Tribute to founder of the Modern Olympic Games

The Olympic fever has swept the world once again. The latest edition of the Summer Olympic Games have started. The sportsmen and women from all over the world have thronged to Beijing to strive for supremacy at the world’s greatest sporting extravaganza.

I had the rare privilege and honour of managing the Sri Lanka Team for the 28th edition of the Summer Olympic Games in 2004 when the Olympic Games returned to the ancient birthplace and the city of their revival Athens in Greece.

Here is a tribute to the gentleman who made it all possible. The revival of the Olympic Games in 1896 was the work of the French nobleman Baron Pierre de Coubertin, and was the outcome of his vision of the rebirth of the ideals of ancient Greek athletics. His unceasing efforts to make that vision into reality allow us to call him the founder of the modern Olympic Games.

Pierre de Coubertin was born in Paris on 1 January 1863. His father, the well-known painter Charles Louis Baron Fredy de Coubertin, and his highly-educated mother, Agathe Gabrielle de Criseney, cultivated a love of classical education in him from a very early age. Pierre studied fine arts, science and law, and became involved in the theory of education and educational systems.

The Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71 and its unfortunate outcome for France stimulated his patriotism and his country’s defeat was humiliating for him. His studies of the educational systems of Europe and America led him to the conclusion-even before the age of 25 that athletic exercise was of great value in the intellectual development and upbringing of young people.

His travels through Europe and America showed him that interest in athletics was gaining ground in many countries although there was still complete indifference on the subject in France.

In his efforts to help his country and with his faith in the idea of Olympism now firmly founded, he launched a movement which was to embrace the whole of humanity.

De Coubertin compared the educational systems of the various countries and determined that the purpose of his life should be the development of athletics, first of all in his own country. He engaged in impassioned efforts to make it clear to all that athletics is essential for the general education of young people.

Romantic and realist at the same time, he took note of the technological developments of his time and the changes in the way of life brought about by the great inventions of the railway and telegraphy.

The peoples of the world were coming closer together, and so internationalism gradually made its way into his vision. Pierre de Coubertin cultivated in his mind for quite a number of years the idea of reviving the Olympic Games.

It was not a fantasy: it was the logical termination of a great movement. The 19th century saw the birth everywhere of the idea of physical exercise.

In the dawn of the century, the idea was born in Germany and Sweden; by the middle of the century it has reached England, and as the 1800s drew to a close, it flourished in the United State and France.

Pierre de Coubertin came to Athens and strove to gain acceptance for the Committee’s proposal: the modern Olympics were under way and must not lose momentum.

Together with other foreign philhellenists and humanists, Coubertin, the great fighter, managed to persuade Crown Prince Constantine and the royal family to help in implementing the plan.

The organizing and executive committees were set up, and Athens began preparations so that everything should be ready for the opening ceremony in March 1896. The vision of the French educational theorist had become reality.

From 1896, when he became President of the International Olympic Committee, until the end of his life he strove constantly to consolidate the idea of Olympism and to aid the development of young people all over the world.

He knew that the younger generation represented the future hopes of mankind, and that peace and civilization in the modern world depend on the careful upbringing of young people.

Pierre de Coubertin ceased to strive for the ideals of the Olympic Games on 2 September 1937, as he strolled in the Langrage Park, Geneva.

His heart rests in Olympia - a place which belongs to him, to the man who revived its soul and its conscience. Perhaps the most famous saying of de Coubertin is: “The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win but to take part, just as the most important thing in life is not the victory, but the struggle”.

Commodore Shemal FERNANDO