ABSTRACT
Athletic contests, especially those promoting skills useful in hunting and warfare, figure prominently in popular and folk cultures from earliest history and around the world. The most basic of all athletic contests is the footrace, which has given rise to the largest number of folktales about sports deception. An even better-known deceptive athletic contest from Germanic mythology is the three-stage meet to which Brunhild subjects all suitors. Multiple athletic contests are also described in jests, typically with a rather slow-witted giant repeatedly allowing himself to be tricked by an ordinary, but clever and opportunistic human. The athletic and occupational contests discussed prove embarrassing to the heroes' victims, but they are not fatal, thus allowing a storyteller to tie together any number of episodes in a single tale. Encounters between him and mortals, recorded in innumerable local and regional legends, often include an athletic challenge.
