The cultural extensions of sport today reach into every aspect of society and our social lives—and certainly every form of art and media.  Sport could hardly be more pervasive in our time.  But only a 100 years ago, it was just beginning to breach those cultural borders and establish legitimate outposts across the creative spectrum. Baron Pierre de Coubertin documented its cultural expansion in “Olympic Letter XIX: Sporting Pleasure,” which appeared in La Gazette de Lausanne on April 17, 1919. Back then, he delighted in the growing influence of athletics and the role the Olympic Games had had in spreading their popularity.  If he were around today, I’m sure he would astonished and thrilled at the scope and scale of modern sport.

“Yes! Athletics touches everything - morality, art, social organization ... You have not heard the last of its claims; one day I shall take up an idea which Marcel Prévost developed at the Brussels Olympic Congress in 1905, and shall explain to you how it even touches literature.”