Wrestling With The Ancients:
Modern Greek Identity and the Olympics
Alexander Kitroeff
On February 13, 2004, exactly six months before the opening of the 2004 Athens Olympiad, greekworks.com inaugurated its publication series with Wrestling With the Ancients: Modern Greek Identity and the Olympics, written by Alexander Kitroeff. In the first study of this fascinating subject in any language, Kitroeff follows the tortuous route of Greece’s relationship to the modern Olympic movement from the mid-nineteenth century to the first modern games held in Athens in 1896 through the entire twentieth century and on to the Athens Olympiad of 2004. Written with the adept, illuminating touch of a novelist, this extraordinary history uses original archival sources and a deep understanding of modern Greek and European history to recount the ongoing saga of modern Greece’s often impassioned engagement with the Olympic movement.
According to Kitroeff, Greece’s role in the international Olympic movement must be seen as a continual process by which the country has experienced, constructed, and confronted its dual identity: presumptive heir to antiquity’s heritage and modern, European state. The Olympic Games’ revival in 1896, and the subsequent emergence and development of the modern Olympic movement, added yet another area for constructing Greek identity, as well as a new and grand international arena in which Greece could vie for honors. In the end, as Kitroeff shows masterfully in this very important and highly original work, which is certain to become the standard history of the subject, Greece has managed to attain a privileged status in the Olympic movement by assuming its unique role of modern steward of ancient tradition.
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