In reinventing the Olympic Games for the modern era, Baron Pierre de Coubertin introduced two major innovations that, he believed, would ensure their survival.  First, he made them international and made them open to anyone with the talent to make their national Olympic team, eliminating all racial, religious or social barriers to participation, and second, he made them ambulatory, moving every four years to a new host city to give all the nations of the world, over time, the opportunity to celebrate their cultures before all humanity.  As he wrote in his Olympic Memoirs, these ideas helped make the modern Olympic Games popular everywhere and served to spread the humanistic values of Hellenism which he cherished.

“By conceiving the new Games on a completely international level and by wishing to situate them on a world scale, I had not only chosen the only practical means of ensuring their continued survival but at the same time had served the best interests of Hellenism.”