SPORTS
The games were greatly expanded from a one-day festival of athletics and wrestling to, in 472 BC, five days with many events.
The order of the events is not precisely known, but the first day of the festival was devoted to sacrifices.
On the second day, the foot-race, the main event of the games, took place in the stadium, an oblong area enclosed by sloping banks of earth.
On other days, wrestling, boxing, and the pancratium, a combination of the two, were held.
In wrestling, the aim was to throw the opponent to the ground three times.
Boxing became more and more brutal; at first the pugilists wound straps of soft leather over their fingers as a means of deadening the blows, but in later times hard leather, sometimes weighted with metal, was used.
In the pancratium, the most rigorous of the sports, the contest continued until one or the other of the participants acknowledged defeat. Horse-racing, in which each entrant owned his horse, was confined to the wealthy but was nevertheless a popular attraction.After the horse-racing came the pentathlon, a series of five events: sprinting, long-jumping, javelin-hurling, discus-throwing, and wrestling.