00:00 The ancient Olympic Games were highly regarded and considered the pinnacle of all games.

05:26 The ancient Olympic Games were considered holy to the gods and had a sacral quality, with the winners achieving fame and their names being remembered throughout history.

10:21 The origins of the Olympics are uncertain, with one story suggesting that Zeus wrestled with Kronos for the throne of heaven, while another story claims that Pelops held funeral games for his father-in-law and that became the Olympics.

15:14 The Ancient Olympics had a sense of the strange and the weird, with heroes like Pelops and Heracles being part of the games, and the Greeks' obsession with competition extended to various contests beyond sports.

20:25 The contestants in the Ancient Olympics were amateurs, but they were often wealthy individuals who received perks and sponsorship deals, and in some cases, the winners were actually the owners of the horses used in chariot racing and horseback riding events. Women were not allowed to compete, but they could enter chariots, and the first woman to win in the Olympics was a Spartan named Kyniska.

25:14 A woman named Ferenike disguised herself as a trainer and won the final bout in the Ancient Olympics, but was spared from punishment due to her prestigious lineage, leading to the establishment of a new rule that both athletes and trainers must compete in the nude.

30:08 The Olympic Village during the Ancient Olympics was similar to a festival like Glastonbury, with athletes sleeping in tents, extreme heat, and no toilet facilities, and the nudity during the games was either due to the heat or the worship of the human body.

34:46 The chariot race and horse race were major highlights of the Ancient Olympics, with the horses of Pelops being particularly impressive, and there were various myths and superstitions surrounding the dangerous chariot race; the pentathlon was seen as the Greek ideal, and day two would end with a massive celebration and feast; on day three, sacrifices were made to Zeus to ward off flies, and the altar was made of the ashes of slaughtered oxen; day four consisted of running events and crowd-pleasing wrestling and boxing matches, with wrestlers covering themselves in oil and dust.

39:26 The ancient Olympics continued after Greece was absorbed into the Roman Empire, but it went into decline in the early Roman period and by the fourth century it was on its last legs, with the last recorded mention of the games being in 394 AD.

44:27 Boxers and wrestlers tend to be the most remembered Olympians from ancient times, with notable figures like Theogonis, who had a statue made in his honor, and Milo, a wrestler who won five consecutive games and had a tragic death.

49:38 The story of an Olympian who goes mad, kills 60 boys, and then disappears, exemplifies the dark and violent nature of the ancient Olympic games.