As might be expected, there has been a pile of attention in the popular press being paid to the ancient version of the Olympics and I figured it would be a useful thing to gather a bunch of them together in one post to give you some way to kill time while you were waiting for the opening ceremonies, or if you wanted to read something instead of watching the opening ceremonies, or whether you missed the opening ceremonies, or whether the opening ceremonies made you wonder what the ancients did. ‘Nuff said? Ecce and enjoy … you should be able to kill a couple hours with this one:
First and foremost, the fine folks at Cambridge Journals have made a huge selection (20+) of articles available (for free) which touch upon the ancient Olympics/athletics in some way:

• Leading articles in sports and the Ancient Olympics from Cambridge Journals

I mentioned this as a Blogosphere post, but it bears repeating … the Ancient Olympics blog has a feature on the Ancient Opening Ceremonies, such as they were (and there’s plenty of other items of interest at the AO blog, of course):

• The opening ceremony at the ancient Olympics

A video break … the Iris Project’s Lorna Robinson talks about the Olympics 2012 project (tip o’ the pileus to the Classics Confidential folks):

Ages ago, BBC Magazine had a nice feature on the ‘basics’ of the ancient games:

• How much were the original Olympics like the modern Games?

Tip o’ the pileus to Arthur Shippee for drawing our attention to an NPR interview with Tony Perrottet about poetry and the Olympics:

• Honoring The Games, And The Past, With Poetry

You can get a sense of the focus of the London Evening Standard‘s feature on Olympia and the ancient games from the headline:

• All hail randy Zeus, father of the Games

In a similar vein is the Daily Mail‘s offering, which actually is a semi-review of Neil Faulkner’s A Visitor’s Guide to the Ancient Olympics:

• Tracksuits are for losers – in our day we did it in the nude

Margaret Butler (Tulane) has some commentary on the ancient game v. the modern ones which will be showing up in various forms this weekend, I suspect:

• Ancient Olympians glorified gods and community

Self-explanatory, from the University of Sydney (tip o’ the pileus to John McMahon):

• Ancient games: an Olympic factfile from the Nicholson Museum

Greek Reporter seems to not have liked a British Documentary:

• “Ancient Greek Olympic Games Were Totally Corrupted” Says British Documentary

We can do some more clearing of our email box by noting that the Nemean Games revival also has been getting some press attention … first (and most recent), an ITV news report:

• Back in time to the origins of the Olympics

… and from the Spenborough Guardian (the date on this is today, but it’s older):

• Ancient sporting tradition revived

… and the other Guardian … they also have video:

• True Olympic spirit – at the Nemean Games

And now some more videos which I came across in my idleness (not recent, but useful):

An Emory-sponsored lecture by Dr. Hans-Joachim Gehrke on excavations at Olympia:

I suppose we should include the Horrible Histories coverage:

… and since I still can’t find a video of Boris Johnson’s complete performance of Armand D’Angour’s ode, here’s a performance of the first part of a modern adaptation of Pindar’s first Pythian: