Questão 2827521

Who invented the marathon? It’s not as ancient as you think

Ask most people about the origins of the marathon—a race covering 26.2 miles of terrain—and you will likely hear about how Pheidippides, an ancient Greek courier, ran 26 miles from the town of Marathon to Athens to _____________ the Greek victory in a decisive battle over the Persians—then died on the spot. As legend would have it, the Greeks honored the herald by adding a “marathon” to the ancient Olympic Games.

But the true history is more complex and convoluted. There was an ancient Greek named Pheidippides, and he did work as a courier during the war against the Persians in 490 B.C. According to the ancient historian Herodotus, the courier did make an epic run. But Pheidippides was not heralding victory in the Battle of Marathon—he was _____________ to round up troops to help beat back the Persians. Herodotus writes that the courier ran an incredible 153 miles back and forth between Athens and Sparta over 36 hours.

In the 1890s, Bréal participated in the founding congress of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), which proposed a series of international competitions inspired by the ancient games that would rotate among countries every four years. Greece had been hosting its own revived Olympics for years, but the IOC wanted to formalize them as a competition between nations.

Bréal _________ that one of the events be a footrace from Marathon to Pnyx, where the ancient Athenians held their most popular assemblies—a distance of 40 kilometers, or 24.85 miles. Since then, marathons have only grown in popularity. The first U.S. marathon was held in Boston in 1897, and though it began nearly a century later, in 1970, the New York City Marathon is now the nation’s biggest.

(Fonte: National Geographic — adaptado.)

Concerning the use of possessives, check the sentence that shows a CORRECT use of a possessive adjective: