I stepped to the marble starting line at Olympia.
The dry grass on the hillside smelled warm in the sun.
The grooves were still there. Shallow cuts in the stone where bare toes once pressed into place. I slid my own toes into them, feeling the heat of the marble through the thin soles of my shoes.
I leaned forward in my Modrić jersey, waiting for someone to say, “Go.”
I was about to enter history, running the same 192 meters once run for Zeus.
The race was a stadion — one length of the track, roughly 192 meters. I would run it down and back, for a total of 384 meters. Not far. Not by modern standards.
But this strip of packed earth - sand, dust, river silt, and clay - once held forty thousand men on its grassy embankments. Forty thousand voices rising in Attic Greek, shouting for speed, for glory, for Zeus.
Our guide had smiled at me earlier. “You are a runner,” he said. “You must run it as they did. It is our tradition.”
So I bent at the waist and fixed my eyes on the far end of the track.
F…
