He was venerated at Olympia, where his cult developed into the founding myth of the Olympic Games, the most important expression of unity, not only for the people of Peloponnesus, but for all Hellenes.

Their sons include Pittheus[11] (or his mother was Dia[12]), Troezen,[13] Alcathous,[14] Dimoetes,[15] Atreus,[16] Thyestes,[17] Copreus,[18] Hippalcimus[19] (Hippalcus,[20] Hippalcmus[21]), Sciron,[22] Sicyon,[23] Epidaurus,[24] Cleones[25] (Cleonymus),[26] Letreus,[27] Dyspontos,[28] Pelops the younger,[29] Argeius,[30] Dias,[21] Aelius, Corinthus, Cynosurus and Hippasus.

Wanting to make an offering to the Olympians, Tantalus cut Pelops into pieces and made his flesh into a stew, then served it to the gods.

Demeter, deep in grief after the abduction of her daughter Persephone by Hades, absentmindedly accepted the offering and ate the left shoulder.

While Tantalus was banished to Tartarus, Pelops was ritually reassembled and brought back to life, his shoulder replaced with one of ivory made for him by Hephaestus.

Later, Zeus found out about the gods' stolen food and their now revealed secrets, and threw Pelops out of Olympus, angry at his father, Tantalus.

On the way, his charioteer Cillus (also named Sphaerus) dies and stands in a dream over Pelops, who was highly distressed about him, to make requests for a funeral.

The race started, and went on for a long time, but just as Oenomaus was catching up to Pelops and readying to kill him, the wheels flew off and the chariot broke apart.

After his victory, Pelops organized chariot races as thanksgiving to the gods and as funeral games in honor of King Oenomaus, in order to be purified of his death.

This was one of the sources of the curse that destroyed his family: two of his sons, Atreus and Thyestes, killed their half brother, Chrysippus, who was his favorite son and was meant to inherit the kingdom; Atreus and Thyestes were banished by him together with Hippodamia, their mother, who then hanged herself; each successive generation of descendants suffered greatly by atrocious crimes and compounded the curse by committing more crimes, as the curse weighed upon Pelops' children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren including Atreus, Thyestes, Agamemnon, Aegisthus, Menelaus, and finally Orestes, who was acquitted by a court of law convened by the gods Athena and Apollo.

[53] Pausanias was told the full story: the shoulder-blade of Pelops was brought to Troy from Pisa, the rival of Elis; on the return, the bone was lost in a shipwreck, but afterwards recovered by a fisherman, miraculously caught in his net.

In ancient times there was obviously no knowledge of dinosaurs or mammoths, and such findings were believed to be actual remains of legendary heroes or demigods, and to reflect the supposedly supernatural stature of humans of the long-bygone Heroic Age.

The bones' provenance was then determined according to local legends about ancient burials, with political expedience also playing a major role, helped along by convenient dreams, visions or priestly auguries.