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VICTORY
The first written history of the results from the Olympic Games is only about the winners. When Hippias of Elis started to write the history of the Games in the end the 5th century BC there was only one event, a single foot race. The first athlete ever to win an Olympic race was a young cook from Elis, named Koroibus who received a wreath of wild olive leaves as his prize.
The winner
took it all….
To win an event at the Olympics was the greatest honour a man could achieve. In the ancient Olympics each competitor represented a Greek City State, The symbol of victory was a wreath of olive branches but when the winner returned home it was to a hero’s welcome and was bestowed with great honours.
The citizens did not welcom the winner at the gate
as other important personalities, instead the citizens
pulled down a section of the city’s walls so he
could pass through in his chariot. Inside the walls
there was a parade and the citizens were giving
the winner gifts and money.
The goddess
of victory
In the Temple of Zeus in Olympia, the home of the ancient Games, Nike, the goddess of Victory, stood in the palm of a 13-metre tall gold and ivory statue of Zeus. In Olympus Nike sat on the side of Zeus and was often seen with Athena, who does not tolerate defeat.
Nike has always been a symbol of the Olympic Games. In the Olympia museum you can find a marble statue of Goddess Nike, by Paionios about 420 BC, which in the ancient times was standing on a high column outside the Temple of Zeus at Olympia . On the world's earliest sports stamps issued by Greece in connection with first modern Olympic Games held in 1896 Nike was first depicted
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