Modern Olympics Movement

The Modern Olympic Revival

Pierre de Coubertin, who possessed a more inclusively cosmopolitan vision and greater organizational skills than his predecessors, succeeded where they had failed. Schooled in the classics like every educated European, he exploited the aura of antiquity in order to achieve an avowedly political goal—international peace and reconciliation. His motivation was more than political. He was obsessed with a vision of the Olympics as a secular religion. “The first essential characteristic of ancient as of modern Olympism,” he proclaimed, “is that it is a religion.”

In 1894, Coubertin convened an international conference at the Sorbonne, ostensibly to discuss amateurism in sports. Seated in a grand auditorium whose walls were decorated with classical murals by Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, the delegates were aurally seduced by the ancient “Hymn to Apollo,” discovered the previous year at Delphi, set to music by Gabriel Fauré, and sung by Jeanne Remade and the chorus of the Opéra Francais. In this carefully constructed milieu, Coubertin suggested that an International Olympic Committee (IOC) be organized to revive the ancient games. The delegates agreed and Coubertin selected the members. Some of them, like the American William Milligan Sloane and the Czech Jiri Guth-Jarkowvsky, were energetic and able men; others were titled aristocrats whom Coubertin chose for their prestige. To this day, the IOC selects its own members, all of whom are supposed to represent the Olympic movement rather than their country.

Athens was chosen as the most appropriate site for the revived games and a Greek man of letters, Demetrios Bikelas, was chosen as the first IOC president. (He served, rather ineffectually, until 1896, after which Coubertin took the office and served until 1925.) Coubertin controlled the program for the [Page 1014]games and created a clever mix of ancient and modern sports. He included the javelin and the discus, events that had not been a part of modern track-andfield contests. His friend Michel Breal donated a trophy to be given to the winner of a twenty-two-mile race from the site of the battle of Marathon to the Olympic stadium. (The marathon's present distance—26.2 miles—was set in 1908 when the race began at Windsor palace and ended in the stadium at Shepherd's Field.) The throwers and the runners were joined by fencers, gymnasts, swimmers, and wrestlers; none of those events were a part of the ancient games. In other contests, oarsmen, cyclists, sharpshooters, and tennis players used modern sports equipment unknown before the nineteenth century.

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