Every red-blooded Englishman has believed that exercise in the open air is the finest prophylactic against popery, adultery and the fine arts. Baron de Coubertin, who dreamt up the modern Olympic Games, took a different view. He admired the spirit of games on the playing fields of Eton and thought that they might provide a model for games of the sort he imagined the ancient Greeks enjoyed at Olympia: competitive but amateur, fair, wholesome, played for the sake of it and also, he hoped, acting as a stimulus to world peace. Up to a point, Lord Copper.
The Olympic Games, founded in 776 bc, celebrated Zeus, god of Mount Olympus, at his sacred site, Olympia (the actual mountain is more than 160 miles away). The first foot-race in European literature, part of some funeral games, gives an idea of what to expect.
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