David M. Pritchard (Madrid 2016), \'Sport and Democracy in Classical Athens\', Invited-Plenary-Session Paper, The 16th International Colloquium of the ARYS Association: Deporte, Espectáculo y religión en la Antigüedad, Univerisdad Carlos III de Madrid.

This paper addresses the neglected problem of elite sport in classical Athens. Democracy may have opened up politics to every citizen but it had no impact on sporting participation. The state’s sportsmen continued to be drawn from the elite. Thus it comes as a surprise that non-elite citizens judged sport to be a very good thing and created an unrivalled program of local sporting festivals on which they spent a staggering sum. They also shielded sportsmen from the public criticism which was otherwise normally directed towards the elite and its conspicuous activities. The work of social scientists suggests that the explanation of this problem lies in the close relationship which non-elite Athenians perceived between sporting contests and their own soldiering. This paper concludes that the changes that they made to the waging of war supported and legitimised elite sport. Resumen: En la Grecia de época clásica, la institución de la democracia en Atenas permitióque todos sus ciudadanos pudieran acceder a la política, pero el atletismo sólo era practicadopor la élite de la sociedad. Este artículo pretende estudiar la relación entre la democraciay la práctica deportiva en Atenas, buscando y analizando las razones por las que la clase inferiorvalorase muy positivamente y apoyara los juegos atléticos mediante políticas favorables, tantoen la administración de la infraestructura deportiva como en la protección de la crítica pública,dirigida habitualmente hacia todas las actividades de la clase superior. Una de esas razones fuela concepción similar de los eventos deportivos y de los combates de la guerra.