Orsippus of Megara may not have been the most famous ancient athlete or even the best, but he was certainly the one with the most balls. We know this because Orsippus was the first athlete in Greek history to compete naked, presumably just because he liked the way it felt.
If history books and marble statues that make us feel self-conscious about our abs (but not our wangs) have taught us anything it’s that when it came to letting it all hang out, the Greeks weren’t exactly shy. Seriously, Google “Greek statues” and you’ll be greeted to the sight of a wall of stone dongs. The Greeks just didn’t give a damn.
As it so happens though, this is all due to Orsippus, a runner who just didn’t feel like wearing pants that day and just so happened to win while the bottom half of his body was doing an impression of an elephant with a beard.
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Now you’d think something as notable as an athlete letting it rock with his cock out would have been something the Greeks documented the living crap out of, but alas no. Information on Orsippus is remarkably sparse considering he competed in an Olympic event even HBO would hesitate to broadcast.
In fact, we don’t even know for sure why he decided to introduce the world to Orsippus Jr. Some sources say he forgot his loincloth (the gear all athletes wore before this point) and instead of tracking down another dongsleeve he looked down, shrugged and strode the stadium in the buff. Other sources claim that Orsippus heard about another runner who’d tripped over his loincloth and died, and he decided to compete without it to avoid such a possibility. We’re guessing the fact that women were forbidden from watching Olympic events in those days played a crucial role in Orsippus’s willingness to imitate a human biplane. (His penis is the propeller!)
A final reason for Orsippus’s wardrobe malfunction is based on the testimony of Greek geographer and writer, Pausania, who explained that Orsippus at first intended to compete in the customary budgie smugglers, but during the course of the race they slipped free. Upon feeling the cooling breeze of a thousand forbidden pleasures caress his now naked body, Orsippus came to the conclusion that he could run faster naked and just rolled with it. Our guess if this scenario is true is that the changing rooms were just near the end of the race course and Orsippus was running for a towel.
The naked victor!
Though we don’t what caused Orsippus to compete nude, we do know that he won the footrace event at the 720 BC Olympic games. If you aren’t currently imagining a man sprinting towards a finish line wang-first while wearing 14 pairs of sunglasses, we hope you are right now because we mentioned it, because that is literally the only was we’re able to picture Orsippus and we apologise profusely to our Photoshop department for it.
Interestingly, there seems to be some confusion amongst scholars, historians and wang enthusiasts about the exact date of Orsippus’s victory and there’s even a small but hilarious argument amongst historians on whether or not Orsippus was truly the first guy to compete nude, since some Greek scholars refer to a guy called Acanthus of Sparta as the first guy to let it all hang loose.
Regardless, we’d like to raise an internet-glass to Orsippus, because how can you not respect a man who wanted victory so hard he whipped his member out to make himself ever so slightly more aerodynamic? You have to appreciate commitment like that.
Karl Smallwood is a freelance comedy writer you can hire! His work has been featured on Cracked, Toptenz and Gunaxin. You should probably click those links to make sure he isn’t lying. He also runs his own website where he responds to the various pieces of hate-mail he’s gotten over the years, in fact, he got so much hate-mail that he wrote a book about it that you can buy on Amazon. When he isn’t writing, Karl also Tweets and uploads pictures of himself drinking on Facebook.
Karl is an ass-kicker in his own right. He perfected The Art of Video Gamesmanship and torturing sprites for daring to defy his godlike power!
We mean gaming. Did you think we speak of country matters?
