Chariot racing is trying to make a comeback

May 29th, 2007 | Posted by PostmanR

So, according to this article, which uses some dude in Brazil for its anecdotal lede, chariot racing is sort of on the upswing. Folks in England, France, Brazil (natch) and the Middle East are dusting off their nation’s hippodromes and getting down with a large amount of horses.

Last September in Paris, director Robert Hossein staged five performances of a $17 million Ben-Hur re-enactment at the Stade de France, featuring hundreds of extras appearing as charioteers, gladiators and pirates. It drew close to 300,000 spectators.

Wait, gladiators and pirates? Where were the dinosaurs, billy goats, cavemen and hippies? I don’t think that re-enactment was historically accurate enough.

But the ferocity of racing fans eventually hastened the sport’s demise, says Robert Garland, classics professor at Colgate University in Hamilton, N.Y. In 532, a contingent of hippodrome fans in Constantinople launched a demonstration against the heavy-handed emperor Justinian I. Things rapidly got out of hand. Rioters burned down half the city and the emperor’s troops succeeded in quelling the unrest only after slaughtering about 30,000 people. Increasingly fearful of the mob, leaders began scaling down chariot races. Eventually the contests withered away.

I believe we already have a sport that incites these kinds of riots. It’s called football soccer.

{Via Fark.}