While the Ancient Olympics originated in Greece, its modern incarnation is very much a French affair. The Games were revived in the 1890s by a French nobleman, Baron Pierre de Coubertin. He now holds a questionable legacy. For many years, French was the sole language of the Games.
FILE - The bronze bust of the French Baron Pierre de Coubertin stands at the entrance of the Hellenic Olympic Committee building in Athens, Tuesday, April 2, 2024. Coubertin envisioned the Olympics as a pacifist exercise that could foster international cooperation and peace, especially in the wake of France’s defeat in the Franco-Prussian War. The worst charge against Coubertin, was a personal letter he sent to Adolf Hitler praising the Nazi dictator and the Third Reich.
“At the start of the 20th century, France was the world center of art and sports,” says Patrick Clastres, a sport historian at the University of Lausanne.Coubertin also believed in the combination of “muscles and mind,” seeing the blending of sports and art as a cornerstone of the Olympic ethos. It was inspired by the ancient Greeks, who celebrated both physical and artistic excellence.
“The Ancient Greeks saw sports and the arts linked under the umbrella of the humanities. It’s important for Paris in particular as a culture capital to celebrate this,” says Dominique Hervieu, head of the Paris 2024 Culture Olympiad. This week, an homage was held at the Sorbonne university in Paris to commemorate the speech Coubertin gave in 1894 to initiate the first modern Olympics Games.
Clastres points out that the 1924 Paris Games were the first modern Olympics to use media and propaganda to project national prestige. The French government used newspapers, radio and even military resources to broadcast the Games, establishing a press center in the stadium for the first time.
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