The History of the pentathlon
The history of the pentathlon stems from the complete physical training of the Greeks. The pentathlete was the product of training in five events, unlike those athletes who were trained in specialized areas. It began as an athletic competition to determine the best all-around athlete. The pentathlon was introduced into the Olympic Games around 708 B.C. Each pentathlete was superior in strength and activity, which was the ideal physical beauty. The ideal pentathlete should be tall, well built, long legs, flexible hips, and preferably with long hands and fingers.
In the ancient pentathlon, not only were women excluded from participating in the events, but they were also not allowed to watch the events, unless they were unmarried. All married women were banned from the games under the penalty of death.
The ancient pentathlon was composed of two types of events. The light events, which were jumping, running, and the javelin, were the first type. The second type of events were the heavy events, which werethe diskos and wrestling. There is a controversy surrounding the order of events in the ancient pentathlon, but from ancient texts, it is known that wrestling was last.
As legend has it, the modern pentathlon is based on the feats of a soldier messenger during his journey to deliver his general's orders. Supposedly, his horse was killed behind enemy lines and the soldier had to fight his way through first with a sword, then with a pistol before swimming across a river, and finally running four hundred meters through the woods to his destination. It was a test of speed, stamina, skill, and steadiness under pressure.
The pentathlon's reintroduction w...
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...rder to even out each horse's ability in the event. This makes the event a test of the athlete's skill, because each athlete studies the course beforehand and creates his/her own plan of approaching jumps and taking turns. The main concern of each competitor is keeping control of the horse.
Modern Running
The modern running event is the last event of the modern Olympic pentathlon. This event is a cross-country race of 4,000 meters. The starting position of each competitor was a staggered one based on their rank in the pentathlon competition. They start from a couching position toward the ground unlike that of the Greeks who started from a standing position. The starting time of each competitor was based on how many points he/she is behind the leader. The leader of the event starts first. The first to cross the line wins the individual gold medal.
Since 776 BCE, the Olympics have been a way for people of different cultures to come together and compete in friendly competition. In 1892 the first modern Olympics were held in Athens, although it had been over a thousand years since the last game it still had brought together an assortment of different religions and ethnic groups together. Many factors shaping the Olympic Games reflect the changes that have taken place in our world since the last game in 393 CE in Greece such changes include woman’s suffrage, global economy, world wars, and proving competency.
The Penn Museum. "The Real Story of the Ancient Olympic Games | Introduction." Penn Museum - Penn Museum. Penn Museum. Web. 21 Mar. 2011. .
Pericles’ statement, “A woman’s reputation is highest when men say little about her, whether it be good or evil,” reflects a common attitude towards women’s activities in ancient Greek society. Ancient Greece fostered a demeaning role for women restricting their level of education, choice in marriage, and enforcing strict social norms. However, persuading shreds of evidence suggest that some Greek females did participate in athletic competitions alongside men, primarily at religious ceremonies as they advanced toward maturity. Women’s participation in sports is a somewhat recent social phenomenon, and acceptance of that participation by cultures worldwide is an even more recent phenomenon.
Track and field during the victorian era was very similar to present day with many of the same events.Track and field's line of events is from ancient athletic festivals in Greece and the British Isles. Both the original Olympics in ancient Greece and the Celtic Tailteann Games date back to around the ninth century BCE. These games played host to the best athletes throughout the world, who competed in running, jumping, and throwing events in addition to wrestling, archery, and the greeks had swimming.. Professional track and field had no regulation, with many athletes making a living by their skill and talent. There are multiple stories of sprinters who would travel from town to town in disguise, pretending that they had no talent in racing and then persuaded many local people to compete with them and sometimes spectators would place bets against them. Often the races would be handicapped events, meaning the locals were given a rough 5–10 yards' head start in a 100-yard dash. During this way the athletes were able to make a substantial living. Long distance races were also very common, often the races were promoted heavily for extra money. Though cheating happened frequently, the professional sport still had...
Track and field-style events are among the oldest of all sporting competitions, as running, jumping and throwing are natural and universal forms of human physical expression. The first recorded examples of organized track and field events at a sports festival are the Ancient Olympic Games. At the first Games in 776 BC in Olympia, Greece, and only one event was contested which was the stadion footrace. We have track athletes to distinguish who is the best athlete for the event in which they are competing in and the athletes can be distinguished from high school, college, and even countries. All tracks athletes come in different shape and sizes, but one thing they
This article is about Equine Eventing being classed as the most dangerous sport in the Olympics. Eventing consists of three stages, Dressage, Show Jumping, and Cross-Country and is often referred to as the triathlon of the equine world, with Cross-Country being the hardest, most gruelling and dangers of all.
When the Olympic Games first began in 776 B.C. in Athens, Greece, wrestling was the premiere event. It was considered the ultimate test of discipline and strength, in which the world would discover who the greatest warrior is. Wrestling exemplifies the motto of the Olympic Games: Citius, Altius, Fortius. Which means faster, higher, stronger.
People come from around the world come together to join in the olympic games, in ancient Greece they had many competitions such as “running, boxing, and wrestling” still showing today as popular sports (Document 2). In ancient Greece the winner received many prizes, and recognition for example, riches and valuable items similar to today. This proves that similar customs came from Greece and Rome, and derive from such cultures, and has paved a way for competition, and sports.Athletics were a huge contribution for American culture, and medicinal practices has an even higher
Modern Day Olympics are a huge tradition that sweeps the screens of televisions across the world. Competitors take the arena with uniforms that dawn their countries colors and designs that are meant to resemble their designated flag. For months the news is centered around the games; the preparation, the athletes, and of course the competition. Countries aren 't obsessed, they are inspired and full of pride seeing athletes from their country compete and show their incredible skill. This tradition dates back to ancient Greece where the games began. Tony Perrottet writes about the traditions of the ancient game in his book The Naked Olympics.
The first Olympic games started in 776 B.C, beginning with the Isthmos games, which were held every two years in Corinth (Cartledge 3). The four-year Olympics were in Delphi. The Olympics in Greece was only to worship Zeus, a Greek god. This started off as a five-day event in which the first day was a day for sacrifices to honor the different gods. At this time, there were only 3 sports that took place; running, boxing, and horse racing, although there were four types of racing on foot (Grolier 3). The only differences were the length in which athletes ran and what they wore to race. Boxing was a very violent sport that took place. Boxers usually fought until one of the participants had to admit that he was weak and could not fight any longer. Another type of boxing was with armor, usually more violent, and ended up with a bruised athlete (Lassila 4). Out of all sports, horse racing was the most watched and attracted sport to many viewers. Participants usually had two or four horses on chariots, depending how many laps they did (Lassila 2). The games went over 11 centuries until a roman emperor named Theodosius banned the Olympics (Cartledge 1).
The Pentathlon was the name for the five events in Greek gymnastics: running, jumping, wrestling, discus throwing, and javelin throwing which began with the 18th Olympiad. In the wrestling event, wrestlers were anointed with oil, dusted with powder, and forbidden to bite or gouge one another. Wrestling was looked upon as a weapon-free military exercise. Since there was no weapons wrestlers that competed used their weight and strength as an advantage especially since there were no weight categories. The Javelin was thrown in the same form back in ancient times as it is thrown today. The first recorded Olympic Games had one event, a race, called the stade which is a measure of the distance of the length of the track. By 724 B.C. a two-length race was added and by 700 B.C. there were longer distance races. By 720 B.C., men participated naked, except in the foot race in armor that weighed between fifty to sixty pounds. The outfit included a helmet, greaves, and a shield that helped young men build speed and stamina in preparation for war. The Pentathlon included three running events such as the Stade, the Diaulos, and the Dolichos. The Stade was a 200 yard foot race, was the first and only Olympic event for 13 Games. The dolichos was a variable length foot race averaging twenty stades or four thousand yards for the fifteenth Olympiad. The Diaulos was a four hundred yard foot race that was instituted for the next Olympic Games. The discus was considered by ancient Greeks, an event of rhythm, precision, and finesse of a competitor to throw the discus was as important as his strength. The discus was made of stone, iron, bronze, or lead, and was shaped like a flying saucer. The Sizes were different for the boys' division, since the boys were not expected to throw the same weighted discus as the men. The athletes who competed in the jump event used lead or stone jump weights called halteres shaped like telephone receivers to increase ...
Running may be one of the oldest and most developed sports out there. According to legend, the first marathon was run unintentionally in 490 B.C. by a Greek Soldier(James). The soldier ran twenty-five miles to Athens to announce battleground victory over the persians then dropped dead(James). In 1896 the marathon was included in the Olympic games, in Greece, for the first time(James). It was there that the first gold was won by a Greek runner with a time of two hours fifty-eight minutes and fifty seconds(James). The current world record for the fastest finish is two hours three minutes and fifty-nine seconds(James). Marathoning has turned into a world wide activity and every person who participates must endure intense training.
...ter swimming event was held, as was a 200-meter obstacle event and 200-meter team-swimming event. The 200-meter backstroke also made its debut. In 1904, the first breaststroke event was contested at a distance of 440 yards. There are a lot of events and tons of records that have been broke. A lot of Olympians have set future goals to stride for.
Ancient Olympics The ancient Olympics had some differences from the modern Games. There were fewer events, and only free men who spoke Greek could compete, instead of athletes from any country. Women where not allowed to even watch the games on penalty of death let alone play in them.. Also, the games were always held at Olympia in Greece instead of being moved around to different sites every time. But also they had some similarities to our modern Olympics, winning athletes were heroes who put their home towns on the map, and became financially sound for life. The conflict between the Olympic's ideals of sportsmanship and unity and the commercialism and political acts which accompany the Games where also present in ancient times. "Sotades at the ninety-ninth Festival was victorious in the long race and proclaimed a Cretan, as in fact he was. But at the next Festival he made himself an Ephesian, being bribed to do so by the Ephesian people. For this act he was banished by the Cretans."
Athletics were of immense importance to the Greeks. The first Olympic Games were made up of only foot races and later through the centuries expanded to include wrestling, javelin hurling, discus throwing, boxing, jumping, chariot racing, horse riding, the pankration and the pentathlon. The period of competition gradually expanded to five days and the festivals to one month. The foot races included four types of racing. The stadion was the oldest event in which runners sprinted for 192 meters or 1 strade. The 2-strade race was 384 meters and long distance running ranged from 1,344 to 4,608 meters (7-24 strades). Ancient Greece also had a 2-4 strade race by athletes in 50-60 pound...