Abstract
Why do we throw the discus in the modern Olympics? Because the Greeks did. Not just the ancient Greeks, for whom the discus was one of the five events of the pentathlon from the time that it entered the Olympic programme (traditionally dated to 708 BCE). We owe the discus to the modern Greeks as well. It was not originally planned to be part of Pierre de Coubertin’s games at Athens in 1896. But the discus had figured in the earlier Olympic revivals at Athens in 1859 and 1870. Since it was virtually unknown elsewhere, the event looked likely to produce a local champion, and the prospect of victory, then as now, was a powerful incentive for expanding the programme.
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© 2012 Mark Golden
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Golden, M. (2012). The Ancient Olympics and the Modern: Mirror and Mirage. In: Lenskyj, H.J., Wagg, S. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Olympic Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230367463_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230367463_2
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