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Photo courtesy of Stephen G. Miller

Scratched on the walls of the stadium tunnel, a 40-yard-long passageway that led from a locker room (or apodyterion) to the arena, are graffiti identifying several athletes known from antiquity. One of them was Telestas, who triumphed in boys’ boxing at Olympia in 340 B.C.; at Nemea, he marked his name at the bottom of the stone. Above Telestas’s name, someone else, perhaps another athlete, added a word: niko, meaning “I win!”