ABSTRACT
In 1894, delegates from 12 countries met in Paris and set up the International Olympic Committee. The driving force behind the meeting was wealthy French educational pioneer Baron Pierre de Coubertin, whose seminal contribution to the establishment of the modern Olympics was the concept of international Games, held in a different country every four years.
De Coubertin was deeply impressed by the programmes of physical education at classic English public schools. He campaigned unsuccessfully for a much greater emphasis on physical education in French schools before launching his campaign for the revival of the Olympics. A meeting with Dr William Penny Brookes, founder of the Much Wenlock Olympics, inspired him.
Competitors should be amateurs, de Coubertin insisted, and athletics should be reserved for men only. He also believed that alongside the sporting competitions there should be artistic competitions of equal stature. These were introduced at the 1912 Stockholm Summer Games, where de Coubertin entered a poem into the literature competition under an assumed name – and won the gold medal.
When he died in 1937 his heart was removed and placed in a marble stele close to the ruins of Ancient Olympia.
