How Did the Olympics Start? Ancient Mythology Points to a Cheater

— -- Cheating has long been considered a problem for the world’s most preeminent sporting competition, the Olympic Games.

Perhaps that’s because the games were first founded by a cheater, according to Greek mythology.

While there are a number of myths surrounding the establishment of the Olympics, one of the most common involves a prince named Pelops, according to the Hellenic Information Society.

Pelops wanted to marry King Oinamoas’ daughter, so the king challenged Pelops to a chariot race. If Pelops won, he got the girl, but if he lost, the king promised to behead him.

Surprisingly, Pelops agreed to the race, but simultaneously began forming a sinister plot to defeat the king.

Before the race, Pelops and the king’s charioteer, Myrtilos, secretly replaced the bronze linchpins in the king’s chariot with linchpins made of wax. Just when the king was about to pass Pelops in the race, the wax melted and the king was thrown to his death.

Pelops married the departed king’s daughter and instituted the Olympic Games to celebrate his victory.

For centuries, the ancient Olympics were held at Olympia, a sacred site in Southern Greece. Their influence was so great that ancient historians began to measure time by the four year increments in between games.

The first recorded Olympic Games occurred in 776 B.C., where a cook named Koroibos became the first Olympic champion after winning the only event, a nearly 200-meter footrace known as the "stade," according to the Archaeological Institute of America.

Over the next century, more sports were added such as boxing and chariot racing.

But by 393 A.D., with Greece firmly under Roman rule, Emperor Theodosius declared the Olympics a pagan festival and banned the games, according to the Hellenic Information Society.

For nearly 1,500 years, the Olympics were all but forgotten until a Frenchman named Baron Pierre de Coubertin proposed the reinstatement of the Olympic Games in 1894. Coubertin succeeded and the modern Olympics were born, with the first competition held in Athens just two years later in 1896, according to the IOC.

Since then the games have gone from a simple foot race to the most spectacular sporting competition on the planet, often incurring price tags in the billions. The Sochi winter games cost more than $50 billion, according to a 2015 study published in Eurasian Geography and Economics, enough money for Russia to build more than a dozen space stations.

But despite the incredible transformation, the Olympics are still having a hard time ridding themselves of the cheating legacy left behind by their mythic founder.