Compare the preparation and events of the Olympic games today with the Ancient Olympics.

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Compare the preparation and events of the Olympic games today with the Ancient Olympics.

In Ancient Greek times, the Olympics was a yearly event, which took the whole preceding year to prepare for. Today the Olympics take place every four years and we spend the 4 or 5 years leading up to it to prepare. The ancient Olympics lasted for 5 days but today the Olympics last 3 – 4 weeks.

We prepare today, by cleaning the whole country/ town it is going to take place in, by advertising the event and even building a new airport, as they have done in Athens for the Olympics, which will be happening in 2004. In the ancient Olympics the events were held in the same place each year so they didn’t need to put in as much effort as we do in modern day. However, courses did have to be dug and sand pits prepared, as well as general tidying up having to be done around the buildings and monuments.

For the Ancient Olympics all the competitors took up residence one month before the games at Elis and were under supervision from the Hellanodikai. They were trained hard and harshly and the correct criteria of the athletes were checked. They had to be fit, from the correct parentage and they had to be fairly rich. The athletes were put on strict diets and under strict supervision from the judges (Hellanodikai). They had this constantly for one month before the games began.  Nowadays, the competitors come from all over the world and train in their own hometowns until the events take place. They are usually on healthy diets and they have to train hard, but not usually as strict as it was in ancient times. Nowadays, the checks done on athletes are usually drug tests to check they haven’t been taking steroids.

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During the actual events of the Olympics in Ancient times, the athletes were naked. Today athletes wear the latest state of the art aerodynamic clothing to make them streamlined to give them the best performance in competitions. Another difference between the athletes is that in Ancient Olympics, only men could take part but today both men and women can compete, and there are different competitions for male and female competitors.

The running events of the ancient Olympics were similar in a way to modern Olympics. They had all different length races – some long distance and some ...

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