COMPETITIVE running predates the Olympic Games, let alone the Commonwealth ones!

Here is the vivid description of a race from Gavin Douglas's sixteenth-century Eneados in a modern version. The scene is Sicily and the wanderer Aeneas has offered the competitors glittering prizes. . .

THE FOOT RACE

He said no more. They took their places,

and when they heard the signal, they were off

and sprinting at the beginning of the track,

exploding almost from the starting line,

each striving desperately to be the first.

Before them all Nisus leapt into the lead,

far out in front, starting more speedily

than thunder in the sky or thump of storm.

Second to him, but quite a way behind,

runs Salyus, and well behind these two

Eurialus was third. Then after him

came Hélymus, and always close to him

Diores, breathing hot foot at his back,

toes barking Hélymus' heels at every step,

and barging with his shoulder to push past.

He ran so fast that if he'd had more room,

he'd soon have skipped away in front

and who knows then who might have won the race?

Nisus comes to muddy grief but helps his friend Eurialus to leap, victorious, into "the shouting cheering throng." Read more in Extracts from the Eneados of Gavin Douglas with translations by David West (published on the occasion of the XX Commonweath Games by the Scottish Poetry Library and Glasgow University).