Quotes like this deliver state-of-the-art interpretations of the psychology of sport from approximately 100 years ago.  Baron Pierre de Coubertin was a serious student of sports practice and performance at the earliest stages of modern athletics.  He worked across all the sciences, studying a wide spectrum of research and writing from the leading proponents of sport, psychology and physical education. This passage, from an article titled “Sports Psychology,” appeared in Notes on Public Education, a 320-page book published by Hachette in 1901. It gives you a sense of how the Baron viewed the various attributes of competitive success at the time.

“Most of the time, agility consists in properly distributing strength ... the spectator cannot perceive the moment when the ‘knack’ kicks in, no more than it realizes, in wrestling, the ingenious applications that wrestlers make of the laws of mechanics. Every good boxer possesses great agility, just as every good skater possesses great strength. Strength and agility are, in the end, merely appearances. Balance and combat are instincts.”