Pierre de Coubertin

Pierre de Coubertin (1863-1937), French educator and thinker, who was the principal organizer of the modern Olympic Games. Born in Paris, Coubertin did not follow the career in the military or the church that his parents had planned for him, instead choosing to pursue a liberal arts education at the École Libre des Sciences Politiques (Free School of Political Science) in Paris. During the 1880s, Coubertin made several trips to England, and became interested in reforming the French educational system. As part of his educational philosophy, he insisted that sports and physical training played an essential role in the formation of a student's character. Coubertin started to promote his ideas by writing papers and founding numerous sporting societies.

In the late 1880s Coubertin was commissioned by the French government to form a universal sports association, and his vision of an amateur championship for the world's athletes began to take shape. In 1894 he invited representatives from several countries to Paris to attend an international athletic congress. Coubertin used the occasion to propose the organization of the Olympic Games, which would be an international competition modeled on the Olympic Games of ancient Greece. The proposal passed, and that same year the International Olympic Committee (IOC), the international governing body of the Olympic Games, was founded. The committee selected Athens, Greece, as the site of the first Olympic Games, to be held in 1896. Coubertin served from 1896 to 1925 as the IOC's president, helping develop the Olympic Games into a prestigious event. An award named in his honor, the Pierre de Coubertin International Trophy for Fair Play, has been given annually since 1964 by the International Committee for Fair Play, located in Paris, to recognize acts of sportsmanship in athletics.