The review of the unpublished material from the excavations carried out in the 1950-1960s, of the sanctuary of Contrada Mango at Segesta, led to the discovery of a statuette of an athlete. The piece, which, to our knowledge, is unique of its kind, is made from a grey stone of uncertain provenance. The first part of the article explores the context of the statuette, found in close proximity to the north wall of the temenos. The second part provides a detailed description and analysis of the statuette as regards its style and iconography. The male figure with its head and torso intact suggests, from the rendering of the pectoral and back muscles and the right shoulder stance and the conveyed weight distribution, the representation of a discus thrower and a date of 470-460 BCE. In its execution the sculpture shows affinities with Cycladic craftsmanship. As demonstrated in the third part of the article, Segesta had either direct or mediated links with this artistic world in the second quarter of the 5th century BCE, a time when a monumental peripteral temple in the Greek style was erected in the sanctuary of Contrada Mango. The miniaturistic piece would have lent itself plausibly as a sculptor's model but the most immediate hypothesis – given also the presence of traces of colour – is that it was modeled as a votive dedication. The find – evoking the passage in Herodotus (Historiae V, 47, 2) of the hero cult offered by the Segestans to Philippus of Croton (the winner of an Olympic race and, subsequently, a follower of Dorieus in the Expedition to Sicily) – forcefully highlights the male element in a Segestan sacred context. This seems to be associated to an aristocratic class open to the Greek elite able to conserve but also remodel its political identity and renew the image of the prosperous Elymian centre and its civic community.