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Pierre de Coubertin
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Pierre de Frédy, Baron de Coubertin (1 January 1863 – 2 September 1937) was a French pedagogue and historian who is best known as the founder of the International Olympic Committee.
in Paris into an aristocratic family, the fourth child of Baron Charles Louis de Fredy de Coubertin and Agathe-Gabrielle de Mirville, de Coubertin was inspired by his visits to British and American colleges and universities, and set out to improve education in France.
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Pierre de Frédy, Baron de Coubertin (1 January 1863 – 2 September 1937) was a French pedagogue and historian who is best known as the founder of the International Olympic Committee.
Biography
Born in Paris into an aristocratic family, the fourth child of Baron Charles Louis de Fredy de Coubertin and Agathe-Gabrielle de Mirville, de Coubertin was inspired by his visits to British and American colleges and universities, and set out to improve education in France. He believed that part of this improvement should be sports education, which he considered to be an important part of the personal development of young people. He was particularly fond of rugby and was the referee of the first ever French championship rugby union final on 20 March 1892 between Racing Club de France and Stade Français.
Olympic Games
Historians and academics agree that Dr. Thomas Arnold, the legendary Head Master of Rugby School (1828-1842), was the single most important influence on the life and thought of Pierre de Coubertin (1,2).
De Coubertin was first and foremost an educationalist. In establishing the modern Olympic Movement, his ultimate goal was to improve the education of young people through organised sport. De Coubertin repeatedly attributed this idea (3,4) to the central role played by sports and games in English public schools and to the reforms pioneered by Thomas Arnold.
In fact, de Coubertin is thought to have exaggerated the importance of sport to Thomas Arnold, whom he viewed as “one of the founders of athletic chivalry” (5). The character-reforming influence of sport with which de Coubertin was so impressed, is more likely to have originated in Tom Brown’s School Days rather than exclusively in the ideas of Arnold himself. Nonetheless, de Coubertin was an enthusiast in need of a cause and he found it in England and in Thomas Arnold. “Thomas Arnold, the leader and classic model of English educators,” wrote de Coubertin, “gave the precise formula for the role of athletics in education. The cause was quickly won. Playing fields sprang up all over England” (6).
Intrigued by what he had read about English public schools, in 1883, at the age of twenty, de Coubertin went to Rugby and to other English schools to see for himself. He described the results in a book, L’Education en Angleterre, which was published in Paris in 1888. This hero of his book is Thomas Arnold and on his second visit in 1886, he reflected on Arnold’s influence in the chapel at Rugby School (7).
What de Coubertin saw on the playing fields of Rugby and the other English schools he visited was how “organised sport can create moral and social strength” (8). Not only did organised games help to set the mind and body in equilibrium, it also prevented the time being wasted in other ways. First developed by the ancient Greeks, it was an approach to education that he felt the rest of the world had forgotten and to whose revival he was to dedicate the rest of his life.
In 1890, seven years after his fact finding mission on the nature of the English public school system, de Coubertin visited Much Wenlock in Shropshire where Dr William Penny Brookes had put together a local revival of the Olympic Games. He was deeply impressed by the organisation of the Wenlock Olympian Games. In this revival and their equivalent in Greece, he recognised a growing international interest in the ancient Olympics, an interest that was fuelled by archaeological finds at Olympia. The time was right, he thought, to create an International Olympic Committee.
At an international congress on 23 June 1894 at the Sorbonne in Paris, he proposed a revival of the ancient Olympic Games. The congress led to the establishment of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), of which de Coubertin became the general secretary. It was also decided that the first of these IOC-organised Olympics would take place in Athens, Greece and that they would be held every four years. These Games proved a success thanks to the earlier efforts of a Greek philanthropist Evangelos Zappas who had paid for the refurbishment of the ancient Panathenian Stadium for the first modern revival of the Olympic Games. De Coubertin took over the IOC presidency when Demetrius Vikelas stepped down after the Olympics in his own country.
Despite the initial success, the Olympic Movement faced hard times, as the 1900 (in De Coubertin's own Paris) and 1904 Games were both swallowed by World's Fairs, and received little attention.
The 1906 Summer Olympics revived the momentum, and the Olympic Games grew to become the most important sports event. De Coubertin created the modern pentathlon for the 1912 Olympics, and subsequently stepped down from his IOC presidency after the 1924 Olympics in Paris, which proved much more successful than the first attempt in that city in 1900. He was succeeded as president, in 1925, by Belgian Henri de Baillet-Latour.
De Coubertin remained Honorary President of the IOC until he died in 1937 in Geneva, Switzerland. He was buried in Lausanne (the seat of the IOC), although, in accordance with his will, his heart was buried separately in a monument near the ruins of ancient Olympia.
1 Lucas, John A., Associate Professor of Physical Education at the Pennsylvania State University. Baron de Coubertin and Thomas Arnold. (http://www.la84foundation.org/OlympicInformationCenter/OlympicReview/1967/BDCE98/BDCE98e.pdf)
2 Musee Olympique Lausanne, Pierre de Coubertin Fonds: http://multimedia.olympic.org/pdf/en_report_1265.pdf
3 Michael Llewellyn Smith. Olympics in Athens 1896: The Invention of the Modern Olympic Games. Profile Books Ltd, London: 2004
4 Pierre de Coubertin, L’Education en Angleterre. Paris: 1888
12 La chevalerie moderne. Officieel Feestnummer. Olympische Spelen te Amsterdam, 1654.
6 Physical exercises in the modern world. Lecture given at the Sorbonne, November 1892.
7 Pierre de Coubertin, Une Campagne de 21 Ans 1887-1908. Librairie de l’education physique, Paris: 1909.
8 Pierre de Coubertin. The Olympic Idea. Discourses and Essays. Editions Internationales Olympiques, Lausanne, 1970.
Scouting
In 1911, Pierre de Coubertin founded two interreligious Scouting organizations were founded in France: the Eclaireurs de France (EdF) by Nicolas Benoit and the Eclaireurs Français (EF). These organizations later merged to form the Eclaireuses et Eclaireurs de France.
Legacy
The Pierre de Coubertin medal (also known as the De Coubertin medal or the True Spirit of Sportsmanship medal) is an award given by the International Olympic Committee to those athletes that demonstrate the spirit of sportsmanship in the Olympic Games.
The Pierre de Coubertin medal is considered by many athletes and spectators to be the highest award that an Olympic athlete can receive, even greater than a gold medal. The International Olympic Committee considers it as its highest honor.
A minor planet 2190 Coubertin discovered in 1976 by Soviet astronomer Nikolai Stepanovich Chernykh is named in his honor.
Olympic Stadium (Montreal) (Stade olympique in French) is located at 4549 Pierre de Coubertin Avenue in Montreal, QC
Quotations
The famous quotation, which is now a familiar French maxim:
L'important dans la vie ce n'est point le triomphe, mais le combat, l'essentiel ce n'est pas d'avoir vaincu mais de s'être bien battu.
The important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle, the essential thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well.
Further reading
- Pierre de Coubertin, Olympism: selected writings, edited by Norbert Muller, Lausanne, IOC, 2000
- John J Macaloon, This Great Symbol. Pierre de Coubertin and the Origins of the Modern Olympic Games, Univ. of Chicago Press, 1981, New Edition: Routledge 2007
- International Journal of the History of Sport, Volume 23 Issue 3 & 4 2006 -This Great Symbol: Pierre de Coubertin and the Origins of the Modern Olympic Games
- Michael Llewellyn Smith. Olympics in Athens 1896: The Invention of the Modern Olympic Games. Profile Books Ltd, London: 2004
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