The athletes who competed in these events most likely were well-to-do Greeks who could afford to train instead of having to work for a living.
“If you wanted to compete in the Olympics, you had to show up at least a month early to train under the watch of the officials, who presumably would weed out anybody who wasn’t up to the level of competition,” Lunt says. The Greeks didn’t have team sports, only individual competitions, and they didn’t allow women to compete in events—or even, in the case of married women, to attend the games. Disclaimer: Mankind’s earliest sports grew out of survival skills. Wrestling is considered one of the very first, with depictions found in the Lascaux cave paintings in France dating back over 15,000 years. Running also has prehistoric roots, since speed was crucial for both hunting and escaping danger; by around 3,000 BCE, footraces were already being held in Egypt and Mesopotamia, and the very first Olympic event in Greece in 776 BCE was a sprint known as the stadion.
