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They're Still Running at Olympia
| Article
# : |
19992 |
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Section : |
LIFE
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| Issue
Date : |
8 / 1992 |
2,975 Words |
| Author
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Richard M. Key
Richard M. Key has retired from a career as a diplomat and
college teacher. He has worked in Argentina, Brazil, Poland,
and other nations. |
Winning the gold in an Olympic race! Every runner's ultimate fantasy--to stand on the peak of the trilevel winner's platform, watching his nation's flag raised high, hearing its anthem wash over the cheering thousands roaring approval of his championship performance.
My own graying head experienced that same ultimate thrill. Not as a modern Olympian, but under a scorching sun at the very sport where the Greeks held the original games--Olympia. Thousands of people from the Hellenic world once flocked there to honor Zeus with athletic games held at the site of Altis, his sacred grove. That tradition started back before the first recorded Olympiad in 776 B.C. We know that a fast young Greek named Koroibus sprinted to victory that year.
I made my way to fabled Olympia from an air-conditioned cruise ship that docked at the nearby port of Katakalon, a sleepy place on the Peloponnesian peninsula washed by the deep blue waters of the Ionian Sea. Four fitfully air-conditioned buses took a large group of mostly American passengers to the place that still attracts thousands of people from all corners of the world as they look for visible traces of the "glory that was Greece."
We lucked out with a great tour guide, a sturdily handsome Greek woman with an immense pride in the civilizing history of her country. She was wearing glaring white running shoes with broad red stripes. Some one immediately dubbed her Nike, and we all gratefully forgot her tongue-twisting real Greek name. She accepted the switch graciously. "So OK, today I am Nike, the goddess of victory." She smilingly warned us, in her not-so-sturdy English, that we were in the district of Elia, "named after Helios, the Greek god of the sun. You will see that this place always have the sun."
Was she ever right! Even though we were barely into June, Helios was sending down blistering heat, even at midmorning. She told us, too, about the frequent earthquakes there; the last tremor had hit only three days before. "But don't worry," she grinned, "the gods are not angry with you. They will protect us." As the buses moved away from the dock, she snapped out a word we'd hear over and over that day: "Hela!" (Let's go!)
Old And New
Olympia was only thirty-two kilometers away. Along our route, small Christian shrines had long replaced the pagan ones where our ancient predecessors on this pilgrimage
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