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Once every four years Olympic Games were held at Olympia, a city in the Peloponnese. They were the most popular of all.
The finest Greek athletes ran, jumped, wrestled, threw the discus and the javelin and fought each other with their fists. At a hippodrome chariot races were held. The chariots were drawn by four horses.
The games were open to all free Greeks, but since training needed several years, only wealthy slave-owners could afford to enter. Peasants and artisans could not afford to spend so much time on sports. Only the richest Greeks took part in horse racing, because no one else could afford to buy four racehorses.
Thousands of Greeks and visitors from the colonies came to watch the Games. It became a custom even to stop wars for the Olympic Games.
On the last day of the Games the victors were awarded garlands of olive branches. On their return home the whole population of their native cities would turn out to greet them. Often statues of them were placed in the city squares to show that by their victories they had brought glory to their native city.
The Olympic Games strengthened the links between the regions and cities of Greece. The Greeks considered them so important that they decided to introduce a new system of chronology beginning with the First Games- they were said to have been held in 776 B. C.
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