Coubertin Quote for Apr, 16
I see modern Olympism as having at its core a sort of moral Altis, a sacred Fortress where the competitors in the manly sports par excellence are gathered to pit their strength against each other.Share
When he wrote this passage in 1935, Baron Pierre de Coubertin was broke and living alone in a one-room apartment in Geneva. The wealth of his inheritance exhausted, he was living in circumstances that were in some ways the exact opposite of the aristocratic luxury into which he was born. And yet, he refused to let the bitterness and disappointment he felt bleed into his writings about the Olympics. In this article on The Philosophic Foundation of Modern Olympism, which was published in Le Sport Suisse, he continued to celebrate the strength of the Movement he had launched forty-one years before.
Two points worth observing here: The idea of a sacred fortress at the heart of modern Olympism—a moral bastion—may have been an argument against those calling for boycotts of the upcoming 1936 Berlin Olympics, which had, of course, fallen under Nazi control. His reference to ‘manly sports’ reflects the intransigence of his attitude against women competing in the Olympic Games despite the progress made toward greater gender inclusion in the ten years since he had retired.