Scents and sporting traditions: a matter of skin, sharing, and the Ideal

Did you know that fragrant substances (and more broadly, perfume) were an essential component of ancient sports traditions?

The Olympic Games, founded in 776 BC, come to us directly from antiquity. They take their name from Olympia, one of the major sanctuaries where these sporting competitions took place. Initially designed to bring together Greek peoples who were a little too prone to war, these games attracted many athletes, both for the valuable prizes at stake and for the prestige associated with certain competitions. Four sanctuaries in particular symbolically honored the merit of their winners (by means of a plant crown). Each sanctuary had its own: laurel in Delphi, olive in Olympia, pine in Corinth and... celery in Nemea! A distinction that can easily be imagined as the origin of the expression "resting on one's laurels". The prestige of these competitions was such that simply appearing there was enough for an athlete to gain a certain reputation. These Games were immensely successful and lasted over 1,000 years, before being abolished by the Roman emperor Theodosius I... and restored in the 19th century by Baron Pierre de Coubertin.

Cosmetic ritual of the ancient athlete...

The natural environment of Greece at the time offered its inhabitants a multitude of aromatic plants and vegetable oils (in which these aromatics were infused - the beginnings of a method later called enfleurage). The trade routes opened by Alexander the Great added a whole new range of scents to this melting pot: sandalwood, cinnamon, nutmeg, benzoin in particular, which allowed the Greeks to give their beauty rituals a particularly refined turn. While men and women of society typically perfumed their bodies with iris or marjoram oil after public bathing, athletes were not to be outdone...

In antiquity, the athlete's body was an ideal of beauty and strength, a source of inspiration for artists (sculpture, painting), and their hygiene was impeccable. Sculpted by gymnastics, tanned by outdoor sports, the Hellenic athlete's body was also anointed with perfumed oil, which they scraped off with a strigil after exercise. Indeed, athletes at the time prepared their bodies for effort by coating their limbs with olive oil - known for its protective functions. Then, to protect themselves from sun damage, they would sprinkle themselves with sand before training for running, long jump, or javelin throwing... This mixture of oil, sweat, and sand called "gloios", once scraped off, was then collected by the gymnasium guardian and resold as fuel for lamps. This is proof, if ever it were needed, of the preciousness of oil at that time, but also of the highly valued status of ancient athletes!

To finalize the rigorous work done by the gymnasium games, body care then extended to ambrosia-perfumed baths, "recovery" massages with fragrant oils, and hair and beard care. Or how perfumes and physical culture already went hand in hand under the Greek banner of perfect Beauty.

Perfume and Sport Today: Shared Emotions

While the imagery of the ancient hero and the ideal of beauty and strength he represents continues to greatly inspire modern perfumers (Kouros by Yves Saint Laurent, Eros by Versace, or Invictus by Paco Rabanne, to name but a few), there is another dimension that the two spheres share (almost) unknowingly: that of sharing.

As mentioned earlier, these sporting competitions had the underlying function of shifting the struggle from the battlefield to the arena and creating a peaceful gathering between nations. The Paris 2024 Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games, currently being prepared in the French capital, push this desire for openness and proximity to the public even further by making certain events accessible to the public that were not before (such as the marathon), by allowing everyone to be an actor and not just a spectator of the Games (through open events, the Volunteers program, or the Paris 2024 Club), and by bringing together the Olympic and Paralympic Games under a single emblem. An ambition that is part of the worthy legacy of the Greek Olympics in terms of surpassing oneself, uniting peoples, and sharing great collective emotions.

Each host country of this immense event offers a touch of culture to discover. While we remember the essential Brazilian flip-flops or the winter mittens of previous editions, we at Estéban firmly believe that perfumed products, a true standard-bearer of French savoir-faire, have what it takes to become the iconic product of these Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

Perfume, ambassador of our emotions

If we love perfume so much (body or home), it's because beyond revealing a part of our personality, our tastes and desires of the moment, it has the power to transport us emotionally into our memory, to make us travel through our memories.

This "magical" power has a biological explanation (among others): the sense of smell is directly linked to our memory and our emotions by the very constitution of our nervous and olfactory system. Indeed, olfactory information, once generated (following the detection of odorous molecules in the air) is directly sent to the parts of our brain involved in sensory perception (piriform cortex), memory (hippocampus) and emotions (amygdala complex). Once this circuit is completed, the information is finally processed by the part of our brain responsible for the conscious perception of the smell (and this, less than a second after we start smelling it) and decision-making (to approach, move away, buy, etc.) can occur. In summary, the feelings, emotions and memories linked to a smell occur even before their identification by the conscious part of our brain. This shows how powerful the evocative power of perfume is!

While it is sometimes involuntary (we remember the famous Madeleine scene in Proust's Swann's Way), this evocation can be done knowingly, through a cognitive effort (e.g., remembering the scent of one's grandmother) or through objects containing the scent associated with the memory one wishes to evoke.

This year, at Estéban, the emotions arising from the biggest international sporting competition of the year will be tinged with a fragrant trail that we will be able to evoke, share, and renew at will, thanks to an exclusive collection of official licensed Paris 2024 products, available now.

Sources:

• The Great Book of Perfume for an Olfactory Culture (NEZ Culture)
• Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, A History of Beauty, by Dominique Paquet
• The Olympic Games of Antiquity, The Olympic Museum
• Information sheet "The Ancient Olympic Games" from the IOC