As the world turns its collective attention to the rapidly approaching Paris Olympic Games, it’s worth taking a moment to take a closer look at Pierre de Coubertin, the French historian and educational theorist who was the driving force behind the modern Olympic movement.
De Coubertin, whose childhood was significantly marked by France’s loss in the Franco-Prussian War and the tumult of the Paris Commune, became a staunch advocate of the role of sports in elite English schools, which he saw as playing a key role in the development and maintenance of Britain’s powerful empire. In particular, he revered Thomas Arnold, the longtime headmaster of Rugby School, whom he enthusiastically called “one of the founders of athletic chivalry” given his unrelenting determination to integrate sports and sporting values in the English educational system.
As it happens, de Coubertin rather significantly overhyped Arnold’s sporting enthusiasm—sports did not become part of Rugby’s curriculum until 1850, eight years after Arnold died; and by all accounts his educational program was primarily focused on the pedagogical value of Latin grammar and Christian philosophy—but as any academic will tell you, you should never let a few annoying little facts get in the way of a good theory.
And by the late 1880s, de Coubertin believed that he had a particularly good theory indeed: convinced that organized sports were the natural incubators of a modern society’s moral and social strength, he insisted that they play an active role in the French educational experience so that the nation could achieve its luminous potential—including, needless to say, victory in warfare, something France had conspicuously failed to achieve during his lifetime.
The French authorities, however, were not swayed by de Coubertin’s muscular arguments, and his plans to integrate physical education into their school system were soundly rejected (as any trip to a contemporary French collège or lycée will amply demonstrate).
But the tenacious de Coubertin would not be denied: re-orientating his focus from the national interest to the international one, he became obsessed with the romantic quest of reviving the ancient Greek Olympiads for the modern age, notably assisted by the Greek philanthropists Evangelos and Konstantinos Zappas, who’d already refurbished Athens’ famous Panathenaiko Stadium to host their own smaller Olympic revival movement decades earlier.
No longer trumpeting the military benefits of a domestic sporting culture, de Coubertin abruptly changed tack and detailed how a regularly engaged global athletics community would reduce the threat of war through the resuscitation of an ancient ideal that emphasized the purity of amateur sport and the pre-eminent virtue of competition for its own sake, rather than winning at all costs.
It was never entirely clear to what extent de Coubertin’s Olympic sporting philosophy was morally sound, historically accurate, or even, frankly, intellectually coherent. Critics have mentioned, for example, that the ancient Greeks hardly subscribed to the notion that “participation is more important than winning”, and the degree to which those ancient athletes could reasonably be considered “amateurs” is also a matter of lively debate.
Others have naturally pointed out that the “purity” of the amateur athlete is something that only an aristocrat like de Coubertin could afford to indulge in; and in any event achieving genuine international excellence in any domain necessarily requires a monumental commitment of both time and money (among other things)—which is why, after nearly a century of rank hypocrisy and double-talk, the official Olympic policy of “amateurism” was finally jettisoned back in 1984. And then there’s de Coubertin’s damning assessment of female athletics: “Impractical, uninteresting, unaesthetic and incorrect”.
As for his repeated assertion that the new Olympic Games would reduce the likelihood of military conflict by providing a regular forum for cross-cultural understanding, history has hardly borne that out either, given that the modern Games have strongly overlapped with what has been, by any reasonable measure, the bloodiest and most war-ravaged period in human history.
This is not, of course, the fault of the Olympic movement itself, but it’s equally hard to conclude that it has done much, in itself, to make the world a more tolerant place, even on the few occasions when it deliberately tried to do just that.
As it happens, a vivid example of how such attempts can spectacularly backfire was provided by de Coubertin himself, who famously came out of retirement in 1931 to publicly lobby for Berlin being awarded the 1936 Games, persuaded as he was that by giving Germany’s struggling Weimar government a prestigious international event to boost the spirits of its beleaguered populace, he was strongly furthering the cause of global peace.
But it sure didn’t turn out that way.
And yet, the important thing to consider, some 130 years after the founding of the International Olympic Committee, is not whether or not Pierre de Coubertin was a saint (he clearly wasn’t), or if his Olympic Games have in any way prevented war (they clearly haven’t), or even to what extent the IOC has provided any form of global moral leadership (don’t make me laugh).
No, the key question to ask ourselves is simply: Would the world be better or worse off today without the Olympics?
And for me, at least, the answer is most definitely: worse. Despite various negatives—the constant corruption scandals, the ongoing cat and mouse game of doping and anti-doping technologies, the daily nationalistic “medal count” trumpeting, the thought of breakdancing being considered a sport—the opportunity for everyone around the world to take a “global time out” and focus their attention on something genuine, different and often truly inspirational is a wonderful thing, and one we would all be much the poorer for without.
So thanks, Pierre.
Howard Burton, July 22, 2024
Howard is a filmmaker and the author of six non-fiction books on various topics, details can be found HERE. His most recent book, Chessays: Travels Through the World of Chess, includes thought-provoking essays on chess as a sport, tennis, entertainment and the Olympic Games.
He is also the Director of Pandemic Perspectives (2022), Through the Mirror of Chess: A Cultural Exploration (2023), Raphael: A Portrait (2024) and Botticelli’s Primavera (2025) which is the first film in our Renaissance Masterpieces Series.
