"There be some sports are painful." (The Tempest)

.....Since I was a varsity track coach in high school for 30 years, I naturally became interested in the story of Atalanta, a great runner, and Hippomenes (hip-POM-en-ez), two mortals in Greek mythology. I even wrote a poem about them—which I will get to later. Atalanta was the daughter of Iasos in Arcadia and Hippomenes was a Greek youth from Boeotia (bee-osha). It took awhile before these two met. The story goes that King Iasos was very disappointed when Atalanta was born because he expected to have a son. Consequently, he ordered her to be killed. (In Greek mythology, there is no story without someone being killed or turned into something gross at the whim of the gods). However, the slave who was to kill Atalanta became sorry for her, took her up into a mountain cave and left her there. Shortly thereafter, a she bear came along who had lost her cubs to hunters. The bear full of milk and in pain spied the baby and suckled and cared for it. However, when the bear left the cave to search for food, the hunters came along, rescued the babe, and reared her until she became a grown woman.

…..Atalanta grew up to be no ordinary woman. She was extraordinarily beautiful; so beautiful that suitors fell in love with her as soon as they saw her, but she vowed never to marry because she wished to remain a virgin and a huntress. In fact Atalanta became known as the goddess of the hunt. One day, two centaurs took it upon themselves to ravish her while she was in the forest, but when she spotted them she fired her arrows and killed them before they could touch her. At another time, a great, ferocious boar—known as the “Calydonian Boar”, terrorized the countryside, so Atalanta joined five male hunters who went out to kill the boar, but two men were killed before Atalanta was able to destroy it. To reward her feat, the son of the King of Calydon and Althea, Meleager, awarded her the skin of the boar. This angered the male hunters, uncles of Meleager, who mad with jealousy, wished to deny a female from wearing the skin. They tried to kill Meleager, but he killed them instead. Their sister, Althea, was so overwrought at what her son did that she called on Artemis to help kill him, which she did; and shortly after, Althea committed suicide. And so the world turns.

…..Atalanta had fallen in love with Meleager, and so feeling sorry for her, her father took her back and desired her to marry. However, she said she would only marry a man if he could beat her in a foot race. (Finally back to the track!). But she knew that there was no one on earth that could win a race against her. If they tried and failed, she put them to death. To her, a racing track was sacred. But one day, Hippomenes offered to attempt it and he called on Aphrodite to help him. The goddess gave him three golden apples, and during his race with her (they both ran naked)—she stayed behind him, thinking to catch him at the finish line. But he kept dropping one apple after another, and since she lost time by stooping to pick them up, she lost the race and had to marry Hippomenes. Now to the poem—don’t worry, it’s short:

See where Atalanta lies

Bathed in pools of alabaster tears

While all Boeotia wildly cheers

And raises Hippomenes

To the skies!

…..But the story goes on. One day they had sex in the temple of Zeus which so angered him that he turned them into lions, and since two lions never mate with each other, they were never able to love again.