A French baron revived the Olympics after 1,500 years
Fifteen centuries after the ancient Games were banned, Pierre de Coubertin brought them back - and the first modern Olympics opened in Athens in 1896.
The ancient Games had been dead for roughly fifteen centuries when a French educator, Pierre, baron de Coubertin (1863-1937), set out to revive them. Convinced that sport could build character and bridge nations, he won backing at a congress at the Sorbonne in 1894, where delegates founded the International Olympic Committee (IOC).
Just two years later, the first modern Olympic Games opened in Athens in 1896, a deliberate nod to their Greek birthplace. Coubertin served as IOC president from 1896 to 1925, steering the young movement through its fragile early decades.
Where the ancient Games honoured Zeus, Coubertin’s revival was built on a new ideal: international friendship through fair competition. Much of the modern spectacle we now take for granted - the rings, the flame, the motto - flowed from his vision rather than from antiquity.
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