Director's Comments

The film contains unique footage, not only of a 1923 recreation of the ancient Pythian Games, high up in the Stadium at Delphi, but also a recent reconstruction in 2002 of the Pamviota Athla in Levadia, for which athletes came from all over Greece to try and recreate the methods of the ancient games. In the film we follow three athletes from Greece and its old colonies of Spain and Italy.

They visit not only Olympia, Nemea, Isthmia and Levadia, (where the various techniques and disciplines are tried) but also take part in Robert Dover's Olimpick Games, which began in 1612, and still take place in the village of Chipping Campden. These games were the precursor of the Much Wenlock Olympian Games, where we show how a Dr Penny Brookes really started the modern Olympics, 30 years before Baron de Coubertin.

From Mount Olympus Professor Antikas explains the origin of the Games, and that women were probably the instigators for athletics at Olympia, and how they circumvented the 'men only' events later on. In Corinth, Daley Thompson discovers that the ancient long jump with weights actually helped him lengthen the distance jumped without them.

In Nemea, Professor Miller the site director, shows us the first discovered ancient 'locker room' and following the path of an athlete under the stadium tunnel, he entertainingly brings to life with ancient graffiti the thoughts of a competitor 2,000 years ago

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