The story
Kirkpinar Oil Wrestling Festival in Edirne
The Kirkpinar Oil Wrestling Festival in Edirne is the world's oldest continuously held sporting event, dating to the 14th century. Held annually, usually in late June or early July, at Sarayici, wrestlers known as pehlivans, coated in olive oil, compete over three days for the Golden Belt and the title of Chief Pehlivan.
Long before most of today's professional sports leagues existed, wrestlers were already gathering each summer near Edirne, in Turkey's northwestern corner near the Greek and Bulgarian borders, for a tournament that has now run, by most accounts, continuously since 1357 or 1362, deep in the Ottoman Empire's earliest expansion into Europe, years before the conquest of Constantinople.