It was interesting watching some of the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia.

I watching on TV and so had the benefit of the super close-ups and the replays of the drama.

The modern Olympics are incredibly regulated. They have rules and procedures and, of course, all the modern electronics to drive timekeeping and other systems.

The whole thing is full of emotion – people train for years and then win or, perhaps, fall out in the first metres for any number of reasons.
The emotion has always been there but all the rules and technology have developed over very many years.

In the 1908 Olympics, held in London, Dorando Pietri of Italy ran the marathon. He exerted massive effort and was way ahead of the rest of the field. He probably ran a bad race owing to a lack of modern coaching because, after pushing himself so much, he collapsed in the stadium about 300 m from the finish line. He battled to crawl and, later, the New York Times said: “It seemed inhuman to leave Dorando to struggle on unaided.” So, what happened was that a race official picked him up and supported him all the way to the finish line. He received raptous applause, but was then disqualified for receiving help.

Britain’s Queen Alexandra later gave him a gold cup of her own to acknowledge his effort. Also at the 1908 Games, the marathon was supposed to be exactly 26 miles – from Windsor Castle to the Royal Box at the new White City stadium – but Princess Mary asked if the course could be extended by 385 yards so that the race would begin under the nursery window of the castle. If it were not for that change, Pietri would have made it. That strange distance stuck and today the marathon still has the extra 385 yards.

The first recorded Olympics were staged in 776 BC, when a baker, Koroibos, won the only event, which was a 192 m running race known as the ‘stadion’. This single event persisted until 728 BC. At the following Olympics, it was expanded when a race of two stadions, known as a ‘diaulus,’ was added to the programme.

The ancient Games consisted of only one day, until 692 BC. From then on, they became two days. By 632 BC, the Games had expanded to five days. The Roman Empire adapted the Olympic Games with enthusiasm and so they developed for some 800 years until Christianity put an end to them. After the games of 393 AD, Roman Emperor Theodosius 1 declared the games to be anti-Christian and banned them. His decree lasted until the seventeenth century, when the ‘Cotswold Olympics’ were inaugurated in England, but the Games were not truly resurrected until 1896, when the first modern Olympics event was held in Athens.

Individual events have come and gone. In the 1920 Olympics, in Antwerp, Belgium, the tug-of-war was an Olympic event for the last time. In 1924, rugby was an Olympic event for the last time and in 1936, at the Berlin games, polo was an event for the last time.

In the 1904 Olympics marathon, Thomas Hicks won, having been fuelled by a mixture of brandy and strychnine by his trainers. At the time, taking stimulants was perfectly legal. Not any more, of course. Now there are advanced chemical tests for a huge variety of banned substances. In fact, today, athletes have to be careful not to take anything, even medicines like cough mixture, because they may contain a trace of a banned drug, which the tests will pick up.

It is important to remember that the whole concept of the Olympic Games is actually sportsmanship. At times, this is difficult to remember, with all the high-intensity training and management that go into modern sport.

For sportsmanship, it is worthy mentioning the Jamaican Bobsled team. At Sochi, they came last. This Jamaican thing started at the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary, Canada.

As unlikely as it sounds, a group of Jamaicans in Jamaica decided to try for the Winter Olympics. They chose the Bobsled event, which was a bit of a problem, since Jamaica has no snow. They built a home-made contraption with wheels and practised on grassy slopes in Jamaica. Much to everyone’s amazement, they pitched up in Calgary and took part, after buying a second-hand Bobsled. They crashed spectacularly to achieve last place, but their sporting effort caught the imagination of the world.

Amazingly, when the Jamaicans took part in the 1994 Winter Olympics, in Lillehammer, Norway, they came fourteenth, beating France, Russia, Italy and the US. They were back in 2014.

So, while there now is much intense competition and loads of emotion, it is worthy remembering that it is the sporting spirit which really counts.