Mindful BMX

This introduction will contain a brief outline considering BMX and the original Olympics, not the current Olympics. Still, by the end, you will hopefully be able to impart some wisdom from Homer (not Simpson) to your friends. 

Creatures of a day! 

What is someone? What is no one? 

A dream of a shadow is a man. 

This poetry, almost philosophical in its quality, is the ancient Greek athlete’s victory hymn. Imagine if Logan Martin or Charlotte Worthington stood up and said this as they received their Olympic gold medals. How would you feel? Do you expect your sporting heroes to stand up and reveal they are closet academics? Do we feel that philosophical inquiry has no place for sport and that sport has no position in philosophical investigations? The Greeks did not feel so, and neither should you. 

When we think of the accomplishments of ancient Greece, we think of philosophy, democracy, and the Olympic games. If you ponder these three ideas, you can see they are all interlinked. They are considered disparate groups, possibly linking philosophy and democracy together but missing the link to sports. The Olympics was the precursor to philosophy and democracy by arriving on the scene hundreds of years before the other two. 

In a democracy, we want good governance; in philosophy, we want to find the truth; and in sport, we want to see a virtuous performance. We will see that sport led to a questioning of existing social hierarchies, leading to Athenian democracy. 

Onwards to a level playing field 

In the Iliad and Odyssey, Homer gives us some of the earliest accounts of sport. Within them, we can see ideas that still run through modern sports and some that seem contradictory to the true notion of virtuous performance. While writing about his current era in time, Homer also links back to previous civilisation’s ideas of sports, particularly how sports helped show a leader’s worthiness. 

Early sporting greats were seen as heroes. In the ancient definition of heroes, they were part god, part mortal. Hercules was the son of Zeus and was born to a mortal woman, Alcmene. The Pharaohs were the children of gods. You can see this through the divine right of kings and queens, even in modern times. We also still refer to athletes as gods or heroes, and through this, we can see how early civilisations would have felt athletic feats were divine and attached to their rulers. 

Ancient rulers even used this notion to prove they had the divine right to rule. They may have fixed the odds in their favour to live up to expectations. They were showing that the current fascination with PEDs was always around. People will always use to try and elevate themselves above the rest of humanity. Pharaohs would run around posts placed 55 metres apart to prove they were worthy. It may seem unbelievable that an uncontested sprint would prove your athletic prowess, but combined with ancient propaganda, it worked, at least until Homer arrived on the scene. 

Agamemnon’s javelin 

In the Iliad, in book 23, Homer brings us sport. There is a set of games to commemorate Patroclos, during which King Agamemnon wins the javelin event without even picking a javelin up. As king, he is superior to everyone else. It is just a foregone conclusion that he would win. Homer starts questioning whether Agamemnon is worthy enough to lead his people. How can he be worthy of leading if he does not step up to a simple challenge? 

In the Iliad, Homer points out that kings must now prove their value. In philosophical terminology, they have to prove their arête. The kings must restore their honour as their traditional hierarchies have been disturbed. The only way to regain their honour is for them to have merited its restoration. 

In the Iliad, we can see many links between ancient sports and BMX. No one is forced to compete, there is a set course, everyone knows the rules (that might be a bit of a stretch), there are prizes for the victorious, and there are commissaries to judge on fair play and the winners. 

There are also differences in that you can only compete if you are from society’s elite, and prizes might not be handed out in the correct order. Gods and goddesses can change the rules and hinder or help participants. 

The overriding goal, though, is competition. Homer brought us the competitive spirit. You can show that you are the best in a public forum. You now have to offer your athletic virtue in front of the masses. Your arête is now not predisposed based on your family’s position in society, and you have to earn it. 

Sport is an Odyssey 

Homer has laid the groundwork for sport in the Iliad, and in the Odyssey, he brings it home, literally. In the Iliad, we have questions about who will win. We are on the edge of our seats. In the Odyssey, we have Odysseus’ decade-long return home from the Trojan War. 

On his way home, Odysseus has to perform many athletic feats to prove his arête and why he is a worthy leader. We have Odysseus and Telamonian Ajax retrieving Achilles’ body, and both claim to be the bravest Greek. A vote resolves this dispute, Odysseus wins, and Ajax is driven mad and ultimately kills himself. His honour was severely damaged. 

Whilst sailing back to Ithaca, he angers Helios by hunting his sacred cattle. Helios tells Zeus if Odysseus is not punished, he will take the sun to the underworld. Zeus, therefore, creates a storm, and Odysseus is shipwrecked. All his men drown, but he washes up on Ogygia, where he remains a prisoner of Calypso for seven years. Escaping with help from Hermes, he again is shipwrecked. This time, he is saved by the Phaeacians, and for them to help him, he has to perform athletic feats to prove he has arête. After being successful, they take him back to Ithaca. 

Once in Ithaca, he is in disguise, and no one can recognise him except one woman, who is sworn to secrecy. To regain his marriage to Penelope, he has to participate in an archery contest. None of her other suitors can string the bow of Apollo, never mind fire it. Odysseus does string it and fires an arrow through 12 axe shafts. In what may be the first recorded account of being a terrible winner, he slaughters all his opponents. You should probably not do this at the end of any BMX jam. 

Sport is then being used to back Odysseus’ claim to be king. In this way, Homer reinforces the old patterns that a worthy ruler will be an excellent athlete. We now need the Olympic Games to step forward and break this connection between society’s elite and sporting excellence. 

Olympia 

Before Olympia became the seat of the Olympic Games, it was a religious site that honoured all the gods of Greece. Similar to Homer’s Iliad in that the diverse religions come together in one place, like the various tribes of Greece came together in one war. Although this sanctuary of the gods brought everyone together, it did have its issues. 

When the tribes came together, their social hierarchies meant that those at the top were given due place in meetings. How do you do this in a religious sanctuary? Which gods are higher, and which sacrifice is better? Who gets to start the religious ceremonies? You could not just pick a king. The choice had to please everyone and the gods; they had to be worthy. If they were not worthy, what would happen to harvests? What would happen to the weather? This is why the first event at Olympia was a foot race where the winner was rewarded by lighting the sacrificial flame. The winner was dressed with an olive wreath, palm branch, and ribbons that used to be worn by the sacrificial animals. 

Hot-footing to victory 

The question then is, did the victor of the race win because they were the best or because the gods favoured them over the other participants? Therefore, the winner was associated with athletic and divine virtue, much like the kings and queens of old. By doing this, the old social hierarchies were struck down, as a privileged upbringing did not necessarily bring you victory in this athletic challenge. 

The ancient Olympics spanned a period of a thousand years. Without the games being open, truthful, and open to the true spirit of athleticism, they could not have expected to last so long. Everyone could see who the winner was. The leaves of philosophy were sprouting out of Greece at this time. You had to be able to evidence your beliefs and show them transparently to the world. Both philosophy and sport could have winners if they showed their true selves on a field or through discourse. 

As such, sports at Olympia could never be judged subjectively; they could only be judged objectively. You could have raced BMX at Olympia, but we could not yet have freestyle BMX. The Greeks invented a starting gate to avoid people cheating off the line. Could this be the ancestor of the modern BMX gate? Cheating was considered an insult to the gods, and harsh retribution was levied against those caught cheating. The UCI could learn something from the fines set against the cheaters. 

To democracy 

The games had to be fair; it was about pleasing the gods. Not being fair could bring a travesty to everyone. The winners had to be worthy; they could no longer win like Agamemnon. They had to prove their worth before the pantheon of gods. The people watching had to feel that the results were the correct results, the results they saw before their own eyes. We can see this leading to the questioning of social hierarchies. Kings might no longer win now; a fishmonger won one year. 

The fishmonger’s victory raises questions about everyone’s place in society. As we saw earlier, society’s elite often used athleticism to show their superiority, even though they hobbled the competition. The competition was free, and the nobility was no longer as victorious as they used to be. If you did not inherit the ability to be a champion, why do you inherit the ability to rule? This questioning leads to democracy. Sport was asking philosophical questions that point the way toward a democratic society. 

As winning the games carried favour with the gods, cities started to look past their elite echelons for worthy athletes that could champion in their name. The social hierarchies began to break down. We also started to find the story of the underdog; these stories carried as much favour in ancient Greece as they do now. As such, the first official Olympic champion was not from the upper echelons but was listed as a cook. 

We might not know much about all the victors of the Olympics, but the fact that we know there were a few underdog victories shows us that sport was a great democratiser, even before we knew what democracy was. 

Athens 

It took two centuries for this spirit to reach Athens and for Athens to become the poster child for democracy. Although in both Athens and the Olympics, there were rules to how democratic they were. You couldn’t be a woman, an enslaved person or a foreigner to participate, but everything must start somewhere. 

When competing at the Olympics, all athletes were considered equal. The rules stated this, and they all followed the rules. The rules can be seen as being laws. We have the start of a democracy or dēmokratía (rule of the people). In a democracy, we are all equal under the law, and the law is the ultimate ruler of society. We should be willing to place ourselves under the rule of law in both sport and society.