You could easily get the impression from this quote that Baron Pierre de Coubertin had not seen any intelligent athletes in the first few generations of international competitors, but that is not at all the argument he was making.  His basic theme was that as modern athletics spread their footprint through all the professions and classes of society, more and more people were destined to embrace sport, among them great thinkers who may not have had the opportunity to compete in the past.  Today, of course, we have thousands of models of athlete scholars who have made their mark in academia, sport and all the professions—just as the Baron predicted. Today’s quote is from a speech the Baron delivered at the Opening of the Advisory Conference on the Arts, Literature, and Sports in Paris in May of 1906, where he was attempting to convince a highly creative audience of poets, painters, writers, musicians and sculptors to embrace the Olympic Games.

"To interpret the muscular strain that effort causes in the athlete's body, should the sculptor not also have felt something similar in his own body? But what is this? Are we going to let ourselves be stopped by such baseless and outdated prejudice about the incompatibility of sports and certain professions? The power and universality that have been achieved in such a short time through the renaissance of athletics safeguard us against any such fear. The coming generation will see exceptional thinkers who are also athletes."