"What is the Value of Olympic Victory?"

Abstract

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.


Speaker
David M. Pritchard is the Leverhulme Visiting Professor at the University of Edinburgh in 2026-7. He is an Australian ancient historian working at the University of Queensland (Brisbane) where he has chaired the Department of Classics and Ancient History. Leverhulme Visiting Professor Pritchard has obtained 16 research fellowships in Australia, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States of America. He is the author of Athenian Democracy at War (Cambridge University Press 2019), Sport, Democracy and War in Classical Athens (Cambridge University Press 2013) and Public Spending and Democracy in Classical Athens (University of Texas Press 2015). He has edited The Athenian Funeral Oration: After Nicole Loraux (Cambridge University Press 2024) and War, Democracy and Culture in Classical Athens (Cambridge University Press 2010). Leverhulme Visiting Professor Pritchard has co-edited Waging War in Fourth-Century Athens (Routledge 2026) and Sport and Festival in the Ancient Greek World (Classical Press of Wales 2003). He has also published 70 articles and chapters, resulting in an h-index of 22 and 1800 citations, and obtained the equivalent of 2.2 million Australian dollars in research funding. Leverhulme Visiting Professor Pritchard speaks on radio and regularly writes for newspapers around the world. His 61 opinion pieces have appeared in, among other newspapers, Die Süddeutsche Zeitung (Germany), Le Monde (France), Le Figaro (France), Ouest-France, Sud Ouest (France), The Conversation (Australia, France and Spain), Kathimerini (Greece), Inside Story (Greece), Scroll.in (India), The Age (Australia), The Australian, Politike (Brazil) and The Daily Star (Bangladesh). Leverhulme Visiting Professor Pritchard obtained his PhD in Ancient History from Macquarie University (Sydney).