4. The Early Olympics Had Only One Athletic Event
The modern Olympic Games are a mega global event – the mega global event – whose only close rival is perhaps soccer’s FIFA World Cup. In the most recent games, the 2020 (or 2021) Tokyo Olympics hosted more than 11,000 athletes from 205 nations, plus the International Olympic Committee’s Refugee Olympic Team. All of them were 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 that and the original Olympics is stark, to say the least.
The variance between the scope and scale of today’s Olympics and the original event would probably astonish and amaze ancient Greek participants and audiences. They simply could not have imagined 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.
