What would it take to convince Emperor Theodosius I not to ban the Olympics in AD 394, and how long could they plausibly last if this were the case? In addition, how would the event change?
My uneducated two cents would be to give the tradition a more Christian feel - perhaps it could be another pagan festival co-opted into the Christian canon of holidays. This may well last it up until the Fourth Crusade (if it's explicitly Orthodox), or all the way to the conquest of Greece by the Ottomanns (if more generically Christian), or perhaps even continuation onwards under Ottomann cosmopolitanism.
...But then again, I'm no expert.
What do you think, guys?