According to Miller, the race consisted of 12 laps around a hippodrome, or horse track, and then 12 times in the opposite direction. The actual length varied depending upon where the event was held. Chariot racing was an expensive sport to compete in.
The owners of the horses and chariots—who watched as drivers competed in their name—used the event to flaunt their wealth. Hippodromes didn’t have a divider in the center of the oval, head-on crashes between chariots and horse teams sometimes occurred, which made chariot racing an extremely dangerous sport. 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.
