoi (racecourses), for example -
and the religious temples and sanc-
fuaries associated with them are
known from excavations of the Pan-
hellenic sites, beginning with Olym-
pic sjfrom 1875 to 1881 and conclud-
ing in the past decade with Nemea,
the last Panhellenic site established
in antiquity. Numerous festivals of
lesser importance were held all
over the Greek world, and stadia
and dromoi have been excavated at
many of these sites; the process has
unearthed many small objects used
by the athletes - discuses, weights to
enhance performance in the long
oil and sweat.
The first games are recorded at
Olympica in 776 B.C, but ‘“‘that date
is suspect,” Romano says, ‘because
the Greek alphabet was introduced
about that time and earlier written
records may not have existed.”
Archaeological evidence indicates
that religious activities which may
have included athletic competitions
were taking place at Olympia as
early as 1000 B.C.
Each of the Panhellenic games
was dedicated to a god - Zeus at
Olympia and Nemea, Apollo at
Delphi and Poseidon at Isthmia.
The Greeks believed that the gods
bestowed on the athletes and physi-
cal prowess that enabled them to
take part in the games. “Each
athlete made an individual offering
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to the god in whose honor the games
were held,” Romano explains. ‘“Vic-
tory was the ultimate expression of
honor.” In fact, victory was all that
mattered. No prizes were given at
the “Big Four” games for second
and third places.
Very little remains of the early
stadia at the Panhellenic sites, but,
at each site, the stadium was
undoubtedly a religious structure
located near the sanctuary. ‘‘Fifth-
century B.C. stadia excavated at
Olympia and Isthmia give us a good
idea of what a classical stadium
looked like,” Romano says. The
running area was 600 “feet” or a
‘“stadion”” in length, although the
length of the ancient “foot,” varied
greatly from place to place and
from century to century.
Spectator comfort was not on the
stadium builder’s mind. ‘‘Early
stadia provided seats only for the
judges and a few VIPs,” Romano
says. The rest of the crowd - 25,000
people or more --either sat or more
probably stood on the gradually
sloping earth embankments sur-
rounding the running area. The
word stadium, in fact, is probably
derived from the Greek verb ‘to
stand.”
In the fourth century B.C., there
was a trend to move stadia out of
the sanctuary to a nearby location
to provide more spectator room.
About this time, some stadia were
built with seats. Others, such as the
one at Nemea, also had vaulted
entrances providing the athletes
with direct access to the atadium
from the sanctuary - ‘‘and a place
to carve graffiti,” says Romano,
who directed the stadium excava-
tion at Nemea for three years.
From such inscriptions on vaults,
tombstones, statues and monu-
ments, scholars have pieced
together achievements of individual
athletes, lists of citors, even the
costs of running events. Another
rich source of information comes
from vase paintings, primarily from
the sixth and fifth centuries B.C.,
depicting various athletic contests.
The illustrations are not always
technically correct, however, since
the artists seem to have been more
interested in aesthetics than accu-
racy.
“But they weren’t far off in their
depictions of physique,” says Dr.
Lawrence Angel, a physical anthro-
pologist at the Smithsonian’s
National Museum of Natural Histiry
oin Washington, D.C., who has stu-
died ancient Greek skeletons. “‘In
general, the skeletons do fit the
figures of the paintings and sculp-
ture - stocky, muscular, fairly long
trucks, widish shoulders and hips.
This is the stuff of which basic
effective athletes can be created.”
And created they were, through
vigorous training that began in boy-
hood. For many years, only the sons
of the wealthy could afford the time
and expense of training, but eventu-
ally athletes acquired patrons, and
the games became more demo-
cratic.
Still, only male citizens of Greece
with its far-flung colonies were
allowed to compete at Olympia, and
only males - and unmarried women
- were permitted to attend the
events as spectators. Women had
their own festival, dedcicated to the
goddess Hera, but woe to any mar-
ried woman caught breaking the all-
male rule: She was to be tossed off
a nearby mountain.
Like today’s athletes, ancient
olympians tended to specialize in a
single event. For the first 52 years
at Olympia, the sole event was the
stadion race, which continued to be
the most prestigious even after
other events were added. Eventu-
ally, athletes, competed in wres-
tling, boxing, the pankration (a
brutal, no-holds-barred combination
of wrestling and boxing), the pan-
tathlon (discus, javelin, long jump,
foot race and wrestling) and a race
in armor:
Contrary to popular belief, the
marathon and the torch race of the
modern Olympics were not part of
the ancient games. ‘There were
torch races in antiquity associated
with religious festivals,” Romano
says, ‘but not at olympia.”
In contract to the original Olym-
pics, the 1984 Olympics in Long
Angeles, despite the Soviet-led boy-
cott, is expected to attract thou-
sands of athletes from dozens of
nations, competing in 21 events and
two demonstration sports. Some
700,000 spectators will see the $500
million games, and 4,000 officials
will be on hand to decide the vitors.
An Olympic Arts Festival will fea-
ture an international array of 75
performing arts events and 20 exhi-
bitions. Television via satellite will
bring the games to an estimated 2.5
Earth’s population. The spectacle
would be Greek to the ancients.
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‘By CHARLOT M. DENMON
Staff Correspondent
Most boys and girls’ in Back
Mountain Baseball and the Back
Mountain Elementary Wrestling
Club were familiar with the late
Betsy Snyder.
Not all of them knew Betsy by
name, but they were used to
seeing her working in the stand
at a game, working in the
kitchen at the Dallas High School
during one of the wrestling club’s
tournaments or coaching one of
the Division I Girls’ Softball
teams.
The many volunteers working
with the Back Mountain Baseball
Inc. realized only too well the
amount of time Betsy gave to
that organization and this year,
to perpetuate her memory, the
association dedicated its season
to the memory of Betsy Snyder.
Betsy, the former Betsy Johns,
was married to George Snyder.
They were the parents of three
girls: Betsy Ann, Kerri, Cathy,
and one boy, Christian, age 9.
Betsy was only 37 years old when
she died following surgery last
February, but spent at least 10 of
those 37 years giving her all for
the benefit of young boys and
girls.
In baseball, she coached, man-
aged and kept score for Division
I girls’ softball.: She worked in
the food stand, kept records,
transported children to and from
games and pitched in wherever
needed:
She was active in Back Moun-
tain Elementary Wrestling from
the time it was organized, assist-
ing with dual meets, working at
tournaments and taking charge
of the food concession.
Officials of the Back Mountain
Baseball Association discussed
various ways of honoring Betsy’s
memory. After discussing the
: Season dedicated
subject with her husband,
George, and her daughters, it
was decided that an award would
be given at the end of the season
to the 12-year-old girl selected as
the Division I ‘“‘Outstanding
Sportsman.’ The members of the
seven teams in Division I will
vote for the girl they believe
deserves the award and from
these names, the managers of
each of the seven teams will
select the girl they believe most
deserving. In the event of a tie,
William Gabel, chairman of the
committee, will select the recipi-
ent.
The award will be presented at
the end of the season picnic,
which will be for all boys and
girls in the Back Mountain Base-
ball Association. Both Betsy’s
family and the league officials
believe that nothing could please
her more.
It is hoped that the award will
become an annual event to per-
petuate Betsy Johns Snyder’s
decicated service to youth of the
Back Mountain.
Tennis players
Coach Bill Eydler of the King’s
College tennis team proudly refers
to it as King’s ‘Back Mountain
Connection.”
He points to the presence on his
15-7 team of brothers Bill and Jay
Downs, and of Jerry Ross, all Back
Mountain residents who arebig fac-
tors in the success of the net Mon-
archs. Eydler keeps close tabs on
players from this area!
Jerry Roos, son of Mr. and Mrs.
Benjamin Ross of 96 Ridge St,
Shavertown, has a lot going for him
on the tennis circuit. A graduate of
Dallas High School, Jerry was
coached by Mr. Thomas Kilduff at
the time. ‘He helped me more
mentally in my game,” commented
Jerry of Kilduff.
Presently a psychology and mar-
keting major at King’s, Jerry gives
tennis lessons at Kirby Park. When
asked about King’s tennis program,
he stated, “I think Coach Eydler is
improving the program. He puts a
lot of extra effort into it and it’s
starting to show.
“I think we’ll do very well next
good recruits and only losing one
graduate.” )
Career-wise, Jerry is interested in
¢
to continue as a tennis instructor.
“King’s College has a very good
program and Coach Eydler is doing
a good job to make it even better,”
was Jay Downs’ comment when
asked about the King’s College
tennis program.
Jay Downs, son of Mr. and Mrs.
William Downs of RD 4, Box 213,
Dallas, attended Lake-Lehman High
School, coached by Joseph Martini.
Off a year due to a leg injury, Jay
has a confident outlook for next
year.
“Next year’s program should be
better than this past year’s since
only one person graduated,” he
explained. ‘I want to keep playing
tennis and having fun around the
valley in tournaments.’
The computer science major |
hopes to pursue an engineering
career.
Brother Bill Downs was King’s
captain as a junior and was half of
the doubles tandem which made the
MAC tourney finals this year. Also a
Lake-Lehman grad, he played under
Coach Joe Martini. : :
“Our level of players in college is
much higher and it makes you work
all the harder to improve your
game,’ said the team captain. :
“With the addition of Ned Feath-
erstone from Coughlin, we should
have a fine season,” said the busi-
ness administration--marketing
major.
The U.S. has more tennis players,
and more world-class professionals,
than any country in the world. The
United States ‘Tennis Association,
the governing body of tennis in the
U.S., believes that expert coaches
and teaching pros are the key to
this success. As a measure of its
commitment to keep those working
in the industry at the peak of their
fi
f
I
the 1984 National Tennis Teachers
Conference at the Roosevelt Hotel in
New York City, August 29, 30, 31.
Now in its 14th year, this convoca-
tion of outstanding tennis leaders
has received national and world-
wide acclaim for preparing coaches
to face the ever-increasing pressure
to develop players with superior
skills and winning attitudes.