victors"(Gary 72). However, the athletes had to win three times before the
statues could be made in their likeness. Later, it was often the practice to
make "a breach in the walls of the city through which the victorious
athletes returned"(Gary 73). In the fifth century before the Common Era,
the Games reached their climax; and they were already showing their first sign
of decay. Trying for records and specialization claimed the interest of the
crowd. The invasion of the Macedonians put an end to the Greek city-states and,
relieved of the political controversies, they devoted themselves entirely to the
Olympic Games. Instead of training their growing youth like the Greeks, they
merely hired athletes and nationalized them. During the middle of the second
century before the Common Era, Greece came under the domination of the Romans,
who permitted the Games to continue but they had little interest in them.
Centuries passed and the Games still continued but the high Olympic ideals were
entirely discarded and profit alone provided the incentive. In "393 A.D.,
the Emperor Theodosius forbade the Games altogether"(Gorman 102) but they
had survived a period of "nearly 300 Olympiads or approximately 1200
years"(Gary 78). Full credit for the revival of the Olympic Games in the
modern era must go to Baron Pierre de Coubertin, who was "born in Paris,
Jan. 1, 1863 and who died at Geneva, Sept. 2, 1937"(Gary 89). Very early in
life he showed a taste for the study of "literature, history, and the
problems of education and sociology"(Gary 90). At the age of 17 he began to
scrutinise the weaknesses of his people who were trying to recover hope and
self-respect following the Franco-Prussian War. He concluded that "three
monarchies, two empires, and three republics during a single century are not
indicative of stability in the French character"(Gary 92). The solution, he
believed rested in the development of the individual. Coubertin had sufficient
means to travel, he therefore visited England and America where he studied
organised athletics conducted by students. He observed that "competing for
a place on an athletic team developed qualities of character whereas the
attitude in French schools was that games destroyed study"(Gorman 118). He
was convinced that he should devote his entire time and energy to securing a
reform in his own country. He decided to start at the bottom because, as he
expressed it, "the foundation of real human morality lies in mutual
respect-and to respect one another it is necessary to know one
another"(Gary 92) Coubertin was not an athlete but he chose athletics as
his field. The first major sport with which he associated himself was rowing,
but when he attempted to bring the British oarsmen to France or send the French
oarsmen to compete at Henley, he found that the "British and French
conceptions of amateurism were not the same"(Gorman 120). This gave him the
idea of bringing together educators, diplomats, and sports leader for the
purpose of developing a universal understanding of amateurism so that the
athletes of all nations might meet on an equal basis. Coubertin realized that to
capture the attention of disinterested persons he would have to originate
something spectacular. He began to dream of a revival of the Olympic Games. At a
meeting of the Athletic Sports Union at Sorbonne in Paris, Nov. 25, 1892, be
first publicly announced the Olympic Games idea. Speaking at the conference,
Coubertin said, "Let us export oarsmen, runners, fencers; there is the free
trade of the future-and on the day when it shall take place among the customs of
Europe the cause of peace will have received a new and powerful
support"(Gorman 125). However, his proposal to revive the Olympic Games
went for naught as his auditors failed to grasp the significance of the idea.
His next opportunity came in the spring of 1894 at an international congress
which he had assembled for the purpose of studying the questions of amateurism.
At this meeting, official delegates from France, England, the United States,
Greece, Russia, Sweden, Belgium, Italy, and Spain, were in attendance. Hungary,
Germany, Bohemia, Holland and Australia sent proxies or letters. Seven questions
concerning the problem of amateurism were on the agenda and Coubertin took the
liberty of adding an eighth, "Regarding the possibility of the revival of
the Olympic Games"(Gorman 125). Coubertin imparted his enthusiasm so well
that it was "unanimously agreed on June 23, 1894 to revive the Games and an
International Committee was formed to look after their development and well-being"(Gorman
130). Two years later in 1896 Greece celebrated in the rebuilt stadium of Athens
the first Olympic Games of the present cycle and from this beginning, the
world’s greatest athletic spectacle was established. Only the ceaseless labor,
the tenacity and the perseverance of Baron de Coubertin accomplished and
perfected this great work. Its main organization benefited from his methodical
and precise mind and from his wide understanding of the aspirations and needs of
youth. In fact, Coubertin was "the sole director of the Games in regards to
their form and character; the Olympic Charter and Protocol and the athlete’s
oath were his creation, as well as the opening and closing ceremonies of the
Games"(Gary 95). In addition, until 1925, he personally presided over the
IOC, assuming single-handed all the administrative and financial duties. The
work of Coubertin was, above all, a work of peace but there is one basic fact,
almost universally misunderstood which is that peace is not the major aim of the
Olympic Games. "Peace," Coubertin hoped and believed, "would be
furthered by the Olympic Games . . . but peace could be the product only of a
better world; a better world could be brought about only by better individuals;
and better individuals could be developed only by the give and take, the
buffeting and battering, the stress and strain of fierce competition."
Although they were founded as part of a vision of world peace, once the modern
Olympic Games became a truly important international event they also became a
stage for political disputes. The most controversial Olympics were the Berlin
Games of 1936. The IOC had voted in 1931 to hold these Games in Berlin, before
IOC members could have known that the Nazi movement would soon control the
country. When it became known in the early 1930s that under the rule of the
Nazis, German Jewish athletes were being barred from the 1936 German team which
was in violation of the Olympic Charter, many Americans demanded a boycott of
the 1936 Games. The boycott movement failed because Avery Brundage, head of the
United States Olympic Committee (USOC) at the time, was convinced by German
officials that "Jewish athletes would be permitted to try out for the
German team"(Gary122). In fact, only two Jewish athletes were named to the
1936 German Olympic team, and both were of mixed religious backgrounds. There
have been several boycotts of the Olympics by various countries. In 1956 the
Egyptian, Lebanese, and Iraqi teams boycotted the Melbourne Games to protest the
invasion of Egypt by the United Kingdom, France, and Israel that had occurred
earlier that year. Major boycotts of the Olympics occurred in 1976, 1980, and
1984. In 1976 many African nations demanded that New Zealand be excluded from
the Montreal Games because its rugby team had played against South Africa, then
under the rule of supporters of apartheid, the official policy of racial
segregation followed in that country from 1948 to the early 1990s. When the IOC
resisted the demands of the African countries with the argument that rugby was
not an Olympic sport, athletes from 28 African nations were called home by their
governments. The issue in the 1980 boycott of the Moscow Games was the invasion
of Afghanistan in 1979 by the USSR. Although American President Jimmy Carter
forced the USOC to "refuse the invitation to attend the Moscow Games, many
other NOCs defied their governments’ requests that they boycott the
Games"(Gary 124). Once Carter acted to spoil the Moscow Games and after
"62 nations did boycott the Games" it became clear that the USSR and
its allies would retaliate with another boycott at the 1984 Games in Los
Angeles. Although Romania did send a team to Los Angeles, 16 of the USSR’s other
allies boycotted the Los Angeles Games. From the 1940s to the 1980s, the IOC
also had to deal with the political problems caused by divided nations. One
example was the dilemma concerning the Chinese Olympic team, which developed in
1949 after the political division of China into the People’s Republic of China
on the mainland and the Republic of China on the island of Taiwan. The issue was
whether the Chinese people would be represented by a team from the mainland or
by a team from Taiwan. In 1952 the IOC decided to invite both Chinas, but this
decision led to decades of boycott by the government of mainland China, which
did not send a team to the Olympics until the Lake Placid Games in 1980. Another
political issue arose in 1949, because of the formal political division of
Germany that year into East Germany and West Germany. This division created the
question of whether there was to be one German team or two. The IOC tried to
solve this problem by insisting on a combined German team. Negotiations lasted
several years, and this solution was first tested at the Melbourne Games in
1956; it lasted until the Munich Games in 1972, for which two teams were formed.
There continued to be two German teams until 1992, by which time the countries
had reunited. The IOC also had to cope with racial segregation in South Africa.
The IOC voted in 1968 to exclude the South African team from Olympic competition
in order to bring pressure on the government to give up its policy of apartheid.
The South Africans were not readmitted until the Barcelona Games in 1992-by
which time apartheid had been discontinued. Violence has also occurred at the
Olympic Games. In the midst of the 1972 Munich Games, the Olympic movement
experienced its most tragic hour. A band of Palestinian terrorists made their
way into the Olympic village, murdered two members of the Israeli team, and took
nine hostages. When the IOC, meeting in emergency session, learned that a
gunfight had broken out and that all nine hostages were dead, along with five of
the terrorists, the Games were suspended for a day. The IOC’s controversial
decision to resume the Games that year was endorsed by the Israeli government.
Having survived a century of warfare and political turmoil, the Olympic Games
have become very successful in recent years, gaining more popularity and
generating more money than ever before. A great deal of this popularity and
wealth is due to the development of satellite communications and global
telecasts. Not only can more and more people see the Games, but the opportunity
developed to sell television rights to the Games for hundreds of millions of
dollars. With their share of this income, organizing committees can now stage
spectacular Games without fear of the huge indebtedness incurred by Montreal’s
organizing committee in 1976. With more money, the IOC can also subsidize the
development of sports in less affluent nations. In return for their money,
however, television networks have gained a strong influence on when, where, and
how the Olympics will take place. The Olympic movement has also become dependent
on multinational corporations, who pay millions of dollars to become official
sponsors of the game and to use Olympic symbols in their advertisements which
has led to the mass commercialization of the Olympic movement. However Pierre de
Coubertin’s dream has lasted over 25 Olympiads and will no doubt continue remain
in the hearts of the world with the Olympic ideals carrying on well into the
future. The Games of the Olympiads and The Cities of the Olympic Games Summer
Winter I 1896 Athens, Greece II 1900 Paris, France III 1904 St. Louis, USA IV
1908 London, England V 1912 Stockholm, Sweden VI 1916 Cancelled due to W.W.I VII
1920 Antwerp, Belgium VIII 1924 Paris, France 1924 I Chamonix, France IX 1928
Amsterdam, The Netherlands 1928 II St. Moritz, Switzerland X 1932 Los Angeles,
USA 1932 III Lake Placid, USA XI 1936 Berlin, Germany 1936 IV
Garmish-Partenkirchen, Germany XII 1940 Cancelled due to W.W.II 1940 Cancelled
due to W.W.II XIII 1944 Cancelled due to W.W.II 1944 Cancelled due to W.W.II XIV
1948 London, England 1948 V St. Moritz, Switerland XV 1952 Helsinki, Finland
1952 VI Oslo, Norway XVI 1956 Melbourne, Australia 1956 VII Cortina D’Ampezzo,
Italy XVII 1960 Rome, Italy 1960 VIII Squaw Valley, U.S.A. XVIII 1964 Tokyo,
Japan 1964 IX Innsbruck, Austria XIX 1968 Mexico City, Mexico 1968 X Grenoble,
France XX 1972 Munich, Germany 1972 XI Sapporo, Japan XXI 1976 Montreal, Canada
1976 XII Innsbruck, Austria XXII 1980 Moscow U.S.S.R 1980 XIII Lake Placid,
U.S.A. XXIII 1984 Los Angeles, USA 1984 XIV Sarajevo, Yugoslavia XXIV 1988
Seoul, South Korea 1988 XV Calgary, Canada XXV 1992 Barcelona, Spain 1992 XVI
Albertville, France XXVI 1996 Atlanta U.S.A 1994 XVII Lillehammer, Norway XXVII
2000 Sydney, Australia 1998 XVIII Nagano, Japan
Bibliography Gary, Austin. (1986). Development of the Olympic Games. New York:
Houghton-Mifflin. Gorman, David. (1998) A Detailed Account of the Olympic Games.
New York: Basic Books. Miller, Andrew. (1994). Olympic Stories. London: Sage
Publishers. White, Matt.