Original subtitles

Olympia, the celebrated ancient Greek sanctuary,

is known the world over as the birthplace of the Olympic Games.

For a thousand years,

major sporting events united the citizens of ancient Greece.

Athletes, the heroes of their day dazzled the stage with their exploits.

With the roar of the crowd,

each was trying to improve on his personal best to honor the gods.

In late antiquity, the Olympic Games were banned

and the devastated site hides its secrets.

In the past 200 years, however,

archaeologists have been able to uncover much of the sanctuary.

Today's technology offers new opportunities

to see the past in a more accurate way.

It's possible now to picture the wonders of Olympia

that had disappeared seemingly forever, like the statue of Zeus.

In the morning, when the temple doors were opened,

the sun came and lit up the statue.

Specialists in ancient sports can at last understand

the technical aspect of the competitions.

For the first time, a high-speed camera

is used to reveal the movements of the ancient athletes.

The Greeks didn't try to run as fast as possible,

they only wanted to win the race.

In ancient times, it was just winning that counted.

Large areas of Olympia still lie buried, such as the racecourse,

where the showpiece chariot races were held,

in which the drivers competed with teams as powerful as they were dangerous.

The world is still passionate about sporting competitions,

so let's revisit the days of the first Olympic Games.

For as far back as the most ancient of tales,

stories about Greece appear to include a series of never-ending conflicts.

For centuries, cities like Athens or Sparta

waged war to control new territories.

From a young age, the Greeks are taught how to defend their cities.

For this, they undergo harsh military training.

Yet there's a tradition that makes the armies

stop killing each other, at least for the duration of a truce,

to honor the gods.

Citizens are told to cease fighting for power

and to compete just for the glory.

This is the origin of ancient sports.

Competitions that are a mix of martial exercises and events,

with an even older history.

The first sporting events date back to Minoan Crete, 3,500 years ago.

In the palace, young people appear to challenge the bulls

with dangerous somersaults.

The origins of boxing are also said to have begun in this period.

The competitions held in public will influence the Greeks,

who will in turn invent new sports over the centuries to come.

Several Greek cities organized sports to celebrate their gods.

As in Athens, where games are held in honor of the goddess Athena,

or at Delphi in honor of Apollo.

However, the most prestigious games of all are those at Olympia.

All the cities of ancient Greece participate under the auspices of Zeus,

the most powerful of gods.

Every four years, special envoys travel the Greek world

to announce the long-awaited news,

the date the games are to be held at Olympia.

A month in advance, there's a truce so everyone can attend the games.

The athletes, citizens of all the city-states of Greece,

can come to train.

They come by land or sea from throughout the Mediterranean basin,

making for the western Peloponnese,

the peninsula just south of continental Greece.

Generations of athletes and their supporters

have traveled these hills and rivers of Greece.

They are anxious to reach their destination,

and to see the stadium at Olympia,

and to be part of the excitement of the games.

At the various crossroads, two days walk from Olympia,

judges wearing red togas lead the crowds towards the site.

Mount Kronos overlooking the valley, then, as today,

offered an unbeatable view over the Olympic landscape.

The site is flanked by two rivers and dotted with sacred trees.

The valley, which hosted the games throughout antiquity,

was covered over following a series of floods

and then largely forgotten.

Only 1,000 years later did archaeologists begin to rediscover it.

As they entered Olympia for the first time,

the participants would finally witness for themselves

the true magnificence of the sanctuary and its monuments.

A few ruins are all that remain of the original site.

However, this is what Olympia looked like at its height.

To the west were the buildings where the athletes could train.

To the east, the stadium and racecourse used for the games.

In the center was the holy area with its temples.

These alleys were uncovered by generations of archaeologists.

Amongst the first is Englishman Richard Chandler,

who in 1766 identified it as the Site of Olympia,

by using ancient texts

such as those of Traveller and geographer Pausanias.

Five decades later, a French team was the first to actually begin digging.

In 1828, France joined in the Greek Wars of Independence.

The expedition is not just for military purposes.

France decided to add a scientific element to its military expedition.

There were botanists, zoologists, geologists, and also architects,

and experts in sculpture that showed up in Greece in 1829.

Some of the team set to work in the heart of Olympia.

The first excavations were of just a tiny part of the site,

but the French uncovered the remains of a huge temple.

They believed it was the one dedicated to Zeus.

It was the sign they discovered the very heart of Olympia.

Germans led the excavations from 1875 onwards.

The archaeologists will unearth a majority of the sanctuary's monuments,

as well as the contours of the stadium.

As a result of these Herculean efforts,

Olympia will slowly re-emerge into the light.

To this day, archaeologists from several countries

are still searching the area.

There are fewer people working than in the old days,

but there are many locals now, who are experienced and well-trained.

The researchers and students are in charge.

In theory, the excavations are done the same way

as they were decades ago.

However, it's more precise, and greater care is taken now

when it comes to removing, documenting, and stripping away small amounts of Earth.

The excavations at Olympia have yet to uncover any living quarters

for the flood of visitors in ancient times.

Participants probably set up camp along the two rivers

that boarded the site.

Their waters provided drink and relief from the summer heat.

It was here, somewhere between the temples,

the animal enclosures and the buildings for the sportsmen,

that the Olympic Village may have stood.

In all likelihood,

an area resembling a campsite with people sleeping under the stars,

or for the better off in tents.

It's not known how many would attend,

but it's probably in the tens of thousands.

Taking part in the Olympic Games provided a fine spectacle,

not just in following the event, but also in observing Greeks

who had come from all over the Mediterranean

with their different accents, their different games, and food.

The competitors could train in several different locations,

including the gym, a large space bordered by a colonnade.

In ancient times, these corridors were roofed.

The athletes would go through their paces in the gym's courtyard.

The judges would watch the training sessions

and decide who was worthy of the honor of actually competing in the games.

Training sessions were open to the public,

who would enjoy betting on who had the best chance of winning.

The athletes would represent their native cities.

However, who were the men authorized to compete

in such a venerated sanctuary?

All the cities of the Greek world could take part,

so long as they were considered genuinely Greek and not barbarian.

In other words, from places ruled by Greek institutions

where they worshipped Greek gods and where they spoke Greek.

They had to prove their citizenship in front of a panel of judges.

They'd be accompanied by their fathers, brothers, or trainers,

to prove they were really citizens of Athens, Corinth, or Sparta.

Delegations would gather in the Bouleuterion

to watch their champions being presented and officially accredited.

It was situated next to the sacred enclosure

and was the council house of the Olympic Senate.

The athletes would take The Oath of Olympia

in front of the judges.

They would promise to obey the rules and not to cheat.

Once the games began, spectators would converge en masse

to watch the events in a huge public area, the stadium.

The Olympic Stadium was the most famous sporting site

of the ancient world,

Today, its shape has by and large retained its ancient form.

Yet it had been lost for more than 15 centuries.

In the 1930s, Germany decided to invest heavily

in digging up Olympia's buried sporting facilities.

Thousands of tons of earth are removed and carried away by rail.

The 192-meter-long stadium emerges from the sediment.

The athletes enter the stadium through this long corridor

with stone arches to the clamor of the crowd.

Spectators gather on the embankments that surround the stadium.

One thing the excavations revealed was just how basic everything was.

Apart from an area for the judges, the stadium had no other terracing.

The spectators therefore just crowded in together

on simple mounds of grass and earth.

The public is essentially male.

In some rare cases, young virgin girls and unmarried women

were granted access to Olympia.

Demeter, the goddess of fertility,

is represented in the stadium by her high priestess.

The athletes form up along the stone starting line.

The first event is an endurance race.

On the word go, the runners spring forward.

They'll cover a distance of 24 stadiums, about 4.5 kilometers.

A large number of painted pottery has been found at Olympia.

Depicted are the sportsmen and the events they practice,

all helpful evidence for the historians.

One of the traits of Greek pottery is that it's painted.

The scenes portrayed are of remarkable richness.

Greek pottery has often been described as a large picture book,

and the pictures were not something you would go to see in a museum

as we do today,

but would be part of everyday life for the Greeks.

Every aspect of daily living is depicted.

At home, these would be as common as sight as they were at the shrines

where they were offered to the gods,

and they would also be placed in the tombs of the dead.

However elaborate the pictures might be,

do they really give an accurate account of the sports at Olympia?

There is something very concrete, quite brilliant about Greek pottery,

which tempts us to spontaneously read and interpret the image.

However, it would be wrong, in fact, to take the images at face value

like a snapshot of a scene at Olympia.

The pictures, while they appear very natural,

are often deliberately constructed images that need further interpretation.

Understanding the imagery is the work of experimental archaeology,

a discipline that recreates the athletic motions of the past

under modern conditions.

In the south of France, a group of sportsmen

with a keen interest in history

have been working for many years to re-enact the ancient events.

The aim is to better understand the sporting practices of the time.

There are hundreds of images of athletes.

Through a series of tests,

we can piece together how they actually moved.

Today's technology allows us to learn a lot more.

The new digital camera can record thousands of images every second

and is a good way to analyze how sportsmen actually move.

These extremely high-speed images give us a much better understanding

of the technical details.

By breaking down the movements, it can recreate the picture on the vase,

exactly as it was painted by the artist 2,000 years ago.

After the long-distance events, come the sprints.

Though nearly twice as long, it equals today's blue ribbon event,

the 100 meters.

What kind of performance could the athletes have achieved back then

running in bare feet?

The Greeks weren't trying to run as fast as possible,

they were running to win the event.

It wasn't a race to break records.

Today, we're running to improve on the time to beat records,

while in antiquity, victory was everything.

You could win even if it was a very slow time.

Therefore, it's very difficult, probably impossible,

to make any kind of comparison.

Certain events are based on warlike exercises,

such as the race wearing armor.

All the athletes had to run around a post, the same one for all of them,

and they weren't allowed to touch it or they'd be disqualified.

They had to know what was the best position in the path

that formed before they reached the post.

You were allowed to lean on your competitors to break

or to make your turn sharper,

and then head into the homestretch.

It's fascinating to see the athletes on the Greek faces

who have an arm stretched out to stop competitors from overtaking,

or even to lean on them, maybe.

Following the efforts of the day, the athletes gather at the baths.

In the rooms off to the side of the gym,

the sportsmen could change and wash in tubs like these.

It's a moment of relaxation for the athletes

and a chance to wash off sweat and dust.

This is a marble tablet from a tomb,

and it shows an athlete who is scraping his skin with a strigil.

These objects were mainly used by sportsmen

to clean their bodies like this.

After scraping their skin, the athletes would oil their bodies

to form a sort of protective varnish.

Most athletes are portrayed naked in statues or on pottery.

Did they in fact compete in the nude?

In the first few centuries of competition,

we know the athletes would roll up their tunics,

but later, most would compete in the nude,

particularly in the pentathlon races or some of the wrestling.

The experimental archaeology sportsmen, however,

think that the ancients didn't necessarily compete in the nude.

It's too dangerous on a practical level to run naked.

The genitals could be hurt,

and it's something they would have been aware of.

We think the image of naked athletes on the archaeological artifacts

is just an artistic invention.

The artists wanted to portray them in the most beautiful way possible.

The Greek ideal of the body is seen in one of the period's most famous statues.

The Discobolus attributed to Myron was originally made of bronze

and later copied in stone by the Romans.

The discus thrower is also naked.

Myron's Discobolus shows the moment when the athlete

is about to launch the discus.

However, it's an abstract representation of a discus thrower,

not a realistic interpretation.

It does portray the muscles in great detail,

but it all fits into a geometric pattern.

The lines of this or that muscle all connect,

and the whole composition is a series of isosceles triangles,

or rectangles that have been fitted together.

It's an ideal vision of the discus and not the reality of the event.

However, to the sculptor Myron,

the important thing was to show in a convincing and agreeable manner,

the way a discus was thrown.

The discus also had its origins in warfare.

During fighting, it was launched onto the enemy

and could break their momentum by breaking their bones.

Amongst the objects in the museum, there's this bronze discus.

This one had a dedication and we know the name of the donor.

It belonged to Publius Asklepiades.

It was unearthed here at Olympia,

and several others were also found of various sizes.

Some were used during the games and others were offerings to the gods.

According to the inscription, this one dates from 241 A.D.

The discuses could be 30 centimeters across

and weigh as much as six kilos.

It required strength and dexterity

to throw an object shaped like this as far as possible.

During testing by experimental archaeologists,

the athletes were unable to throw it further than 15 or 20 meters,

depending on the weight.

The ancient text claimed that some Greek athletes

were able to reach up to 24 meters.

To reach that sort of level,

the ancient athletes occasionally had some tricks.

In the javelin, for example, they used a short rope for propulsion.

The Propulsion is used to make it go further,

as it provides both more leverage and precision.

The propulsion makes the javelin spin,

and that rotation makes it cut through the air more efficiently,

giving a straighter trajectory even if there's wind.

The other advantage of the propulsion is it can direct the javelin away

from the mast crowds of spectators in the stadium.

Greek archaeologists continue to sift through the gymnasium,

an area that remains little known.

Built during the Hellenistic period,

the training area was actually larger than the gym itself.

What this dig by Greece's archaeological service

is trying to uncover, are new portions of the colonnades

to get an idea of the size,

and so that visitors can better appreciate this complex.

This is where the athletes who needed more room,

like the runners and the javelin throwers could train.

The gymnasium was also where long jumpers could exercise,

but in those days, the long jump bore little resemblance

to the modern event.

The sportsman would use weights

that would allow them to leap far greater distances.

It took quite a few experiments to understand the use of these weights,

and what springs to mind is a type of pendulum.

It's logical that these weights, the halters,

would provide forward momentum.

It's important to coordinate the arms and legs

to produce the greatest possible forward movement.

It was a very technical event and also physically challenging.

The greatest distance recorded was 16.5 meters,

so we realized they must have made five jumps.

Less than five would have made a distance like that impossible.

Five seems a coherent number.

It took seasoned performers,

so I trained for a long time to reach the levels of the ancients,

and my personal best is about 17 meters.

Mythology played an important role throughout the duration of the games.

At nightfall, the ancients would tell of the origins of Olympia,

stories steeped in legend rather than reality.

One such was about Pelops, a hero of Greek mythology.

A half-god, he was said to have conquered Olympia

by winning a chariot race against his enemy King Oenomaus.

Pelops is said to have organized the first Olympic Games

in honor of the gods, who he believed protected him.

Still, other legends claim the games originated with a well-known Greek hero.

Other myths state that it was Hercules who was the founder of the games.

As he crossed the Elis region, which is where we are now,

he had just completed one of his labors, the cleaning of the Augean stables.

Both athletes and spectators at Olympia regularly paid homage to the gods.

Close inspection of the various archaeological layers

has revealed the importance of such practices.

German archaeologists have extracted large numbers of metal objects,

many of them in very poor condition.

Here it is.

What you can see here is that this was a very long spear,

and you can see that this is the point.

At the shrine in Olympia, we discovered many weapons buried in the stadium area.

It was customary for the Greeks to offer their opponent's helmets to Zeus,

as he was the god of competition and of military conflicts.

Weapons weren't the only things found on the ground.

Innumerable ex-votos have been dug up,

small figurines offered to the gods asking for protection,

good fortune, or recovery from illness.

When you win, you want to pay tribute to the gods

for having intervened to help you come first.

They would be offered statues or discuses.

It was really to thank the gods for having tipped the balance of victory

in your favor.

Pottery and ancient writings show there were also large-scale sacrifices

of animals during the games.

The name of the biggest and most spectacular of these

was the hecatomb,

a word that has entered the language meaning slaughter.

During a long procession,

100 cattle are sacrificed in honor of Zeus.

At Olympia, the largest sacrificial altar was a large mound

made up of the ashes of hundreds of animals over the years.

Only a small portion of the meat was offered to the gods.

The rest was divided up amongst the participants.

Combat sports were among the highlights of the games.

The bouts would be between two athletes drawn by lots.

Who they fought would only be known at the very last moment.

The rules are similar to those used today,

with whoever forced his opponent to the ground three times consecutively

being declared the winner.

A forerunner of boxing, fist fighting, or pugilism,

was one of the earliest sports in antiquity.

Fist fighters wrap their hands in cloth.

It was to protect the boxer's metacarpals.

It also reinforced their fists, of course,

which meant they could land more powerful blows.

It was violent, with punches directed at your opponent's head.

The fights could last for hours and honor was at stake.

We know that it was a fierce sport

and that it could provoke quite serious injuries

and possibly even deaths.

However, the aim was not to kill each other.

It was to knock out or force the opponent to quit.

In the end, the weaker man had to ask for the fight to be stopped,

otherwise, it could finish with his death.

Pausanias, who wrote in the second century A.D.,

tells of great pugilists,

and we know their fights could be extremely violent.

There's a story about how one fighter swallowed his teeth

at the end of a bout, so as not to lose face.

This bronze is like a cast of the face

and shows how this fighter had been scarred.

It may be Satyrus, a winner at Olympia on several occasions.

However, the most dangerous of the combat sports is pankration.

It was a mixture of punching and wrestling on the ground.

The idea was to finish off your opponent by strangulation

or by using leg or arm locks.

Almost everything was permitted in pankration

apart from biting and eye gouging.

In ancient Greece as today, there were those who cheated

despite having taken the oath to behave in an exemplary fashion.

Some sportsmen used some quite unsporting methods.

The evidence lies in the statues of Zeus,

the Zanes that decorated the alleys of Olympia.

Athletes caught cheating had to erect a bronze statue

and pay for it themselves.

All that's left today are their stone pedestals.

However, they probably look like this bronze of Zeus or Poseidon

found at sea off Cape Artemision.

After the events in the stadium were over,

athletes and onlookers could take time off to celebrate the gods

while they waited for the races in the Hippodrome.

Located next to the stadium and separated by a wall,

the center of the sanctuary was built around a sacred wood.

The staging of the games was very closely linked

to the worship of the gods.

Each had their temple.

One of the earliest to be built was the Temple of Hera,

the goddess of fertility, she is both the sister and wife of Zeus.

Originally the columns were made of wood.

They were gradually replaced with stone.

Inside the temple was the altar

on which the victor's laurel crowns would be placed.

A short distance away, in the heart of the sanctuary

was the towering temple to Zeus.

Built in the middle of the fifth century BCE,

it was a perfect example of the classical Doric style,

with its thick columns topped with capitals.

Several of its pediments have been unearthed

and are adorned with sculptures of the gods.

These include Apollo and the Centaurs,

legendary figures in the history of Olympia.

Overlooking the center of the shrine

was the magisterial and enthroned figure of Zeus himself,

painted in many bright colors.

Some of the treasures from the Temple of Zeus at Olympia

are now in France at the Louvre.

These include fragments of the metopes statues,

which portrays the 12 Labors of Hercules.

The metopes of Olympia were marble from Paros

and sculpted in very high relief,

and like most Greek architectural sculptures

from the classical period, they were painted.

The background was blue

and the characters were enhanced with several colors.

Some details were just painted on.

Hercules's hair over here is just painted.

The greatest treasure of all in the temple of Zeus has vanished.

It was one of the seven ancient wonders of the world.

This is the eastern entrance to the temple.

The only access to the interior of this very large place of worship.

Inside, was the statue of Zeus.

In the mornings when the doors of the temple were opened,

the rays of sunshine would enter and light up the statue from below.

The authorities called on the renowned Athenian sculptor Phidias

to create the masterpiece.

He'd made his name with the statue of Athena

at the Parthenon in Athens.

Because of its enormous size,

the representation of the most powerful of the gods

needed a vast workshop.

Phidias worked in the axis of the temple to Zeus.

This is the so-called Phidias workshop.

This is where the large gold and ivory statue of Zeus was built

and assembled before being transferred to the cella,

the inner chamber of the temple.

In his workshop, Phidias and his assistants

used the most precious materials.

The body of the statue of Zeus was covered in ivory

and his clothes in gold.

Once inside the temple, the god's head almost touched the roof.

At an estimated 13 meters tall,

Phidias's statue presented the greatest of the gods seated on his throne.

A pool filled with oil served to maintain internal humidity

at a level to prevent the ivory from drying out.

This liquid also served to provide the mysterious lighting of the statue.

The sculpture remained in Olympia for five centuries

before being moved to Constantinople, where it was destroyed in a fire.

The chariot races were the showpiece events of the games,

attracting the largest number of spectators.

Over the centuries, the teams were of either two horses,

the bigger or, in more affluent times, the four-horse quadriga.

They were amongst the most powerful racing machines of the day.

In ancient Greece, the horse held cult status.

Rich owners would spend fortunes on keeping stables.

A mark of prestige.

Artists would try and outdo each other in depicting the strength

and grace of the horse.

Olympia was the site of one of the largest racecourses

in the Greek world.

Today, it is no longer visible.

Buried below the new Olympia Valley,

it's believed the Hippodrome was almost 800 meters in length,

situated between the stadium and the River Alpheus.

Its exact dimensions, however,

are unknown as the site has never been excavated.

To find out more about these spectacular races,

one has to leave Olympia and travel to Delphi on the continent.

Perched in the mountains, the Sanctuary of Delphi

held its own sporting events, the Pythian Games.

The athletic competitions were held in a stadium that ran alongside the rocks.

In the valley, a vast hippodrome which has long since disappeared,

hosted the chariot races.

In 1896, during excavations at the site,

French archaeologists discovered a virtually intact statue.

It is one of the treasures of Greek art.

The one-meter, 80-tall bronze is of a charioteer, the chariot driver.

Charioteers tended to be slaves or employees of owners

who were wealthy enough to afford these racing machines.

They were often nobles, kings, or rich merchants.

The bronze group shows the driver on a victory lap.

It was quite an ambitious composition

that celebrated the victory of Polyzalos of Gela,

the tyrant of Sicily.

Other portions of the chariot team allow us to imagine

the complete work on top of a stone plinth.

Just how wealthy the owner must have been is that this bronze quadriga

had an extra horse.

There were five, not four.

The Delphi charioteer is a rich source of information

for researchers and for the creation of replicas.

This is a reconstruction of a Greek chariot from ancient times.

The complete system combined speed and stability.

Inside the Hippodrome,

the teams would line up at the start in a V formation.

The drivers had to focus not only on steering their own teams,

but also on what their competitors were up to.

Driving a racing chariot was difficult.

The chariot driver was standing

and he had to control four horses and the changes of speed and direction.

The most dangerous moments were the turns, the speed, the pressure on the chariots,

and the proximity of competitors often led to some spectacular accidents.

Not many teams finished the race in one piece.

The four-horse chariot races would be 12 laps of the circuit,

about 14 kilometers.

Coming first in such events would be extremely prestigious.

It was the owner rather than the charioteer

who picked up most of the honors,

not least the fact that the gods had favored his victory.

For several days, the athletes had exerted themselves unsparingly.

Whipped on by the cheers of the crowds,

they had fought for glory and for the honor of their cities

by physically pushing themselves to the limit.

After the events, they would gather in the sanctuary

to hear the judge's verdicts.

During the official ceremony,

a spokesman announces the name of the winner and his city of origin.

At Olympia, winners are awarded a simple crown of laurel leaves.

The wars in Greece drag on,

and the competitions at Olympia continue to be held every four years.

It's the only example in history of an event,

the Olympics, being held on a regular basis

for a period of almost 1,000 years.

Over the centuries, the venue at Olympia has evolved

and new construction has been undertaken.

When Philip II of Macedonia invaded Greece in the fourth century BCE,

he had a circular temple built.

The Philippeion marked a new step

in the architecture of Olympia with its ionic-style columns.

The Leonidaion appeared at about the same period.

Named after the architect who built and financed it,

the building was used to lodge athletes and distinguished visitors.

When the Romans invaded Greece in the second century BCE,

the occupiers continued with the tradition of the games.

They appreciated the spectacle of events held under divine protection.

Some Roman emperors would later personally compete in the events,

on the understanding that of course, they would win.

Nero was crowned winner of six events after bribing the judges.

Under the Romans, there was a different sporting spirit.

After the Romans occupy Olympia, the form and the games remain the same,

but the spirit behind them changes.

The prizes are no longer just for the glory, but for cash.

Athletes become professionals and are paid to take part in the games.

The spirit of competition,

the ideal of valor and courage

that had inspired the event under the Greeks,

is degraded by the Romans, who replaced it with competition for monetary gain.

Now, money has become the driving force.

The Romans so admire the games that they copy some of the events

which are then held in circuses across the Empire.

Combined with more bloodthirsty events such as gladiator fights,

the Roman versions of the games proved very popular with the people.

However, the spread of Christianity, with its belief in just one God

and a rejection of idolatry, will mark the end of the games.

In 394 CE, the Olympics, judged to be too pagan,

were finally banned.

When Emperor Theodosius, who was Christian, passed an edict,

he didn't directly forbid the games,

he banned the pagan practices such as sacrifices.

However, at Olympia, everything revolves around the worship of Zeus

and his sacrifices.

The edict was in 390 A.D., and in the years that followed,

the ban on pagan worship effectively banned the games themselves.

With the decline of the Roman Empire in the fifth century,

Olympia loses its protection and is pillaged by barbarian forces.

After the damage wrought by man, nature also takes its toll.

Several earthquakes destroy the heavy temple columns.

The site of the Olympia is slowly abandoned.

Flooding from the two rivers that run near the site

completes the work of destruction.

The valley is buried under six meters of earth.

Over the centuries, Olympia is forgotten.

The games will be reborn,

thanks to the efforts of one man, Pierre de Coubertin,

an enthusiastic sportsman and historian.

He wants to popularize the games by making it an international competition.

By the end of the 19th century,

archaeologists have uncovered a part of Olympia.

Pierre de Coubertin decides to take up the concept of the ancient games.

The first Olympic Games of the modern era were held in Athens in 1896.

Twelve nations take part.

What de Coubertin tries to reintroduce to the games

is really their universal nature.

It's not just the fact that they are named after the most beautiful

sporting site of antiquity,

but it's also the spirit of competition between people

in order to unite people around the same sports.

That was his aim, rather than recreating the actual events.

The essential thing is not to have conquered,

but to have fought well.

These were de Coubertin's actual words

now usually shortened to, the important thing is taking part.

Every four years, the flame of the modern Olympic Games

is lit in front of the Temple of Hera at Olympia.

The Summer Olympic Games is now one of the biggest media events in the world.

Billions of people watch it live on television.

The Olympic ideal and the motivation of the organizers have evolved, of course,

but exceeding the limits of the human body is still a challenge

for generations of athletes.