The ancient Olympic Games were primarily a part of a religious festival in honor of Zeus, the father of the Greek gods and goddesses. The festival and the games were held in Olympia, a rural sanctuary site in the western Peloponnesos. The Greeks that came to the Sanctuary of Zeus at Olympia shared the same religious beliefs and spoke the same language. The athletes were all male citizens of the city-states from every corner of the Greek world, coming from as far away as Iberia in the west and the Black Sea in the east.The sanctuary was named in antiquity after Mt. Olympos, the highest mountain in mainland Greece. In Greek mythology, Mt. Olympos was the home of the greatest of the Greek gods and goddesses.

The ancient Olympic Games began in the year 776 BC, when Koroibos, a cook from the nearby city of Elis, won the stadion race, a foot race 600 feet long.From 776 BC, the Games were held in Olympia every four years for almost 12 centuries.According to some literary traditions, this was the only athletic event of the games for the first 13 Olympic festivals or until 724 BC. Additional athletic events were gradually added until, by the 5th century BC, the religious festival consisted of a five-day program. The athletic events included Contrary evidence, both literary and archaeological, suggests that the games may have existed at Olympia much earlier than this date, perhaps as early as the 10th or 9th century BC.
The olympics did have women saddly they only were able to patiapate in one event.Along with the athletic contests held at ancient Olympia, there was a separate festival in honor of Hera (the wife of Zeus). This festival included foot races for unmarried girls. Although it is not known how old the festival was, it may have been almost as old as the festival for boys and men. Little is known about this festival other than what Pausanias, a 2nd century AD Greek traveler, tells us. He mentions it in his description of the Temple of Hera in the Sanctuary of Zeus, and says that it was organized and supervised by a committee of 16 women from the cities of Elis. The festival took place every four years, when a new peplos was woven and presented to Hera inside her temple. During the Hera festival, unmarried girls competed in three age groups in a foot race that was a single length of the racecourse (approximately five-sixths the length of the men's dromos, but held in the same stadion used for the men's and boys' contests). Girl victors in this foot race could dedicate images (probably paintings) in the altis to commemorate their victories, and they could take part in the sacrifice of the cows in honor of Hera.