The Ancient Olympic Games included four foot races: the stade, which was 200 yards, the diaulos and the Hoplitodromos, or, race in armor, both of which were 400 yards, and the long distance race, the dolichos, which ranged from seven to twenty four stades, but averaged twenty stades.

The stade was the only Olympic event for the first thirteen Olympic Games, until the diaulos was instituted in the fourteenth Olympics. The dolichos was then instituted the following year, for the fifteenth Olympic Games. The Hoplitodromos, or the race in armor, was not instituted until the sixty-fifth Olympiad. The race, which required the runners to wear helmets, greaves (shinguards) and a shield, was introduced to aid soldiers in their war training.

Unlike a modern track which is an oval, two straights joined by two semi-circle curves at each end, an ancient Greek stadium was a straight strip of land about 230 yards long and thirty yards wide. Therefore, in a race that was longer than a stade, the runners had to make a 180 degree turn around a post, which the Greeks called kampter, at the end of the track (Sweet, p.27). Dangerous! Since the starting line was fit to accommodate up to twenty runners in each heat, you can imagine how difficult it would be for all twenty of these runners to make this 180 degree turn, while running at top speed, without running into any of their opponents.

At the starting line, which the Greeks called the bablis, there were grooves where the runners stood to insure they stayed in a straight line. These grooves are called balbides, which is the plural of balbis (Sweet, p.27-8). Since this starting line only accommodated twenty people (still a lot more than modern tracks which only hold six or eight people) they would have to run in separate heats if there were more than twenty competitors. This meant that the winner actually won two races.