Pierre de Coubertin

Baron Pierre de Coubertin was born in Paris in 1863 and was personally involved in fencing, rowing, boxing and cycling. His visits to British 'public' schools resulted in a lifelong interest in trying to get the heavily academic French schools to take up more sports-orientated curricula. As an educational theorist, de Coubertin was convinced of the importance of sport for the development of the individual. He believed that the qualities of initiative, teamwork, sportsmanship and fair play should be encouraged in young people who participated in school sports and competitive games.

In 1982 at the age of 29, de Coubertin began to rally support for the revival of the Olympics. He felt that a great deal could be gained by bringing together the youth of the world in a friendly competition. He also believed that the Modern Olympic Games would be a period of concord in which all differences of status, religion, politics and race would be forgotten.

On the 23rd June, 1894 at the Paris Congress, de Coubertin founded the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and established the structure of the Olympic movement. Preparations began for the first Olympic Games of the Modern Era to be held in Athens in 1896. Similar proposals earlier in the century had produced irregular sporting festivals in Greece and Europe. However, de Coubertin's Games succeeded where others had failed because of his ability to combine his theories of amateur sport and society with an organisational structure based on modern nation states. He served as President of the IOC from 1896 to 1925.

Each Olympic Games sees the interpretation of de Coubertin's ideals in the specific historical conditions of the period, particularly as they may apply to the host nation. Having died in Geneva in 1937, Pierre de Coubertin will be remembered as the founder of the Modern Olympic Games.