David Pritchard (Edinburgh), "What is the Value of Olympic Victory?"

Leverhulme Visiting Professor David M. Pritchard – The University of Edinburgh

A joint lecture from the Centre for the Study of the Ancient Mediterranean and the Near East and Durham Centre for Classical Reception.

There is hot debate about the value of Olympic victory. Britain now spends hundreds of millions of pounds on getting its national team to the Olympics. Each gold medal that a British sportsman or sportswoman wins literally costs tens of millions of pounds. Sports fans are convinced that this is money well spent. For them, the value of Olympic gold is completely obvious and totally priceless. But those who are less sports mad often claim that such Olympic success is much less valuable. For this side, it is quite clearly a big waste of money – money that would be better spent on teachers and nurses. It is hard to work out which side of this hot debate is right or wrong. One way to do so is to look back at the long history of the Olympic Games. The ancient Greeks competed in Olympics for more than a thousand years. Ancient Greek states actually valued Olympic victory more highly than we do today, giving Olympic victors much more than our keys to the city. In this richly illustrated public lecture, David M. Pritchard – the Leverhulme Visiting Professor – explains what value the ancient Greeks got out of Olympic victory. In doing so, his lecture helps us to work out which side wins in our current hot debate about the modern Olympic Games.