| On Friday, more than ten thousand of the world’s best athletes will break from tradition by riding in boats along the Seine, in Paris, rather than marching in a big circle around a stadium. The aquatic “parade,” which constitutes the opening ceremony for this year’s Olympics, marks a “revolutionary” moment, to slightly paraphrase event organizers. The two weeks of running, throwing, and flipping that follow will similarly adhere to and riff on the Olympic past, a uniquely captivating, and increasingly global, ritual. In 2012, The New Yorker’s Louis Menand considered the Olympics’ origins, which are, in many ways, both more distant and more recent than you might think. Though the Games officially began in ancient Greece, the modern version, which started in 1896, also owes a debt to French and British concerns about masculinity. The length of the marathon was famously determined during a battle in the fifth century B.C.—but also, it turns out, by the location of a Queen Victoria statue in London. As Menand surveys books of history and trivia about the Olympics, he unearths little-known details (the oldest medalist was in his seventies), discarded rules (there was a maximum bikini size, in women’s beach volleyball), and the reason the high jump might remain in its Fosbury Flop era forever. But, while the strategies and regulations evolve, the Games’ deepest foundation probably lies in human instinct. “Competition,” Menand writes, “is natural and spontaneous.” | 
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