There's one question no one watching the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics is asking themselves: "What's so hard about that?" The degree of difficulty behind the incredible athletic feats we're witnessing is, to put it simply, off the charts. And that's just the way Baron Pierre de Coubertin thought it should be. He recognized that there is something in the human spirit that loves a challenge. And he knew the global stage of the Olympic Games would bring out the best in every new generation of young athletes.

"(Young people) ... submitting themselves to a discipline which is doubly effective because freely consented to ... It is perfectly human to worship effort in a disinterested way and love difficult things simply because they are difficult. That is the philosophy of sport in general and of our union in particular."

This quote is taken from the text of Physical Exercises in the Modern World, a speech that Coubertin delivered in the Sorbonne in November of 1892 when he first proposed the restoration of the Olympic Games.