The magnitude of worldwide inspiration delivered through every edition of the Olympic Games today would astonish and certainly please Baron Pierre de Coubertin.  His legacy has reached far beyond his goals.  The Games have surpassed the influence he envisioned for them as a global spectacle—and now regularly produce feats of athletic beauty and inspire reverence through their rituals.  In 1908 he wrote the article, “Why I Revived the Olympic Games,” for the Fortnightly Review, and expressed his hopes that the Games would one day achieve the influence he hoped for.  While you could argue that the Olympic Movement has not yet realized the baron’s goals in education, it is clear that the Games have exceeded his hopes as a worldwide source of inspiration.

“If the modern Games are to exercise the influence I desire for them they must in their turn show beauty and inspire reverence—a beauty and a reverence infinitely surpassing anything hitherto realized in the most important athletic contests of our day. The grandeur and dignity of processions and attitudes, the impressive splendor of ceremonies, the concurrence of all the arts, popular emotion and generous sentiment, must all in some sort collaborate together. This cannot be achieved by a single Olympiad, nor even by three or four; it will need at least a quarter of a century. But, then, when one aspires to create or recreate institutions of this magnitude, the first condition is not to be in a hurry.”