It should surprise no one that Baron Pierre de Coubertin, one of the world’s foremost experts on competitive sport at the start of the 20^thcentury, created his own definition of athletics.  While delivering a lecture on Olympia in Paris in 1929, he quoted this passage from his own “Manual of Athletic Education,” where it appears under the “Definition of Athletics.” While the Baron often advocated for a certain ‘excess’ in sport in order to expand the boundaries of human performance, it is interesting to note the caution he proscribes here—limiting the practice of athletics to the borderlines of risk.  In essence, he was saying be daring, but don’t be foolish.

“Athletics is the voluntary and habitual practice of intense muscular exercise based on a desire for progress and extending as far as risk.”