When Baron Pierre de Coubertin left the IOC in 1925, he was sixty-two, an age by which most men have turned more conservative, less liberal and far more risk adverse.  But here the Baron once again departed from the norm, launching two new initiatives—the ‘Union Pédagogique Universelle’ and the ‘Bureau lnternational de Pédagogie Sportive’—both designed to serve the working class by providing access to new forms of sport and education.  He would not succeed in these new ventures, but they revealed the unchanging character of a man who sought to serve the greater good through each stage of his life.  This quote is from the Baron’s retirement speech at the Opening of the Olympic Congress in Prague in 1925.

“No doubt I have already surprised or even shocked some listeners in displaying revolutionary tendencies at a time when conservative instincts are more heavily accented. But I owed a frank explanation of my plans to my colleagues, to my faithful friends. I wanted to tell them, too, that I am taking on this new work in the athletic spirit that we have cultivated together, in other words in the spirit of effort, the taste for risk, and the pursuit of the impartial ideal.”