User:BarronVonEssen/sandbox

In ancient times a discus would vary in size and weight, making it difficult to judge between current records and ancient ones, but it also makes it hard to gauge if the ancient records are reasonable. The modern discus weighs 2 kilograms, but ancient ones have been found that weigh as much as 8.6 kilograms. The discus were made of stone by earliest records, then seem to have been replaced by bronze. They would have a cord through the center of them, from which they would be thrown. It is unknown how big the area from which the discus would be thrown (called a balbis) was, but it was marked for a wider area than the modern, allowing the discus to be thrown in any direction, except for directly behind the thrower.

Discus is a routine part of most modern track-and-field meets at all levels and is a sport which is particularly iconic of the Olympic Games. The men's competition has been a part of the modern Summer Olympic Games since the first Olympiad in 1896. Images of discus throwers figured prominently in advertising for early modern Games, such as fundraising stamps for the 1896 games and the main posters for the 1920 and 1948 Summer Olympics.

The discus was re-discovered in Magdeburg, Germany, by Christian Georg Kohlrausch and his students in the 1870s. His work around the discus and the earlier throwing techniques have been published since the 1880.

The first modern athlete to throw the discus while rotating the whole body was František Janda-Suk from Bohemia (present Czech Republic). He invented this technique when studying the position of the famous statue of Discobolus. After only one year of developing the technique he gained the olympic silver in 1900.

The women's competition was added to the Olympic program in the 1928 games, although they had been competing at some national and regional levels previously.