Measure ad performance. Select basic ads. Create a personalised ads profile. Select personalised ads. Apply market research to generate audience insights. Measure content performance. Develop and improve products. List of Partners vendors. Share Flipboard Email. Robert McNamara. History Expert. Robert J. McNamara is a history expert and former magazine journalist. He was Amazon. I wanted to give the world, in an enduring way, an ancient institution whose guiding principle was becoming necessary for its health.
Featured Video. Cite this Article Format. McNamara, Robert. History of the Olympics in Rome, Italy. Cities and the Quest to Host the Olympics Games. Racial Controversies and the Olympic Games. History of Women's Basketball in America. In he had visited England for the first time and learned of the work of Dr. In he embarked on a tour of Canada and America with a view to discovering the methods of education used in schools and colleges in those countries. In he visited England again and was introduced to Dr William Penny Brookes, founder of the Much Wenlock games, an Olympic style yearly sporting competition.
At around this time excavations around Olympia found artefacts that suggested that ancient Olympia was a prosperous place. Pierre de Coubertin began to dream of a revival of the ancient Olympics and in he put the proposal to the Paris Sports Society he had founded earlier. Unfortunately the proposal was not well-received. Pierre de Coubertin was not put off and in invited athletes and sports people from nine different countries to attend a sports conference.
Louis, were not as positive, as these events were nearly eclipsed by world's fairs; the IOC and Coubertin were nearly displaced. However, the Games of , held in Stockholm, hewed more closely to Coubertin's ideals. Mandell wrote that these Games "were independent of any other distracting public festival and took place in facilities especially designed and built for the occasion.
He continued to promote his idea that the Games encourage peace and communication among nations through nonviolent competition in sports. He had volunteered to serve in the military, but instead, was assigned to oversee the physical education programs in French provincial schools. By this time, Coubertin had spent most of his formerly large fortune to promote the Games.
What was left disappeared in the rampant inflation that took place during the war. Impoverished, he dismissed his servants and sold his family home. His sister-in-law was killed when the Germans bombed Paris, his two nephews were killed in combat, and his beloved son suffered severe sunstroke at the age of two, became catatonic, and never recovered.
Coubertin's daughter, was mentally ill and required care. Coubertin's wife, in response to these tragedies, became compulsive and controlling, and refused to give any of her own money to support the family.
Coubertin was penniless during the last years of his life, but his wife refused to give him any spending money. After the Olympics in Paris, which were very successful, Coubertin retired from his post as president of the IOC. In his later years, he became isolated and bitter. However, the international tradition he created was now strong and full of life. He died in Geneva, Switzerland on September 2, After his death, one final Olympic ritual occurred. In his will, Coubertin left directions that his body should be buried in Lausanne, but his heart should be removed and buried in holy soil amid ruins on the site of the ancient Olympic Games.
These wishes were honored. An Encyclopedia Britannica article noted that "Coubertin's extraordinary energies, his taste for cultural symbolism, his social and personal connections, and his willingness to exhaust his fortune in pursuit of his ambitions were critical to launching the Olympic Movement. Coubertin left influences on the Olympic Games that endure today. The vast pageantry, and the ceremonial and ritual opening and closing of the games, began with him.
Because French people at the time were not interested in sport for sport's sake, and enjoyed elegant, artistic spectacles, he accompanied the events he organized with speeches, banquets, and solemn assemblies, often including displays of fireworks and torch-lit parades. He believed that sports should incorporate elements of theater and ritual in order to captivate the minds and hearts of participants and spectators.
Coubertin also contributed the paradoxical notion that the Olympics can intensify national pride and patriotism of individual nations, and at the same time, prevent conflict between nations because all the nations are involved together: that "the mixing of patriotism and competition will somehow further universal peace," as Mandell noted. He quoted Coubertin, who wrote in , "The Olympic Games, with the ancient [Greeks], controlled athletics and promoted peace. Is it not visionary to look to them for similar benefactions in the future?
All rights reserved. Early Interest in Sports As the member of a wealthy family, Coubertin did not face the pressure of having to make a living as a young man.
Sought Support for his Olympic Plan As Mandell pointed out, Coubertin had little contact with athletes, but he was superb at convincing bureaucrats and wealthy supporters that the Olympics were a worthy cause.
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