No holds barred as Beeb flesh out the ancient Games

TV View: The Horizon team on BBC2 dug up an ancient Olympic athlete on Friday evening and brought him to life inside a computer. Some 2,500 years ago, we were told, sport was not an activity for the faint-hearted, writes Johnny WattersonTV View

"This was a rough, tough world. These are people you don't want to mess with," said archaeologist Sarah Palaskas.

Well, who'd want to mess with CJ Hunter?

"Mr Fingertips" was one such athlete who enjoyed an enviable reputation in the ancient games, where death and mayhem were commonplace.

Zeus, the top god in the Greek pantheon, liked a bit of rough in his Olympics and so collision sports were an important part of the schedule.

"These were very aggressive and violent," said Berkeley University's Dr Miller. "Strangulation was permitted. People broke arms. The point was to incapacitate your opponents. There was one man famous for his finger-breaking techniques."

A reconstructed fight scene was shown, replete with the sound-effects of breaking fingers and a grinning imbecile taking obvious delight from his mastery of the snappy routine.

"Boxing had no ring," added Miller. "There were no rounds and no weight divisions. Gloves were rawhide strips, not there to protect opponents but rather to inflict damage."

The chariot races were responsible for the greatest attrition and racked up an even bigger body-count than professional cycling.

"Widespread death and destruction" and "inevitable carnage on the track" explained the narrator, catching the mood of the event perfectly. There are records of one race where 41 chariots started and only one finished.

The analysis of the stocky athlete retrieved from the sarcophagus - who, according to the experts, was 5ft 6in, weighed 170 lb and had "explosive legs" - showed he'd have shaped up to modern-day Olympians reasonably well.

Having put ersatz flesh to his bones, the scientists entered him into competition with modern-day Matt, a former pentathlete. The conclusion was that he would have held his own but might not have medalled. Loser.

Some 500 years before Christ, Olympians were practically professionals; they travelled with an entourage and ate special diets. Arsenic and strontium were found in the skeleton and the teeth were nearly perfect, which suggested our ancient Olympian didn't grind down too much cereal but ate protein-rich meat and seafood.

Winning sprint events earned the athletes giant jars of olive oil. "That would equate to about £50,000 in today's money for a sprint win," said one expert, an authority no doubt in the currency exchange rates between vats of oil and sterling.

Like modern Olympians, the Greeks made a promise they wouldn't cheat, nor did they care to record who came second in events, only the winners.

For a false start such as the one Linford Christie made in the final of the 100 metres in Atlanta, the athlete would have been hauled away from the starting line and flogged. They may have run around entirely naked in front of thousands, but these Greeks knew a little about pride and dignity.

Golfers know a little about that too. After the ignominy of a run of little or no Wimbledon tennis or British Open golf from Troon, RTÉ peppered viewers with the Irish Open from Baltray. A good thing, if a week or so late for the golf nuts around Ireland.

When the national broadcaster chooses to miss out on, or not avail of, or is unable to bring the biggest events in world tennis and golf, but heavily mines the schedule with a PGA tour event, or the soulless procession of another Grand Prix, you begin to wonder what sporting or commercial imperatives operate at Montrose.

On Thursday, the Irish Open appeared on RTÉ 1 at noon and 1.25 pm and on Network 2 at 6 pm and 11.55 pm. On Friday RTÉ 1 screened the golf at noon and 1.25 pm, Network 2 at 6 pm and 11.30 pm. On Saturday the golf ran from 3 pm to 6 pm on Network 2.

Why is Baltray so big, Troon so small in RTÉ's scheme of things? Why is the Irish Open everywhere, Wimbledon nowhere?

What shone through in the blanket coverage of the links, which commentator Alex Hay defined as "that strip between arable land and the sea" was how magnificent and natural a golf course Baltray is and how it stands alone as one of nature's architectural wonders.

If golf tourism is one of the aspects of Fáilte Ireland's sponsorship of the Irish Open, they picked a winner with this one, particularly in the early rounds when the sun smiled on this Co Louth gem.