For nearly 40 years the Consul General of Greece in Boston has presented the Boston Athletic Association with olive branch wreaths to crown the four first-place winners of the race.
Stratos Efthymiou, the current consul general of Greece in Boston, will present the wreathes to the Boston Athletic Association at the the State House on April 11. The BAA will use those wreathes to crown the winners on April 18, three days after the marathon.
"It is an ancient Greek tradition," said Efthymiou during an interview with Boston Public Radio Tuesday. "The Greeks at the Olympic games, they didn't give money to the winners, they crowned them with olive wreathes. It was the glory and the symbolism that the wreath brought to the competition," he said.
Efthymiou joined BPR to talk about the wreath ceremony, the history of marathons, and more.
