Despite the overall success of his Olympic Games, Baron Pierre de Coubertin remained insistent—to the very end—in reminding people that his original and most important mission in life was educational reform.  His work on the Olympic Games was initially intended to promote the popularity of sport in order to empower the physical education reforms he was pushing throughout in French school systems.  Although he never achieved any comparative level of success in his physical education initiatives, he clung to the idea that education reform was the key to building a better world.  This passage is from the Baron’s “Message to the Olympia-Berlin (Torch Relay) Runners,” which appeared in Le Sport Suisse in 1936.

“For me, fifty years have passed since that day in 1886 when, casting aside any concern of a personal nature, I vowed that my life's work would be to prepare for the reform of education, convinced as I was that from now on, no political or social stability can he achieved without educational reform first ... I am aware that I have completed my mission, but not fully.”