Modern: Athletes today compete for glory, money (prizes), and to become a better athlete. Most of the time they do not compete for religious purposes.

Ancient: Similar to Modern, athletes in ancient times wanted glory and prizes, however, they did compete to honor the gods and for religious reasons.

Modern: Participants are from all over the world, all representing different countries. Participants can be any race or gender, not just men.

Ancient: Participants were just from the Greece geographical area. They were around the same age as modern day though. Women could not compete.

Modern: Modern training is very intense. For the most part these athletes are doing this as an occupation and train year round for their event. Practices also look differnet in modern day becausae of team sports. Athletes today also have trainers, and have a lot more knowledge and research on what works and what does not.

Ancient: Similar to modern for training year round, but it is more to stay in shape. They also had trainers. Weights were even used to help in events such as long jump. Athletes that won in previous years became trainers. Everything is solo training because of the lack of team sports.

Modern: Today, top three get medals and are recognized all over the world. Most all athletes receive glory from their country for even competing.

Ancient: Only the Winners received a prize which wa an Olive Wreath crown.

Modern: Similar to the ancient games there were still a lot of cheating going on. Athletes now use performance enhancing drugs. The Olympics and countries can drug test to make sure there is no cheating. The consequences now depend on how bad the act is instead of getting beat when cheating like in the ancient games.

Ancient: There were fines and monuments built to Zeus when athletes cheated. Inscriptions were put on the monuments about what happened to warn future athletes. Athletes were also "beaten or flogged for fouling other players."