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NATIONAL OLYMPIC COMMITTEE Sierra Leone

Olympic Education

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Your comments are welcome here.

  1. Dear Joseph, I am impressed by your efforts to spread Olympic Education. I am President of Tanzania Olympic Academy. And a graduate of the First IOA Master's Class, of the University of Peloponnese and the IOA. I have also lectured at the IOA on several occassions, so reading your work is impressive, however, I am sure if you could register for the IOA Master's class you will be more knowledgable on Olympic Matters, ancient modern, structures, commercial etc.
    I will be glad to share any information with you.
    Keep it up,
    Best wishes,
    Henry

    (Posted on 2012-03-31 12:19:00 by Henry Benny Tandau)

Joseph Nyande, Editor

NOC Secretary General

greece.mrdonn.org
en.wikipedia.org/
www.archaeology.org/
www.penn.museum/
www.perseus.tufts.edu/

ANCIENT OLYMPICS LINKS ...

www.bbc.co.uk/
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With the support of the Olympic Solidarity, we have established a computer pool that has internet facilities. In addition, we set up our website at http://nocsl.org. Our column for Olympic Education will be published every two weeks.

In this first edition, we will focus of the history of the Ancient Olympic Games.

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THE ORIGIN OF THE ANCIENT OLYMPIC GAMES

There are different versions of the Ancient Olympic Games, but almost all of them portray similar facts about how the games were held.

The Ancient Olympic Games Originated in Greece. They were held in the form of athletics competitions amongst the various states in Greece. Apart from athletics, the programs also included chariot racing and other combat events. For the Greek people, the organization of these games was a tradition and therefore it was enshrouded in a lot of myths and legends. Heracles was the son of the Zeus. According to some legends, it was Zeus and his son Heracles that were the progenitors the games. It was also further believed that Heracles was the one first pronounced the “Olympic Games” and even declared them to be held in every four years.

According to legend, after Heracles completed his twelve labours, he built an infrastructure used to host the athletic events, and he referred to it as an Olympic Stadium, in honor of his father Zeus. After he has completed this work, he walked in a straight line across the stadium taking 200 steps which mean in Greek as “STADION’, and a Latin word which means to “STAGE”.

As I initially stated, there are various accounts of the origin of Ancient Olympics that are associated with myths. The other was the belief that, the origin of the Games was associated with the Greek Concept which depicted truce during the time of hostilities.
According to this myth, the first and the most widely accepted date for the origin of the Ancient Olympic Games is 776BC. This was based on archaeological evidence that were found in the town of Olympia, through the accolades or winners of the footraces that were won from the year 776 BC.

According to history, the athletics program consisted of a pentathlon; which consisted of discus, Javelin throw, a footrace, wrestling and a jumping event. The other events were boxing, wrestling, and equestrian events. The first Olympics Champion was believed to have been Coroebus, who was a cook from Elis.