As he stood before the IOC at the Olympic Congress in Prague in 1925, Baron Pierre de Coubertin was ready to retire after 31 years at the helm. But as he said goodbye, he encouraged his colleagues to be bold and daring as they led the Olympic Movement into the future. His Olympic Games had reached the pinnacle of global sport in Paris in 1924, but in his opening speech at the Congress, he exhorted his colleagues to reach even higher.

“Sports cannot be made fearful and prudent without compromising its vitality. It needs the freedom of excess. That is its essence, its reason for being, the secret of its moral value. It is fine to teach people to be bold and reflective; but to teach them to be afraid of daring is folly. Daring for daring's sake in the absence of real need—that is when our body overcomes its own animal nature.”

The photo below shows Pierre de Coubertin (center), the Baroness de Coubertin (right) and Jiri Guth-Jarkowsky (left), the founding member of the IOC from Czechoslovakia, at City Hall in Prague for the Olympic Congress in May of 1925