The Modern Olympic Movement Was Founded in Paris
On this day · 23 June 1894
In a Sorbonne auditorium, a French baron's stubborn dream became the committee that still runs the Games today.
On 23 June 1894, delegates gathered in the grand auditorium of the Sorbonne in Paris voted to revive the ancient Olympic Games and created the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to steward them. The driving force was Pierre de Coubertin, a French baron convinced that organised international sport could build understanding between nations.
The vote came on the closing day of an international congress that had drawn dozens of delegates from across Europe and the United States. Their unanimous resolution did more than launch a sporting body: it set in motion the first modern Games, held in Athens in 1896, just two years later.
Coubertin’s dream became a self-governing institution that has now guided the Olympic movement for well over a century.
The committee founded that day in Paris remains the supreme authority of the Olympic movement, choosing host cities and safeguarding the rituals, from the rings to the flame, that define the Games.
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