Sporting Vernacular 38: STADIUM

THE RUGBY World Cup final, at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff on Saturday, came close to being staged indoors. The Greeks would probably not have approved.

The Greek stdion originally referred to a race track, particularly the one at Olympia, which was, according to which source you trust, between 185 and 200 metres long, and the term came to be used to denote that length. It was in this form that the word first entered English, via the Latin stadium. The "racetrack" sense of the word came in the 17th century, with the idea of a sports arena coming later.

The main event in the earliest Olympic Games was the stdion, or sprint, and the date usually given for the first Games, 776BC, is actually the date of the first known stdion victor, Koroibos of Elis.

The Theatre of Dreams in Olympia was not the first known stadium, though. Until there is new evidence, that honour currently goes to Paso de la Amada in the Chiapas region of south-west Mexico where, in April 1998, archaeologists discovered a court for ball games dating to 1400BC. There appear to have been frequent human sacrifices involved - an impression also gained in most of the Rugby World Cup games nearly 3,500 years later.