Ancient Champions: Daippos, Komaios, Pythagoras, and Praxidamas

Daippos of Kroton

Victor of the 27th Olympic boxing tournament in 672 BC and became the first Olympic winner from western Greece.



Komaios of Megara

Third of his brothers to win the boxing contest at the 32nd Olympics in 652 BC


Pythagoras of Samos

In 588 BC, a young man from Samos made his way to the Olympic Games with the goal of winning the youth division in boxing. When registering, the officials told the young man that he was too old to compete with the boys. Spectators and competitors began to mock the Samian for his long hair and purple robes, accusing him of effeminacy for attempting to compete with the younger boys. Undeterred, the young man signed to fight with the adult boxers. Despite the contemptuous ridicule he had suffered from the crowd, Pythagoras won bout after bout, and was crowned victorious at the 48th Olympiad.

According to the ancient historian Diogenes Laertius, this was the same Pythagoras of Samos who would go on to found the Brotherhood, a unique school of philosophers in Greek history. The Pythagoreans were incredibly well-respected, and their work influenced that of all the great philosophers who would follow them– including the famous trio of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Music and mathematics played especially important roles, to the Pythagoreans. These fields informed their philosophy, while their philosophy simultaneously inspired their musical and mathematical discoveries.

Eratosthenes says, as Favorinus quotes him in the eighth book of his Universal History, that this philosopher was the first man who ever practised boxing in a scientific manner, in the 48th Olympiad

Pythagoras was said to be the son of Apollo, god of boxing, logic, and music.



Praxidamas of Aegina

victorious in boxing at the fifty-ninth festival in 544 BC and the first athlete to have a statue dedicated at Olympia. According to Pausanias the statue of Praxidamas was made of cypress wood.

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