Pierre de Coubertin

French diplomat and administrator

• Born: January 1, 1863
• Birthplace: Paris, France
• Died: September 2, 1937
• Place of death: Geneva, Switzerland

Coubertin was the driving force behind the revival of the Olympic Games on an international scale. Through his efforts, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) was established in 1894, and the first modern international Olympics were held in Athens in 1896. He also oversaw the difficult formative years of the Games until they reached maturity and success.

Early Life

Pierre de Coubertin (pyehr deh kew-behr-tahn) was born into a wealthy French aristocratic family in Paris. The third of four children, he enjoyed a privileged upbringing. Serious beyond his years, he was an intense youth of rather small stature and average appearance (later made more distinguished by an enormous, carefully groomed mustache), who developed attitudes much too liberal for his conservative, Roman Catholic, royalist parents. The disastrous defeat suffered by the French in the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871) was a disturbing reminder to him of France’s decline and convinced him that the old values of his family were no longer realistic in a “Bismarckian” world. The shaky beginnings of the Third Republic made the country’s future uncertain, but Coubertin became a firm supporter of the new regime. He developed interests in social criticism, journalism, history, and, most important, educational reform.

After completing a Jesuit education in Paris in 1880, the idealistic Coubertin embarked on a plan to reform French education along the lines of England’s privileged class especially in regard to physical training. No stranger to sport and competition (he had fenced, rowed, and boxed), he believed that part of France’s problems lay in the poor physical conditioning and mental attitude of its youth. In the British style of upper-class amateur athletics, he saw the seeds for English patriotism and a reason for England’s success. Becoming an unabashed Anglophile, Coubertin made the first of many trips to Britain in 1883 to observe for himself the playing fields that had nurtured the English elite.

Hoping to establish further his credentials as an expert in physical education and aiming to strengthen his control over French amateur athletics, Coubertin organized and financed a Congress for Physical Education in June of 1889. Besides the usual speeches and business meetings, there was music, ceremony, and sporting events. While the congress had many of the earmarks that would later characterize the Olympics, it attracted little positive attention. To expand his movement and give it a more international flavor, Coubertin visited the United States and Canada on an educational fact-finding mission for the French government soon after the 1889 congress. On his return, he stopped in England, where he attended some annual local English Olympic-style games in Shropshire, which, along with widespread publicity sparked by the recent excavations at Olympia in Greece, may have led Coubertin to think about a revival of the Olympic Games.

Life’s Work

While Coubertin is credited with organizing the first modern international Olympics in 1896, others had proposed the idea earlier, and the Greeks had already held their own modern games in Athens in 1859, 1870, 1875, and 1889. Coubertin first publicly proposed reviving the Olympic Games in 1892 at the “jubilee” meeting of his organization of French athletic clubs, the Union des Sociétés Françaises des Sports Athlétique (USFSA). The idea received a cold reception.

In 1893, Coubertin was again in the United States as the Third Republic’s representative to the Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition. His main reason for being there was to attend an international congress of higher education, but he used the opportunity to travel extensively, speak at American universities, visit athletic clubs (such as the Olympic Club in San Francisco), and look for allies sympathetic to his ideas about the Olympics. On this trip, he met William Sloane of Princeton, who would become his most fervent United States supporter and a member of the first international Olympic Committee.

Undaunted by his lack of success in generating sufficient interest in a modern Olympics, Coubertin organized an International Congress of Amateurs in 1894 at the Sorbonne and invited representatives from amateur athletic organizations in the United States and Europe to Paris, ostensibly to discuss the concept of amateurism in sport, one of the burning sports issues of the day. Contrary to the modern idea of amateurism, the term was being used by aristocratic sportsmen of the late nineteenth century to distinguish themselves from “professional” working-class athletes, with whom they had no desire to compete or associate.

It was at this conference that Coubertin and his circle of supporters, including Sloane, first confronted the unsuspecting international guests with the idea of reviving the Olympic Games a modern, multinational athletic contest among the young elite of the world as a means to promote patriotism, peace, and mental and physical excellence. Before the assemblage had dispersed, they had been seduced by the wily, affable, and persuasive Frenchman into voting to reestablish the Olympics for “amateurs” only. They had also accepted Coubertin’s International Olympic Committee (largely titled nobility with little or no responsibility) as the administering body of the Games and had confirmed his Greek cohort, Demetrius Vikelas, as its first president and him as secretary. At the closing session of the conference, Coubertin announced that there was no need to wait to hold the first Games in Paris at the 1900 Universal Exposition as he had originally proposed; they could be held in Greece, the land where the Games had originally begun, in Athens two years hence in 1896. The motion passed enthusiastically, and the modern international Olympics began to take shape.

Once the organization of the Games was under way, the Greeks did whatever they could to exclude Coubertin, whom they considered an interloper. Understandably, they saw these Olympics as an international edition of their own revived national Olympic festivals, and they intended to make Greece the permanent site for the Games. Consequently, while much of his organizational plan was incorporated, Coubertin was treated more like a visiting journalist than the founder of the International Olympic Committee (IOC).

Despite these difficulties and others, the 1896 Athens Olympics were a success. The fully restored ancient stadium (the first modern athletic spectator facility and model for all subsequent stadiums) was the same one used for the earlier 1870 and 1875 Greek Olympics, the majority of attending athletes and spectators were Greek, and most of the medals were won by Greeks, but, still, there was enough multinational flavor and support to get the Olympics off on the right foot. It was now an international sports festival, but it had attracted little worldwide attention.

Coubertin was able to fend off the Greek challenge to be permanent hosts of the “official” Olympics, and, through his carefully calculated propaganda, would eventually make the world practically forget the Greek contribution to the revival of the Games. As president of the IOC, Coubertin now looked to the 1900 Games to be held in his beloved Paris. Unfortunately, they took place within the context of the Paris Exposition, and, while Coubertin expected to have a prominent place in organizing the athletic activities, he was virtually ignored and had no control. The 1900 Games were a failure, and Coubertin became so dismayed at the carnival atmosphere of the 1904 St. Louis Games (held with the St. Louis Exposition) that he did not even attend. The Greeks, still hoping to advance their cause as the home of the Games, held an “Olympics” in Athens in 1906, which was well attended and was the most successful athletic gathering to date. The disgruntled Coubertin dismissed them as “unofficial” and made little of their impact. Ironically, the success of the “unofficial games” probably saved his faltering Olympic movement.

The 1908 London Olympics were again, to Coubertin’s dismay, held in conjunction with an international fair, this time the Franco-British Exhibition. A 100,000-seat stadium was built to accommodate the growing athletic spectacle, but these Games were also marred. Finally, the Olympics came of age in Stockholm in 1912, ensuring their continuation and bringing Coubertin’s dream to fruition; these Olympics were held solely for the sake of the Olympics. They were not part of a larger spectacle, the facilities had been built specifically for the 1912 Games, and, for the first time, all five continents were represented. The world now recognized the Olympics as a legitimate international event, and, as it did, Coubertin began to lose his exclusive control over the IOC and the Olympic movement. Though he continued to express his views through vehicles such as the Revue olympique (1901-1914), a monthly newsletter of the Olympic movement that he edited and published, fewer and fewer people were listening to what he had to say.

Just at the time the Olympics were coming of age, the 1916 Berlin Games were canceled because of World War I, which caused great family tragedy for Coubertin. During this period, he turned the presidency of the IOC over to Baron de Blonay, who was Swiss and therefore neutral. In 1918, Coubertin moved to Switzerland and established the IOC headquarters at Lausanne. The war focused the world’s attention on the need for international peace and harmony, and the only world festival that, on the surface at least, promoted these ideas was the Olympics. The Games of the Seventh Olympiad were quickly organized at Antwerp in 1920.

In 1924, the Olympics came to Paris for the second time. On this occasion, Coubertin probably came closest to receiving his country’s appreciation for his life’s work, though France never gave him the recognition he desired for his efforts in behalf of his native land. He was more appreciated outside France, where he was recognized solely as the founder of the Olympic movement. By this juncture, the IOC had gone from an assemblage of influential dignitaries selected by Coubertin to reinforce his own decisions to a working body almost independent of his direction. He had become a symbol rather than a factor in the mechanics of the Games. The elitism of the early Olympics had passed, and they became the property and heritage of all the people of the world. Coubertin, who had become lonely, unhappy, bitter, and suspicious, did what he could to remind the world of his role as the reviver of the Games. He remained IOC president until 1925 and a member of the IOC until his death. He ultimately produced twenty books and hundreds of articles of uneven import and quality. Many of his projects ultimately came to nothing.

The Olympic movement continued to grow with successes at Amsterdam in 1928 and Los Angeles in 1932. The last Olympics of Coubertin’s lifetime were, ironically, the Nazi Olympics in Berlin in 1936. By this time, the Olympics had become an unimagined phenomenon already assuming social, economic, and political implications that even Coubertin could not have foreseen. His place in sports history had been ensured, and the process of mythologizing the Games and the person responsible for their revival had begun. The 110,000 spectators at the opening ceremony of the Berlin Olympics listened in reverence to a recording of Coubertin’s voice, but Coubertin himself was not even invited to attend. The real Coubertin was left almost forgotten and in poverty in Switzerland. He died the following year in Geneva of a heart attack when he was seventy-four years old. His heart was placed in a monument that can still be visited today on the grounds of the International Olympic Academy at Olympia, Greece. Perhaps the greatest irony of Coubertin’s life was that the individual who had done more than any other to create the world’s greatest modern athletic spectacle rarely associated with athletes himself.

Significance

More than any other single individual, Coubertin deserves credit for reestablishing the modern Olympics. Others had ideas and made proposals to revive athletic competitions along the lines of the ancient games in Greece, but none had the perseverance and wherewithal of Coubertin. Aggressive, dynamic, energetic, and persuasive, he was born in France during a difficult period. French fortunes were on the decline, accentuated by the recent defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, and it was a time of soul-searching for every Frenchman, particularly one of aristocratic background. A patriot and firm supporter of the Third Republic, he looked for an avenue to which to devote his energy and wealth and found it in educational reform, particularly in regard to physical fitness. This idea led to his ultimate proposal at the congress held at the Sorbonne in 1894 of reviving the Olympics on an international scale to promote patriotism, world peace, and mental and physical excellence.

By the time of his death in 1937, the Berlin Games had established the Olympics as a world spectacle of unlimited dimensions, and Coubertin, never fully appreciated, had lost control of the movement he had begun. Mythologized by the world, he became part of the symbolism of the Olympic Games. The man himself was almost forgotten.

Bibliography

Guttmann, Allen. The Olympics: A History of the Modern Games. 2d ed. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002. The first chapter, “The Baron’s Dream,” describes Coubertin’s plans to revive the Olympics.

Lucas, John. The Modern Olympic Games. South Brunswick, N.J.: A. S. Barnes, 1980. An overview of the Olympics up to 1980. The first chapter is on Coubertin, and the next six cover the Games and the growth, trials, and triumphs of the Olympic movement during his lifetime.

MacAloon, John J. This Great Symbol: Pierre de Coubertin and the Origins of the Modern Olympic Games. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981. A social scientist’s intense, detailed study, which is at once a history of the origins of the modern Olympics and of the first Games in Athens, and a biography (focusing on the first half of Coubertin’s life) of their founder.

Mandell, Richard D. The First Modern Olympics. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976. A sports historian’s general assessment of Coubertin’s life and activities before, during, and after the first modern Olympic Games in Athens, as well as discussions on the ancient Games, earlier proposals for revival, and a full treatment of the 1894 Games.

Yalouris, Nicolaos, ed. The Olympic Games. Athens: Ekdotike Athenon, 1976. The best illustrated survey for general readers of the Olympic Games from ancient to modern times. In the second section, entitled “Modern Olympic Games,” Coubertin’s role in reviving the Olympics is discussed, and short accounts and photographs are included for the Olympiads with which he was associated and others up to 1976.

Young, David C. The Olympic Myth of Greek Amateur Athletics. Chicago: Ares Press, 1984. This book is not specifically on Coubertin, but it contains the most realistic assessment of his motives and methods in reinstituting the Olympic Games.