Noble Blood - Olympic Glory for a Princess

Episode Date: February 24, 2026

Though Queen Elizabeth II's daughter, Princess Anne, competed in the Olympics, the first princess to do so beat her to it by more than a thousand years.Support Noble Blood:—PRE-ORDER 'THE ARCANE ARTS'— Bonus episodes, stickers, and scripts on Patreon— Order Dana's book, 'Anatomy: A Love Story' and its sequel 'Immortality: A Love Story'See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Hey there, folks. Amy Robach and T.J. Holmes here. And we know there is a lot of news coming at you these days from the war with Iran to the ongoing Epstein fallout, government shutdowns, high-profile trials. And what the hell is that Blake lively thing about anyway? We are on it every day, all day. Follow us, Amy and T.J. for news updates throughout the day. Listen to Amy and T.J. on the IHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or we're

wherever you listen to podcasts. Hey, I'm Dr. Maya Shunker, a cognitive scientist and hosts of the podcast, a slight change of plans, a show about who we are and who we become when life makes other plans. I wish that I hadn't resisted for so long the need to change. We have to be willing to live with a kind of uncertainty that none of us likes. You can have opinions. You can have like a strong stance. And then there's your body having its own program. Listen to a slight change of plans on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever

you get your podcasts. Will Ferrell's Big Money Players and IHeart Podcasts presents soccer moms. So I'm Leanne. Yeah. This is my best friend, Janet. Hey. And we have been joined at the hips since high school. Absolutely.

A redacted amount of years later, we're still joined at the hip. Just a little bit bigger hips. This is a podcast. We're recording it as we tailgate our youth soccer games in the back of my Honda Odyssey. with all the snacks and drinks. Why did you get hard seltzer instead of beer? Oh, they hit a bogo. Well, then you got them.

Listen to soccer moms on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of IHeart Radio and grim and mild from Aaron Manky. Listener discretion advised. One quick announcement before we start today's podcast, if you are a listener of this show, you might be interested in the fact that I'm. I have a book coming out in May. It's a book by S.D. Coverly, which is a pseudonym, very cleverly, of my first initials transposed, that I co-wrote with a friend of mine. And the book is called The Arcane Arts.

It's a dark academia, sort of romantic fantasy novel about magic and a graduate student and a professor doing illegal secret magic. It's a really fun, sexy adventure thriller time, not for kids, which is. is also part of the pseudonym explanation. But if you're a listener of the show, I really think you would like it. And if you're interested in it at all, I would beg you, actually, please, to pre-order it. Pre-orders are the number one way you can support an author.

If you have friends writing books, really forego their Christmas and birthday and anniversary gifts. Just pre-order their books. So look it up, the arcane arts. It's in the episode description, a link. And if you're interested, please pre-order. Thank you so much. In 2013, Queen Elizabeth II of England achieved a major coup.

At the Royal Ascot, she won the Gold Cup, with her horse, whose name in fittingly nonsensical, fancy horse fashion, was named Estimate. The Royal Ascot consists of many different horse races, but the Golden Cup is the oldest and arguably the most prestigious. So winning was certainly a feather in Queen Elizabeth's well-structured pastel-colored hat. But it's not the only race her horses have won. Queen Elizabeth's horses have given her over two dozen Royal Ascot victories across decades, from a horse named choir boy in 1953 to more recently a horse named Tactical in 2020.

Queen Elizabeth II's daughter, Princess Anne, shared the late Queen's interest in horses. In 1976, Princess Anne actually competed at the Olympics in Montreal in the equestrian events. Unfortunately for Princess Anne, though she came in seventh in dressage, during the cross-country event on the second day of the equestrian competition, her horse got bogged in mud and fell with Anne riding him after hitting a fence. Anne suffered a concussion, but they managed to finish the course, albeit with no hopes of making it to the podium. Even so, I think you'll agree there's still something dazzling about a princess at the Olympics, romantic even. But would you believe me if I told you that Princess Anne wasn't actually the first,

princess to compete in those prestigious games. In fact, someone had beaten her to it by more than a thousand years. I'm Dana Schwartz and this is Noble Blood. The Olympics as they exist today, literally today in Italy as I record this podcast, are actually relatively more modern than you might think. The Olympics, as we know them, only came about in 18, But a lot of the imagery, like the laura leaves that are used now on the medals, and a lot of the events purposefully harken back to the ancient Olympics in Greece. Incidentally, in order to pay respect to that, Greece is always allowed to go first in the procession of countries during the opening ceremony, while everyone else mostly goes in alphabetical order. The ancient Olympics date back to 776 BC when we have the first recorded victor, Corobos of Ellis, who won a foot race.

Technically, the entire competition was known as the Panhellenic Games, with festivals taking place at multiple locations around Greece. But the largest and most prestigious competition was at Olympia, the Olympics. honoring Zeus. It was the festival at Olympia that took place every four years, with the other games at Isthmus, Nemea, and Delphi, held in between. The Panhellenic games continued for a millennia, even through the second century after Greece came under Roman rule. In 373, the Roman Emperor Theodosius I banned the festivals as pagan,

But inscriptions and literary sources indicate that the games continued on into the early 5th century. And it truly was a pan-Hellenic event, uniting people from various city states and athletes from all over the Greek Empire, since the competition was open to all freeborn Greeks, whether they be Athenian, Corinthian, Spartan, what have you. But it's Sparta that were actually most interested. in today, particularly one Spartan athlete, Siniska, a princess who became the first woman to ever win at the Olympic Games. Unfortunately, as is the case for a lot of women in ancient history, much of what we know about Siniska's life comes from filling in the empty spaces in the stories of the men in her life. Her father was King Archadamus II of Sparta, and she,

was likely born around 440 BC. We're not even certain that Siniska's real name was actually Siniska. It's possible it was a nickname. Its translation is like female puppy or little hound. And it's likely the feminization of her grandfather's nickname, which had been Siniscos. If Siniska was a nickname, it probably communicated that she was a sporty and athletic girl

who enjoyed hunting. And though as daughter of a king, she was certainly born into a position of exceptional privilege, Spartan women were actually comparatively given more freedom than their Athenian counterparts. Spartan women could legally own and inherit property, and from anecdotes about Spartan soldiers receiving letters from their mothers, we can infer that women could read and write.

A lot of what we know about Spartan women comes from people in other places writing about them. From the outside, their reputation was as promiscuous and domineering, loud, dominant, sexual. The poet, Propatius, wrote about how much he wished his own mistress felt free to openly live with him, like a Spartan woman who would walk out in public with her lover. And as you might imagine from what ideas you have about Sparta, maybe from a film, and the fact that this episode is about the Olympics, Spartan women were also quite athletic. Young men in Sparta were required to train in state-sponsored athletic programs. It's very possible that there were similar programs in place for young women. Though they wouldn't be training in combat, there were.

laws requiring women to be, quote, fit as their brothers, and young unmarried women could be horseback riding, wrestling, running, and doing what we consider to be track and field events. Of course, all that gallivanting around stops when you get married. But while other young women in Greek city-states might get married around 14, almost certainly to someone much older, young women in Sparta were getting married around 18 or later to men around their age. But before we start imagining Sparta as some comparatively feminist paradise, it's important to remember the only reason young Spartan women were free from the confines of domestic labor in the way their, say, Athenian counterparts weren't,

was because Sparta had a robust system of state. slavery, where most of the population was enslaved. So when we're talking about Spartan women, most people aren't thinking of the many, many women in Sparta who were quite literally enslaved and had none of the freedoms we're talking about. But we can imagine that Siniska, as a free woman whose father was king and whose brothers would be kings after him, grew up privileged, active athletic, running around and competing alongside other young women, with the relative freedom that came from not needing to marry extremely young. But Siniska wanted to compete on a bigger stage.

Siniska might have been a Spartan woman, but she was still a woman, which meant that she wouldn't actually be allowed to compete in the Olympics. There's actually a pretty healthy debate among historians today still about whether or not women were even allowed to attend the Olympic festival at all, even as spectators. But there was a loophole for Saniska. Women could technically compete in the Olympics in the chariot races. They couldn't be the ones driving the chariots, but they could be the ones who owned and trained the horses.

and in the chariot races, the person who owned and trained the horses was the actual competitor. Why did Siniska enter the Olympics? Well, according to some sources, she was encouraged to compete by her brother, the future king, Adeselaus, the second. It seems like a nice encouraging brotherly thing to do, but according to some contemporary sources, Adeselaus was actually a sporting purist, who thought that chariot racing as an Olympic event was fundamentally unmanly

and only showed off how wealthy someone was. Winning just because you were able to own and train fast horses was, quote, victory without merit. And so, according to some, he encouraged his sister to enter the competition in order to prove that the entire thing was a sham, to shame any men who might want to compete. after all, how legitimate could their sport be if a mere woman might be able to win? But we have to take those accounts with a grain of salt.

The writers almost certainly had their own agendas, and in my personal opinion, that seems like the sort of post-hoc anecdote designed to make a Gessalais look manly and clever after the fact. Because in truth, after Siniska won, he certainly did. didn't do a see-girl-stink victory lap. She became famous and honored and made their family all the more famous and acclaimed. If he did convince her to enter the chariot race, it's distinctly possible he just believed in his sister,

wanted her to win, and wanted to use an Olympic champion sister to bolster up his own career in politics. Whatever the motivation, in 319,000, B.C. Siniska entered the Olympic competition with a team of four horses that she had trained herself. She won. Four years later in 392, she entered again, second time, and again, came in first place. Historians aren't sure whether she was actually even allowed to be present at the Olympic event where she won. As I mentioned earlier, there's still healthy scholarly

debate about whether women or maybe unmarried girls were allowed to attend the Olympics. But when she did, and in order to commemorate her victory, Siniska commissioned a set of bronze statues for the Temple of Zeus in Olympia, statues of herself, her charioteer, and the horses that ran them to victory. She accompanied the statues with a plinth and an inscription. Quote, kings of Sparta are my father and brothers. I, Siniska, victorious with a chariot of swift-footed horses, have erected this statue. I declare myself the only woman in all Hellas to have won this crown. A monument commemorating her victory with the same inscription was erected in Sparta.

And though the Hero Shrine at the Plain Tree Grove in Sparta had previously, only ever been an honor granted to Spartan men, mostly kings, Siniska became the first woman to receive that honor too. It's a legacy that proves that when Siniska achieved victory at the Olympics, just like today, her countrymen back home were extremely proud of her. That's the story of Siniska, the first woman to ever win at the Olympics. We'd keep listening after a brief sponsor break to hear a little bit more about what made the ancient Olympics special. You can have opinions, you can have like a strong stance, and then there's your body having its own program.

I'm Dr. Maya Shunker, a cognitive scientist and host of the podcast, a slight change of plans, a show about who we are and who we become when life makes other plans. We share stories and scientific insights to help us all better navigate these periods of turbulence and transformation. There is one finding that is consistent, and that is that our resilience rests on our relationships. I wish that I hadn't resisted for so long the need to change. We have to be willing to live with a kind of uncertainty that none of us likes. Listen to a slight change of plans on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast. or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey there, folks. Amy Robach and T.J. Holmes here. And we know there is a lot of news coming at you these days from the war with Iran to the ongoing Epstein fallout, government shutdowns, high-profile trials, and what the hell is that Blake lively thing about anyway? We are on it every day, all day. Follow us, Amy and T.J. for news updates throughout the day. Listen to Amy and T.J. on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Readers, Katie's finalists,

publicists, we have an incredible new episode this week for you guys. We have our girl Hillary Duff in here and we can't wait for you to hear this episode. They put on Lizzie McGuire 2am video on demand. This guy's... 2 a.m.

Lizzie McGuire. And I'm like... A wild batch you were with. It was like a first like closet moment for me where I was like... I don't feel like she's hot. Like the rest of that. No, no. I was like, she's beautiful.

But I'm appreciating her in a different way than these boys are. I'm not like... But listen to the... Askal Dristas on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or whatever you get your podcast. It's a commonly repeated misconception that during the ancient Olympics, everyone called off their wars. It's not quite true. Not even the promise of a fun discus event could stop warfare in the ancient world. But the Olympic truce was a real thing. The truce, or Echakiria, translates to the holding of hell.

hands, and it was inscribed on a bronze disc displayed at Olympia. As I said, it didn't necessarily mean that the countries themselves weren't fighting. That might have been the idea promoting peace among the Greeks, but what the Olympic truce really did was served to protect athletes and religious pilgrims who were making their way to Olympia to compete or to watch. Whether they were traveling through enemy territories or war zones. If someone was coming to the Olympics, they were committed to travel and peace. Grimm and mild from Aaron Manky.

Noble Blood is hosted by me, Dana Schwartz, with additional writing and research by Hannah Johnston, Hannah Zwick, Courtney Sender, Amy Height, and Julia Milani. The show is edited and produced by Jesse Funk, with supervising producer Rima Il Kali, and executive producers Aaron Manky, Trevor Young and Matt Frederick. For more podcasts from IHeartRadio,

visit the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Hey, I'm Dr. Maya Shunker, a cognitive scientist and hosts of the podcast, a slight change of plans, a show about who we are and who we become when life makes other plans. I wish that I hadn't resisted for so long,

the need to change. We have to be willing to live with a kind of uncertainty that none of us likes. You can have opinions. You can have like a strong stance. And then there's your body having its own program. Listen to a slight change of plans on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey there, folks, Amy Robach and T.J. Holmes here.

And we know there is a lot of news coming at you these days from the war with Iran to the ongoing Epstein fallout, government shutdowns, high-profile trials, and what the hell is that Blake lively thing about anyway? We are on it every day, all day. Follow us, Amy and T.J. for news updates throughout the day. Listen to Amy and T.J. on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Will Ferrell's Big Money Players and IHeart Podcast presents soccer moms. So I'm Leanne. Yeah. This is my best friend, Janet. Hey. And we have been joined at the Hips since high school. Absolutely. A redacted amount of years later, we're still joined at the hip.

Just a little bit bigger hips. This is a podcast. We're recording it as we tailgate our youth soccer games in the back of my Honda Odyssey. With all the snacks and drinks. Why did you get hard seltzer instead of beer? They hit a bogo. Well, then you got it. Listen to soccer moms on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.