|
|
|
Golf Fitness Equipment For Your In-Home Program
Golf fitness equipment can be a variety of pieces; but what truly is golf fitness equipment?
You’d be surprised to find out it is not expensive; and is not necessarily in a gym or health club either.
Yes…there are golf “machines” for...
History of kitesurfing
KiteSurfing is by far the latest craze in extreme sports. The idea of using a kite to enhance speed and gravity for the surfer seems like a new and exhilarating challenge, yet the art of KiteSurfing dates back to the 13th Century Chinese when it...
Never go diving without a magnetic compass
A magnetic compass is an indispensable device which divers should always carry and be able to consult while they dive. The compass might make the difference for a lost diver allowing him to find the shore, which he couldn't do without it. Having a...
scuba diving computers take the stress out of diving
Today, scuba diving computers do everything from calculating, and audibly prompting decompression stops to monitoring oxygen consumption in real-time. This really takes the stress out of scuba diving.
A computer calculates your no...
Study: Exercise prevents back pain
John Briley, a long time proponet of exercise to improve health, and well known writer for the Washington Post, recaps the results of a recent study that indicates that exercise helps alleviate back pain as well psychological stress.
The article...
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
Ancient Olympians Were Really In It for the Money
(ARA) - The athletes will be feeling a lot of nostalgia when the 2004 Olympic Games get underway next August. For the first time in nearly 100 years, the games are returning to their place of origin: Athens, Greece.
Today’s Olympic games are all about the heat of competition. Athletes from around the world will compete against each other to prove they are the best at what they do. The winners will take home medals and pride of country.
“A lot of people think that’s what the ancient Greeks competed for too, but they’re wrong. Ancient athletes were in it for the money,” says William Blake Tyrrell, a professor of classics at Michigan State University. Tyrrell has done extensive research on Greek athletics from the period stretching from Homeric times through the 4th century B.C. His findings are published in the new book, “The Smell of Sweat.”
The 350-page book covers the events themselves, the religious and athletic centers, the festivals in which the games took place, the voices of the games’ celebrators, the critics and the athletes themselves.
“In this book, you’ll learn that Greek athletics was a cut-throat business, engaged for victory and victory alone without even a glimmer of the modern Olympic notion of competing for its own sake and doing one's best,” says Tyrrell. “In ancient Greece, if one's best was not the best, then it was nothing. To miss by an inch was as disgraceful as to miss by a mile.”
Tyrrell focuses on the bias in earlier treatments of Greek athletics and the “myth of Greek amateurism” in the book’s introduction. Chapters one through six examine evidence from Homeric times to the Golden Age of Athens.
The text moves from discussion about the virtue of the warrior as a model for the athlete to the role religion played in the games and the development of Olympia as an early Panhellenic center. In the early days of the Games, “heavy events,” such as wrestling, boxing and pankration -- a no-holds barred fight considered the ultimate combat sport -- were the competitions held in the highest regard. Later on, games of skill such as the pentathalon, jump, discus and javelin took on more importance.
“Athletics was a mediated battle that replaced the individual glory that once was the warrior’s, the glory that Greeks had heard of all their lives from epic poets, but could not achieve,” says Tyrrell.
“The Smell of Sweat” is accompanied by an extensive bibliography and companion CD-ROM of sources, translated into English. It is good reading for students of Greek athletics and culture, and available on Amazon.com and in major book stores. Orders can also be placed directly with Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers by logging onto www.bolchazy.com.
Courtesy of ARA Content
About the author:
Courtesy of ARA Content
|
|
|
|
|
|