In seeking to develop a stronger link between sport and education, Baron Pierre de Coubertin sought to emphasize that a good teacher could apply the lessons of sport—the qualities of confidence it generated—to other, if not all, aspects of life.  This was the central thesis of an argument he made in his speech to the Greek Liberal Club of Lausanne in February 1918 titled “What We Can Now Ask of Sport.”

“Sport plants in the body seeds of physio-psychological qualities such as coolness, confidence, decisiveness etc... These qualities may remain localized around the exercise that brought them into being ... How many daredevil cyclists there are who once they leave their machines are hesitant at every crossroads of existence, how many swimmers who are brave in the water but frightened by the waves of human existence, how many fencers who cannot apply to life's battles the quick eye and nice timing which they show on the hoards! The educator's task is to make the seed bear fruit throughout the organism, to transpose it from a particular circumstance to a whole array of circumstances, from a special category of activities to all the individual's actions.”