Legendary origin

No one knows about the origins of the olympic games but several myths and legends have survived. One of these involved Pelops, king of Olympia and eponymous hero of the Peloponnesuss , to whom offerings were made during the games. The Christian Clement of Alexandria asserted, The Olympic games are nothing else than the funeral sacrifices of Pelops. That myth tells of how Pelops' overcame the King and won the hand of his daughter Hippodamia with the help of Poseidon, his old lover, a myth linked to the later fall of the house of Atreus and the sufferings of Oedipus.