This archive covers progress in athletics and sport — from accessibility and inclusion initiatives to record-breaking achievements and policy reforms that expand who gets to compete. Stories here explore how sport shapes communities, health, and human potential.
The ancient Olympics began in 776 B.C.E. at Olympia, a sanctuary to Zeus in the western Peloponnese, where a runner named Coroebus won a single footrace of roughly 192 meters. A sacred truce let rival city-states gather in peace. That modest start grew into a festival that ran for more than a thousand years.
Sumerian wrestling slabs, carved around 3000 B.C.E. in the land between the Tigris and Euphrates, show three pairs of competitors locked in competition — among the oldest known images of organized sport. A later cuneiform tablet even describes a belt-wrestling match between Gilgamesh and Enkidu. Sport, it seems, is nearly as old as cities themselves.
Cave art in Lascaux, France, dating to around 15,300 B.C.E., shows human figures that appear to be running — possibly the oldest known image of organized physical contest. Later, separated by thousands of miles and years, Mongolian wrestlers drew crowds and Egyptian swimmers left marks in desert stone. Sport, it seems, is something humans kept inventing on their own.
