As he watched the Olympic Movement and the Games grow and expand from a distance, Baron Pierre de Coubertin recognized that his great creation was evolving and adapting in ways he had foreseen—and in ways he hadn’t.  The intrusion of politics into the Olympic world took on new dimensions as protests developed in the U.S. against the Nazi hosts of the 1936 Berlin Games.  In “Olympism and Politics,” an article he wrote that year for La Revue Sportive Illustrée, the Baron defended the Olympics against the threatened boycotts, but admitted that the institution had to evolve and adjust to the times in order to survive.  Today’s quote and the one on June 15 were drawn from the same passage and deal with the same subject but deserve to stand alone for the points they make on the surface.

“I am too accustomed to living within the bosom of general history and to scrutinizing its meandering to be unaware of the important concept of evolution. I am hardly surprised, and even less indignant, to find it everywhere. Every institution, every creation, no matter how vibrant it may be, evolves in keeping with the customs and passions of the moment.”