What if athletes were to participate naked in the Olympics again as they did in Ancient Greece

Ancient Greek legend tells that in 720 BC, an athlete Olympic named Orsippus de Megara was competing in the 185-meter race when his loincloth fell off. Instead of stopping to cover his parts, Orsippus kept running and won the race.

His triumphant example remained in time. And nude athletic competition, often emphasized with the generous anointing of olive oil, became all the rage in Greece, seen as the ultimate tribute to Zeus.

“There was the idea that Orsippus was heroic and victorious, and then the celebration because he was naked,” says Sarah Bond, associate professor of history at the University of Iowa.

“For the Greeks, walking naked became a way of recognizing its civility and customs”.

However, by the time the Olympics were revived in 1896, cultural mores had long since changed. The organizers did not even consider bringing back the Greek tradition of nude competition.

In modern athletic competition, clothing plays an essential role in performance– Shoes offer grip and add speed to runners, swimsuits help swimmers slide easier in the water, and tight-fitting suits can reduce wind resistance.

The Tokyo 2020 games, however, promise to be unusual in many ways due to limitations by covid-19. But what if the games took an even more unusual step in reestablishing nudity as was the tradition in the original Olympics?

Although no one is seriously considering doing so, the idea raises interesting questions about the athletic performance, cultural norms, and sexism, among others.

Advantage

To begin with, competing in the nude would create uncomfortable logistical problems for many athletes.

While modern competitors usually practice their sports practically naked (wearing only tight fibers), certain garments have important primary purposes, such as keeping women’s breasts and men’s genitalia in place.

“Without being explicit, that helps in terms of comfort, at least,” says Shawn Deaton, director of special projects at the North Carolina State University Center for Textile Protection and Comfort.

On the other hand, the degree to which clothing actually contributes to athletic performance (as opposed to comfort) is less clear.

According to Olga Troynikov, professor of functional materials and human-centered engineering at RMIT University in Melbourne, it really depends only on the garment, its fit to the athlete’s body and the sport.

In general, clothing does a thing or two for athletes, Troynikov says. First, streamlines the body and “strengthens” them, allowing the power of the muscles to be directed more towards the task at hand.

Weightlifting belts and elastic fibers can be useful, for example, to stabilize a competitor’s muscles so that they can direct all their energy towards the exercise they are doing.

Without these garments, performance could be affected.

Very soft clothing can also reduce the resistance the body encounters when moving through air or water, an advantage for many kinds of sports.

For example, in addition to shaving their legs, cyclists can also benefit from wearing tight-fitting garments with very little air resistance and strategically placed patches to create a beneficially shaped wake behind them.

The swimming

However, the most compelling example of the athletic advantages that clothing offers comes from swimming.

In fact, the sport “became almost an engineering competition rather than just the skills of the human body,” says Troynikov.

This made headlines in 2008 when swimmers competing in the Beijing Olympics broke the world record 25 times, 23 of them by athletes wearing a special full-body suit made with polyurethane called LZR Racer.

According to NASA, whose scientists helped design the LZR Racer, this state-of-the-art suit reduced friction by 24% and compressed athletes’ bodies to decrease drag.

In 2010, the International Swimming Federation (FINA) determined that the LZR Racer and similar suits conferred a too unfair advantage for athletes.

FINA now prohibits athletes from competing in any suit that helps increase speed, buoyancy or performance.

In effect, this means that, in addition to the added resistance from the breasts or genitals, going nude probably wouldn’t affect swimmers’ performance as drastically.

In other summer sports, the overall contribution of clothing to achieving better times or scores is more questionable, says Troynikov. “There are many complaints because the clothes do this or that, but in reality there is not much there.”

Compression garments, for example, are designed to change the way blood flows through the body to improve oxygenation. In fact, the research is split 50-50 for and against improving performance when athletes wear these garments.

“There is some research, but nothing conclusive,” Troynikov alleges.

Footwear

Shoes, on the other hand, are a different story. They not only increase performance but also ensure safety.

Proper footwear that provides arch and heel support and cushioning to the foot significantly helps run, jump and make quick turns. Shoes too reduce the impact on the lower extremities, bones, ligaments and muscles.

“The foot supports the entire weight of the body,” says Pamela McCauley, an industrial engineer at North Carolina State University Wilson College of Textiles. “That is why it is essential to have excellent support for the feet, to support the body.”

For security, some sports require even more specialized footwear. Athletes competing in Olympic sailing, for example, rely on their shoes to reduce slippage and aid stability when hanging off the side of the boat.

This reduces the possibility of dangerous accidents and at the same time improves performance. In all, MacCulay says: “If they want to do the Olympics naked again, that’s fine. But at least they keep their shoes on ”.

Going nude can also influence who ends up competing. With or without shoes, some athletes, if they had to undress necessarily, could choose to withdraw from the games in protest. More conservative nations could also prevent their competitors from participating.

“For cultures in which modesty plays an important role, this would simply not be contemplated, ”says Ruth Barcan, Honorary Associate Professor of Gender Studies at the University of Sydney and author of Nudity: A cultural anatomy (Nudity: cultural anatomy).

There would also be serious legal and ethical questions if athletes under the age of 18 were forced to compete in the nude.

While 12-year-old male athletes participated nude in the Ancient Greek Olympics, given the religious nature of the games, Bond says the athletes’ sexual activity or sexualization it was strictly forbidden and it would have been very frowned upon.

That would not be the case today. “Nudity at the Olympics had a different meaning back then,” says Bond. “Today, it would become inherently sexualized and very pornographic, and that in turn would become very predatory.”

In ancient Greece, the Olympic Games were also watched by an elite primarily male audience, all of whom came from the same cultural and religious background (some single women were also allowed to attend).

Today, instead, the games are broadcast to millions of people around the world.

While conservative countries would likely ban channels from broadcasting the Olympics, in more liberal settings “the media would go wild with excitement,” says Barcan.

Reactions among viewers, on the other hand, they would be very varied. “For every person who thinks something is artistic, noble and glorious, there will be others who think it is disgusting,” says Barcan.

Social media would ensure that the full spectrum of opinion was spread far and wide, which would almost certainly affect the performance of the athletes whose bodies were being scrutinized, for better or for worse.

Uninhibited athletes would love the attention. “They would have these perfect bodies and they would show them off,” says Barcan. But even the most confident competitors they may find care difficult. “They are not in control of what the media and pop culture do,” adds Barcan.

Female and transgender athletes, Barcan continues, would “undoubtedly” face more lawsuits than male athletes.

There are many historical precedents for this.

When Brandi Chastain removed her jersey after scoring the deciding goal at the 1999 Women’s World Cup, for example, photos of the soccer player in her sports bra created a international media frenzy, despite the fact that male athletes, of course, look shirtless all the time.

“Even that was sexualized by the American public,” says Bond. “I can only imagine what would happen if the athletes were completely naked.”

In fact, for many athletes, psychological effects of a completely naked Olympics can far outweigh the physical effects of not wearing clothes.

“Imagine the task of trying to filter out a million voices that comment on the most intimate parts of your body,” says Barcan.

If nudity became a permanent staple of the Olympics, then over time it could be that society would revert to the Greek tradition of viewing athletic nudity through a lens of heroism and celebration.

But that certainly wouldn’t happen overnight, says Barcan.

Meanwhile, for many athletes, the emotional energy required to disconnect from the cultural baggage and social judgment surrounding nudity would probably affect performance.

Under these limitations, the winners of the first nude Summer Olympics could end up being not those with the greatest athletic prowess, but those with the greatest ability to channel the ancient Greek mindset.