The Olympic motto came from a priest's school sports day
"Faster, Higher, Stronger" wasn't ancient Greek wisdom - Coubertin borrowed it from a Dominican friar's school motto.
The Olympic motto “Citius, Altius, Fortius” - Latin for “Faster, Higher, Stronger” - sounds like a relic of antiquity, but it began at a French school. The phrase was coined by Father Henri Didon, a Dominican friar and teacher, who used it for his pupils’ athletics.
Pierre de Coubertin encountered the motto at one of Didon’s school sports festivals and adopted it for the new Olympic movement, proposing it at the 1894 founding congress of the IOC at the Sorbonne. Fittingly, the words are about striving and self-improvement rather than victory over others.
The motto stood unchanged for well over a century. In 2021 the IOC added a fourth word, “Communiter” (“Together”), so it now reads “Faster, Higher, Stronger - Together,” a nod to solidarity in difficult times.
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