Ancient Olympic athletes competed naked.

Arts & Culture

M any aspects of the ancient Olympics are similar to what we see in our modern competition, but there's at least one notable difference: Today, all Olympians wear clothes. For ancient Greek athletes, nudity functioned as something of a national uniform, an intentional contrast to their Persian rivals, who traditionally found it against decorum to appear naked. Competing in the nude (often while covered in olive oil) was also seen as a way to show off status. According to historian Donald Kyle, "In Archaic Greece, disrobing fully to become naked for sport became an assertive communication of maleness, ethnicity, status, freedom, privilege, and physical virtue." Some athletes also considered performing naked a tribute to Zeus. In fact, the words "gymnasium" and "gymnastics" both come from the Greek word "gymnasion," which refers to a place to train or exercise naked.

While competing naked became a Greek tradition, it wasn't always that way; some ancient vases from the Minoan period (which ended around 1200 BCE) depict Athenian athletes competing in loincloths. According to accounts by various scholars, the first naked competitor appeared in the 15th Olympiad in 720 BCE. Orsippus of Megara was said to have lost his loincloth during a race, and then ran on to victory. An epitaph of Orsippus, attributed to the poet Simonides of Ceos, reads, "First of the Greeks in Olympia was he crowned while naked; Before him, all contestants were girdled in the stadium." In the modern Olympics, things have changed a little bit, and now competitors wear clothing — though on rare occasions, some modern runners will still go without shoes.

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By the Numbers

Year the first documented ancient Olympics were held

776 BCE

Approximate length (in meters) of the first race won by a nude Olympian

185

Estimated participants in Portland, Oregon's largest annual Naked Bike Ride

10,000

Year the first (fully clothed) modern Olympics took place in Athens, Greece

1896

Did you know?

The prize for winning the first documented Olympics was an apple.

While the modern Olympic Games play host to an excess of 30 sports and well over 300 events, the very first competition in 776 BCE had only one event: a 630-foot race called the "stade," won by a cook named Coroebus of Elis. (The name "stadium" derives from the stade, which was also a standard unit of measurement in ancient Greece.) Instead of a gold medal, Coroebus was awarded an apple. The apple was a sacred symbol in several Greek legends, including the legend of Atalanta and Melanion, in which Atalanta promises her hand in marriage to whomever is able to beat her in a race. Her competitor, Melanion, receives apples from the goddess Aphrodite, and throws them at Atalanta to slow her down. Beginning in the seventh Olympiad, victors were given olive wreaths instead, in a tradition that continued until the event's discontinuation in 393 CE. Gold medals as we know them did not become the standard first-place prize until the 1904 Olympics in St. Louis.