Classical studies 101: The nude athletic competition

Students bemoaning the ban of the Nude Olympics now have an alternative.

Enter Ancient Greece — Spring Break style, where college students compete in a pentathlon just as the ancient Greeks did — au naturale.

The sixth annual nude College Greek Athletic Meet will be held Sunday on the grounds of the Tallahassee Bare-Devils nudist camp in Monticello, Fla. The event was originally scheduled for March 25 when more spring-breakers would be in the area, but rain forced postponement.

As part of the Greek Athletic Meet, students from nearby schools, in addition to visiting spring-breakers, compete in teams in a pentathlon — which includes long jump, discus, the 200-yard dash, javelin and stand-up wrestling.

But the coordinator of the Greek Athletic Meet Paul LeValley said events are not performed in the same manner a spectator might see in the modern Olympics.

"The long jump they did with weights that they threw down to get an extra boost," he explained. "They used to use a string that they wound around the javelin to give it extra spin."

In addition to supporting its educational relevance to ancient Greek athletics, LeValley defended the advantages of competing in the nude in biological terms.

"Testicles open on thermostat," LeValley explained. "When it's warm, they go down. When you're over-dressed, they get in the way. When they're not, they pull right up out of the way."

LeValley asserted the event's academic importance to students of ancient Greece.

Ancient Greeks spent all year perfecting their minds as well as their bodies, LeValley said, and then presented themselves naked before the gods as an act of worship. The goal of the Spring Break event is "to discover what it really felt like to be a student in ancient Greece," according to a press release.

In fact, the event has roots at Florida State University, where in the early 1990s, the one-day competition was included in a non-credit class about history, culture, art and athletics in ancient Greece.

Though the event urges classics students and track athletes to participate, professors and coaches at the University were skeptical.

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"I think all human activities have potential to expand one's horizons," classics department chair Robert Kaster conceded, adding that the event has no relevance to the mission of his department and that students could not receive a grant for the event even if their thesis is on ancient Greek athletics. "It would have to be non-credit field experience," he said.

Men's track and field head coach Fred Samara said he would never send his team to the meet.

While Princeton students are unlikely to attend the games, the event has seen colleges from 11 states. While most schools are from northern Florida, LeValley said students have attended from southern Georgia and even Syracuse University in upstate New York.

The winning team's wreath of leaves, however, has never gone to an out-of-state team. The defending champions from 2000 are a combined team from Florida A&M University and Florida State.

Participation is free and admittance is $12 for spectators, who also must be nude.

"No one is allowed on the grounds who isn't nude," LeValley said.

Though the combination of college students, nudity and Spring Break would seem an ideal recipe to draw a large crowd, just 10 participants and 40 spectators attended last year's meet, which also was postponed because of rain.

LeValley, however, envisions a day when hundreds of college coeds will flock to the camp for the games. "We hope it will be the thing to do on Spring Break," he said.