ANCIENT ORIGINS

A MAN WITHOUT HIS HANKY DOES NOT A WRESTLER MAKE

It is a strange quirk of the sport of wrestling that wrestlers, big and beefy as they may be, must carry a hanky at all times - a requirement brought in long ago when opponents had to mop up the odd pool of blood. Blood is drawn no longer. Wrestlers must now have manicured fingernails, short or tied-back hair, and their beards must be well established and growing strong by the time they reach the wrestling mat. Stubble is out and street-fighting skills frowned upon: it is forbidden to pull hair, ears or genitals, nor must a wrestler bite or pinch, twist an opponents fingers or toes, kick, head-butt, strangle, touch the opponent's face between eyebrows and mouth, hold him by the trunks or push an elbow or knee into the stomach. And the world of the wrestler is quiet; speaking to one another during bouts is strictly forbidden.

Wrestling is an ancient art, if art it is. Egyptian wall paintings some 5,000 years old depict the first bouts, while the first ancient Games of 776 BC included the sport. The term Greco-Roman, however, is not nearly as old; it was coined by the French in the 19th century in honour of the classical civilisations that gave rise to wrestling as a sport, albeit long after the Egyptians had first thought of it.

In the modern era, wrestlers have been known to go to extreme lengths to win. Beyond abstention from the common pleasures of life, there was Iva Johansson, a Swedish policeman, in Los Angeles in 1932. Having won the freestyle middleweight division after four bouts, he then starved himself, took to the sauna for 24 hours, lost 11lb in weight and returned to the mat as a welterweight for four further bouts on his way to a second gold medal.