HellenicAthletes.com, developed in early 2006 by Christopher G Galakoutis (read Bio), is a specialty website that aims to be the Internet leader in the delivery of English language Hellenic sports news, primarily for the sports of Athletics & Weightlifting -- speed and strength, the mainstays of any Olympics or Olympiad (Olympiada in Greek).

Our Business

Our business model is one that seeks to monetize traffic and is advertising driven, all FREE websites basically are.  It is important to be honest about affiliates and ads, as well as the trade-off created:  our service is provided at no charge, but in exchange, we ask that you use our links if you purchase products from any of the companies we are affiliated with.  In addition, our site will expose you to advertising, by way of banner ads.  If you use technology or other methodology to block the delivery of these ads, you eliminate our ability to bring you the news.

Hellenism and the history of the Olympic Games

The site is dedicated to the memory of Evangelis Zappas, a wealthy Greek patriot, philanthropist, and little-recognized co-founder of the modern Olympic Games.  Born in 1800, Zappas was inspired to revive the Games by an 1833 poem by Panagiotis Soutsos, who wrote about the revival of the ancient Olympiada in his poetry “Dialogue of the Dead.” 

In 1856, Zappas wrote to King Otto of Greece offering to fund, by way of his vast fortune, the revival of the Olympic Games, and to provide prizes to the victors.  The first Zappas sponsored modern Olympic Games were held in an Athens city square in 1859, at Platia Kotzia.  Competitors attended the Games from both Greece and the Ottoman Empire, making them international from that date. Zappas died in 1865, but had bequeathed his entire fortune to the Olympia committee, whose job it was to stage Olympics every four years, rebuild the ruined ancient Panathenian Stadium and build the first modern, purpose-built, Olympic building, which was named the Zappeion.  The first modern Olympic Games to be held in a stadium were held in the newly refurbished Panathenian stadium in 1870, and then again in 1875.   The stadium was later used for the Olympic Games held in 1896, 1906, and 2004.  The Zappeion was used as the Olympic Press Center during the Athens 2004 Olympic Games.

Evangelis Zappas (Zappeion/Athens)

Evangelis Zappas re-established the Olympic Games for the first time since they were held in ancient Greece.  It was these foundations, along with the contributions of William Penny Brookes, a British doctor who had also organized a series of Olympic festivals in England, which were used by Baron Pierre de Coubertin of France, who founded the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in 1894, in launching the 1st "IOC Olympic Games" in Athens in 1896.

Taipei Times: Olympic history should include freedom fighter 

Olympic Revival: The Revival of the Olympic Games in Modern Times
By Konstantinos Georgiadis

Olympic Revival examines the reconstitution of the Olympic Games in the context of modern Greece’s emerging, and continually forming, political and cultural identity. Using original texts and sources from previously unexamined archives throughout Greece, Georgiadis shows how the reestablishment of the Olympic Games was in fact the result of various intellectual trends and developments in many countries and not simply the work of a single individual, Pierre de Coubertin. About the Author Dr. Konstantinos Georgiadis is dean of the International Olympic Academy, a member of the executive committee of the International Society of Historians for the Olympic Games, and a member of the IOC’s commission on culture and Olympic education.

To order the book by historian Konstantinos Georgiadis on the revival of the Olympic Games, from Amazon.com, click on this link: Olympic Revival - The Revival of the Olympic Games in Modern Times 

To order the book by professor David C. Young, The Modern Olympics: A Struggle for Revival, from Amazon.com, click on this link: The Modern Olympics: A Struggle for Revival

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