Coroebus Triumphs: The Alliance of Sport and the Arts

The ancient poets tell us that in the year 776 B.C. a young cook from Elis won a great footrace in a meadow near the river Alpheus at Olympia. The youth, Coroebus, was crowned with a wreath of wild olive twigs and thus became the first recorded victor in the ancient Olympic Games. From this beginning there evolved an alliance of sport and the arts that no culture or civilization since the Greeks has been able to achieve. During the summer of 1984, a collection of scholars, athletes, and artists from various disciplines convened in Coroebus's honor to celebrate the alliance of sport and the arts with the formation of the Sport Literature Association. The papers in this volume, most of which were presented at the Coroebus Conference, are devoted to examining and furthering the understanding of that alliance. The Coroebus Conference, and particularly the resulting writings compiled in this volume, are a long overdue recognition of a neglected relationship. This book could well provide the impetus to recapture the alliance from which both sport and the arts benefitted so well in the past. Originally published in 1989.