The chronology and naming of seventeenth-century pseudo-Olympics on the British Isles

Abstract

ABSTRACT The Cotswold Olimpick Games in Gloucestershire, England, are generally considered by sports historians to be the first so-called ‘pseudo-Olympics’, i.e. competitions referring to the broadly understood Olympic idea inspired by the ancient Olympic Games. Although the exact date of the first Cotswold Games remains unknown, they were in all likelihood founded by a local lawyer Robert Dover in 1612, as evidenced by his settling a year earlier in Saintbury near Chipping Campden – the officially accepted venue of the games. However, in 1609, a large group of knights, esquires and gallants from all over the region were known to visit Hereford on May Day to participate in an Olympian race. It is therefore likely that the Hereford race was historically the first, unequivocally confirmed, sporting event termed ‘Olympic’, not the Cotswold Olimpick Games or other competitions held in the seventeenth-century British Isles, such as the Olympian Games in the Brae of Mar, or the Gog Magog Olympiks, dated several years after the Hereford event.