h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The Hare and the Tortoise
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This is one of the oldest tales around and is thought to have been recounted in one form or another since at least the first Olympic Games in 776 BC. Competitive sports were a serious occupation in Classical Greece, just as they are now and many athletes would go to any lengths to win. This fable was concocted as a cautionary tale for athletes who were contemplating cheating by using drugs to enhance their performance or taking short cuts or any other nefarious means to win. It has had many characters telling the same tale – snails and foxes, koala bears and ostriches – but the version we know was finally written down by the great man of fables, Aesop. It is thought he selected the tortoise and the hare for his principal characters, partly for dramatic purposes but mostly because that was the name of the local tavern where he wrote most of it. The quick, boastful hare challenged the slow tortoise to a race. To his great shock and shame the normally slow lizard roundly beat him. However, he was later relieved when the tortoise failed a random drug test for performance enhancing steroids and was stripped of his gold medal.