A Victorious Corpse
As seen above, a horse race was once won by a dead jockey. It was not the first time in the history of sport that a corpse won a competition. Thousands of years earlier, when Arrhichion of Phigalia was locked in a chokehold in the 564 BC Olympic Games’ pankration title bout, things seemed hopeless. However, the two-time returning champion had a few tricks up his sleeve. He feigned a loss of consciousness, which got his opponent to relax a bit. When his opponent eased off, the wily title holder snapped back into action. With a convulsive heave, he shook and threw off his opponent, and snapped his ankle in the process.
The sudden and excruciating pain of the snapped ankle made Arrhichion’s opponent do the ancient Greeks’ equivalent of a tap out, and he made the sign of submission to the referees. However, when he threw off his opponent while the latter still had him in a chokehold, Arrhichion’s neck was broken. Since his opponent had already quit, the dead Arrhichion’s was declared the winner. It was perhaps the only time in Olympics history that a corpse was crowned a victor. The three-times pankration champion thus added a wrinkle to the athletic ideal of “victory or death” by gaining victory and death.
