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The mighty working of a symbol: From idea to organization

2006; Routledge; Volume: 23; Issue: 3-4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/09523360600639261

1743-9035

Physical education and sports games research

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes [1] Boulongne, La Vie et l'oeuvre, 81–2. Though he claimed otherwise in his formal memoirs, de Coubertin's Le Roman d'un rallié (published pseudonymously under the name Georges Hohrod) suggests that, on occasion, he regretted his decision. Could he have won election? [2] Weber, ‘Pierre de Coubertin’, 19. [3] De Coubertin, Une Campagne de 21 ans, 89. [4] Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen, 382–3; Zeldin, France 1848–1945, 2, 683–5. [5] Paul Bouissac, personal communication, 1977. [6] This account of bicycling follows Weber, ‘Gymnastics and Sports’, 79–82. [7] Ibid., 82, n.29. [8] Zeldin, France 1848–1945, 2:682. [9] Pierre MacOrlan, cited in Weber, ‘Pierre de Coubertin’, 23. [10] Weber, ‘Gymnastics and Sports’, 87. [11] Ibid., 90. [12] Giraudoux, Maximes sur le sport; Prévost, Plaisirs des sports. Prévost, like Giraudoux, had become enamoured of sport in school. In 1924, he spent a great deal of time in de Coubertin's company during the games, interviewing Pavo Nurmi and other athletes. Montherlant's lycée, on the other hand, had nothing in the way of sports, and the bi-weekly hour of gymnastics was avoided by most of the boys. When, at the age of 19, he sought to remedy this lacuna in his education, he was directed by the editor of Auto to de Coubertin's Comité d'education physique (a 1914 successor to the Comité Jules Simon) under whose auspices he trained in the Parc des Princes (with Carpentier's brother as coach) and enjoyed ‘camaraderie with the garçons du peuple’ who composed much of the membership. Montherlant, Les Olympiques, 8–9. This work was originally published in 1924, and entered for the prize in poetry at the 1924 Olympic Games. De Coubertin is said to have regarded it as ‘the Iliad’ of sport (Eyquem, Pierre de Coubertin, 260), but the gold medal was awarded to another by the jury (which included Gabriele D'Annunzio, Maurice Barrès, Paul Claudel, Giraudoux, Blasco Ibanez, Edmond Jaloux, Selma Lagerlöf, Maurice Maeterlinck, Anna de Noailles, Marcel Prévost, Albert Thibaudet and Paul Valéry, the last subsequently known for his great love of sport). [13] Quoted in Weber, ‘Gymnastics and Sports’, 78. [14] Ibid., 82–3, from the account of Georges Bourdon, one of the founders of Racing. [15] De Coubertin, Une Campagne de 21 ans, 43, 47. [16] Ibid., 49–50. [17] Ibid., 57. [18] Ibid., 56. [19] ‘I don't have to appeal to the Council about it. Besides, you are the association all by yourself, I recognize it. You founded, developed, and directed it. Therefore, I give you my resignation and ask you to communicate it to these men.’ Ibid., 57–8. [20] De Coubertin, Mémoires olympiques, 10. [21] Weber, ‘Gymnastics and Sports’, 83ff. [22] De Coubertin, Une Campagne de 21 ans, 59–60. A photograph shows Godart, Franz Reichel, the footballer L.-Reichel, Carnot and de Coubertin, all in top hats and frock coats, watching the races. [23] In 1895, Bennett donated to the USFSA a silver cup for the champions of Association football. Weber, ‘Gymnastics and Sports’, 84. [24] Une Campagne de 21 ans, 60–1. [25] Ibid., 83–4. [26] Ibid., 86–7. [27] De Coubertin, Mémoires olympiques, 8. [28] Ibid.; see also Une Compagne de 21 ans, 73. [29] Bourdon was later to publish articles on Hellenism and a book on Russia. [30] Jusserand was later the author of a history of French sport (Sports et jeux d'exercice dans l'ancienne France), and he became ambassador to the United States. [31] Une Campagne de 21 ans, 90. Reprinted in The Olympic Idea, 1. [32] Mémoires olympiques, 9. [33] Une Campagne de 21 ans, 90. [34] ‘The 1892 “Jubilee” publicized the union. Within months it had enrolled its hundredth member club, competitions like those previously described multiplied, provincial branches were organized, and the union was well on its way to becoming established as the national amateur sports body. De Coubertin's personal efforts in Normandy were far less successful than his Parisian ones. He had been laughed at by his colleagues on the Mirville Municipal Council when he proposed communal games, and in 1892, he had resigned. An invitation to the fencers and gymnasts of Bolbec to perform in Mirville had come to nothing, and when, in 1893, he offered a cup for fencing and running competitions between Bolbec and Fécamp, the latter municipality refused this ‘sterile agitation.’ Ibid., 87–8. [35] Keane's participation in this ecumenical meeting was in part responsible for his later dismissal as rector of the Catholic University, in the midst of Leo XIII's crackdown on American liberal ‘neo-Catholicism’. De Coubertin seems not to have been apprised of these subsequent events. See Ahern, The Life of John J. Keane, 120–78. [36] Johnson, A History of the World's Columbian Exposition, 4, 221–37. [37] Ibid., 221–2. [38] Shaw, ‘Baron Pierre de Coubertin’, 436. [39] Mémoires olympiques, 15, 61. [40] Ibid., 61. [41] Ibid., 63. A search by Byron Trott of the Harper archives at the University of Chicago has yielded no further record of their conversations. [42] Ibid., 15–6. [43] Une Campagne de 21 ans, 92. [44] At the 1894 congress, he and Sloane lobbied vigorously against the British definition of ‘amateur’, and carried the day with respect to Olympic competition. The British, because they were eager for international competition, were forced to come around. While it would be some years before the older class preserves were wiped away in Britain and among its imitators, their death knell was sounded by the growth of international amateur sport in the 1890s. On Racing, see Weber, ‘Gymnastics and Sports’, 86. [45] Une Campagne de 21 ans, 91; Mémoires olympiques, 13. [46] ‘Bulletin du Comité international olympique’, July 1894, reprinted in Une Campagne de 21 ans, 91–2, and in The Olympic Idea, 2–3. [47] ‘Les Jeux Olympiques, 776 av. JC–1896’, 13, 14. [48] Mémoires olympiques, 14–5, reprinted ibid., 5. [49] Une Campagne de 21 ans, 93; Mémoires olympiques, 16. [50] For Astley, see Manchester, Four Centuries of Sport, 197–8; for ‘J. Astley Cooper’, see Mandell, The First Modern Olympics, 32–3, 178. [51] Une Campagne de 21 ans, 94–5. [52] Ibid., 94. [53] Mémoires olympiques, 17. [54] The Times (London), 19 June 1894. [55] Une Campagne de 21 ans, 93–4. [56] Cited in Mandell, The First Modern Olympics, 93, from German sources. [57] ‘Les Jeux Olympiques’, 14. [58] Une Campagne de 21 ans, 97. [59] ‘Very sensible of the act of M de Coubertin, I beg him, as well as the members of the Congress, to receive, with my sincere thanks, my best wishes for the reestablishment of the Olympic games’ The Times (London), 23 June 1894. [60] Quoted in Eyquem, Pierre de Coubertin, 135. [61] Da Matta, ‘Carnival on Multiple Planes’. [62] This unselfconscious but very apt locution (cited in The Olympic Idea, viii) is from a later comment on the design of the Olympic festival. [63] Gréard was not an official member of the congress, perhaps because of his earlier tiff with de Coubertin over the Ligue nationale, but the rector ‘came down from his apartment several times to take part’ in its sessions. Mémoires olympiques, 19. [64] ‘Les Jeux Olympiques’, 13. [65] According to a contemporary English observer. Gosse, ‘Current French Literature’, 671. De Coubertin had indeed secured Aicard through Mme Adam, a fashionable hostess who was a friend of the baron. Une Campagne de 21 ans, 96. [66] Reinach, ‘Une Page de musique grecque’. [67] Une Campagne de 21 ans, 96. [68] Mémoires olympiques, 18. While Hellenism infiltrated the vast enclosure, its occupants simultaneously ‘infiltrated’ Hellenism, much as the dark line of nineteenth-century Parisians including the artist himself wandered into the bois sacré in Toulouse-Lautrec's 1884 Parodie of Puvis de Charannes's mural which now surrounded de Coubertin's assembly. [69] The Times (London), 18 June 1894. [70] Une Campagne de 21 ans, 98. [71] Mémoires olympiques, 19–20. [72] Une Campagne de 21 ans, 96–7. [73] Ibid., 98. The Times (London), 20 June 1894, makes it clear that the decision to hold a games in 1896 ‘in one of the European capitals’ was taken on 19 June. [74] Mandell, The First Modern Olympics, 91, but without citation. [75] ‘Speech by Baron de Coubertin at the Paris Congress, 1894’, 6–7. [76] Gouldner, The Hellenic World, 41–77. [77] Especially Victor Turner's analyses of Ndembu rituals, The Forest of Symbols and Schism and Continuity. [78] ‘Speech at the Paris Congress’, 7. [79] This in an issue that devoted some ten full columns (1¼ pages) to sports, particularly horse-racing, baseball and cycling. [80] ‘Can We Revive the Olympic Games?’ Forum 19 (1895): 317–23. I am grateful to Richard Mandell (The First Modern Olympics, 91–2) for notice of the Spectator and Forum articles. [81] Prior to this date, a column called ‘Le Sport’ was devoted primarily to horse-racing, with a subhead, ‘Les Sports athlétiques’ for all the rest. After 20 June, ‘La Vie sportive’ included subsections on turf, cycling, and athletic sports, including professional and amateur, with student and adult games under the latter. [82] His reaction has gone unrecorded, but it must have been with a sweet sense of revenge that he became a columnist for Figaro and wrote 73 articles for its pages between 1902 and 1906, treating mostly of history and politics, but also of his own role in sport. These articles were collected as Pages d'histoire contemporaine. [83] Neither de Coubertin nor Saint-Clair are mentioned by name in the letter, whose authorship remains a fascinating little mystery. Perhaps Meyer had been tipped off or recognized Saint-Clair in its lines, but Saint-Clair had been shunted to a minor role in the congress and, unless he was embarrassed by Figaro's slighting of de Coubertin in his favour, it is hard to imagine why he would have taken the trouble. Anyone familiar with de Coubertin's modus operandi would immediately suspect that he had written it, but the style is not his. Could Franz Reichel, the ‘press officer’, have been responsible for it? [84] ‘Speech to the Paris Congress’, 7. [85] The Evolution of France, 270–1. [86] Quoted in the New York Times, 26 June 1894. [87] Mémoires olympiques, 21. In the event, Sloane refused the presidency in 1900, and de Coubertin remained in the office until his ‘retirement’ from the IOC in 1925. [88] Ibid. [89] Ibid., 20. [90] Ibid., 23. This is still an apt description of the present IOC, though important changes have been made. The size of the ‘third circle’ has shrunk, the first and second circles have been more or less formalized in the executive board and the commissions, the post of ‘secretary general’ has become the ‘executive director’, who is not an IOC member but an exceedingly powerful ‘staff’ person, and the president's powers, though not his visibility, have been circumscribed somewhat in recent years. [91] Ibid. Here he compares it to the Henley Regatta Committee, but its larger prototypes were the patronage associations he had come of age with. [92] Ibid., 22–3. [93] Quoted in Une Campagne de 21 ans, 108. It is interesting to note, if the transcription is accurate, that the Greeks, unlike most of the Euro-American newspapers, capitalized the words ‘Olympic Games’ from the outset. [94] Mémoires olympiques, 23. [95] Une Campagne de 21 ans, 108; Mémoires olympiques, 23. [96] Une Campagne de 21 ans, 109; Mémoires olympiques, 24. [97] Une Campagne de 21 ans, 109. [98] Campbell and Sherrard, Modern Greece, 100. [99] Une Campagne de 21 ans, 109. [100] Ibid., 111. [101] Mémoires olympiques, 24. [102] Une Campagne de 21 ans, 109–11. [103] In 1896. Hungary was to celebrate in Budapest the millennium of the Hungarian people. Kemeny had worked hard to convince de Coubertin to hold the first games there, and according to the baron this would have transpired had the Greek mission fallen through. Ibid. Why de Coubertin would have preferred Hungary to the more fully formed proposal of Sweden is unclear. Could he have sensed, through Kemeny, that Hungary was on the eve of a sports florescence and was shortly to become the most rabid Olympic nation in Europe? [104] Mémoires olympiques, 25. [105] Ibid. [106] Ibid. [107] Une Campagne de 21 ans, 112. [108] Ibid., 112–3. [109] Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, 470. [110] Une Campagne de 21 ans, 113. [111] ‘A Modern Olympia’, 34. [112] Une Campagne de 21 ans, 114. [113] De Coubertin pronounced himself ‘vexed’ that his schoolboy Greek was ‘utterly useless’ to him, above all, ‘thanks to the pronunciation we were taught’ (Mémoires olympiques, 26). Did he really think that the main difference between ancient and modern Greek lay in pronunciation? If so, it would be no more astounding than his apparent ignorance of the fission between katharevousa and demotike Greek, created by Europeanized Greeks and French philhellenes like himself, and of the obstacles this imposed for national unity and progress. [114] Who in 1897 replaced Bikelas as Greek member of the IOC. [115] Une Campagne de 21 ans, 110. [116] Ibid., 113. [117] Ibid.; Mémoires olympiques, 28. [118] Mémoires olympiques, 26. [119] Une Campagne de 21 ans, 114. [120] Mémoires olympiques, 26. [121] Campbell and Sherrard, Modern Greece, 100. [122] Une Campagne de 21 ans, 115. [123] Ibid. Tricoupis also agreed at this meeting to place the Zappeion at de Coubertin's disposal for his meetings. [124] Ibid., 113. [125] ‘Athletics in the Modern World and the Olympic Games’, 7–10. [126] Une Campagne de 2l ans, 114–5. [127] Mémoires olympiques, 27. [128] Athletics: The ‘Course de Marathon’, 100-, 400-, 800- and 1,500-metre flat races and the 120-metre high hurdles (distances determined by the British Amateur Athletic Association, rules by the USFSA); long jump, high jump, pole vault, discus throw and shot put (BAAA rules). Gymnastics: Individual competitions in rope climbing, horizontal bar, parallel bars, rings, horse vaulting and dumbbell exercises (rules arranged by Strehly at de Coubertin's request) and ensemble exercises by teams of ten (a further sop to the Turners). Fencing: contests for amateurs and trainers in foil, sabre and épee (French Society for the Encouragement of Fencing rules). Wrestling: Greek and Roman (poorly developed as an amateur sport in Europe, but very popular in the Balkans – here began the tradition of including a favourite sport of the host nation, even if it was not ‘international’). Shooting: Carbine and pistol. Yachting: 10-mile steam-yacht races (Paris Sailing Circle rules); 5-mile and 10-mile races for 5-, 10-, 20- and unlimited-ton sailboats (rules and judging by the British Yacht Racing Association). Rowing: 2,000-metre straight races for singles skiffs, doubles gigs and outriggers, and four-man gigs (Italian Rowing Club rules). Swimming: 100, 500, and 1,000 metres. Cycling: 2,000 metres, without trainers; 10,000 metres and 10 kilometres, with trainers (rules of the International Cyclists' Association). Equitation: Jumping, horsemanship (manège); haute-école (dressage?); mounted gymnastics. Lawn Tennis: Singles and doubles (rules of the All-England Lawn Tennis Association and the Marylebone Cricket Club). Ibid., 31. De Coubertin had been unable to convince any but his English-speaking colleagues that boxing, which on occasion he referred to as the ‘noblest’ of sports, was anything more than a barbaric professional entertainment. Much to de Coubertin's further chagrin, the Greeks later dropped the equestrian events, claiming that there were no suitable horses in Greece. Since no foreign competitors arrived, the rowing was limited to the Greek navy and members of a few local clubs, and with yachting was eventually cancelled owing to weather conditions. [129] Ibid., 28, 205–6. [130] Mandell, The First Modern Olympics, 102. [131] De Coubertin, ‘Olympia’, 107. [132] Ibid., 113. [133] Ibid., 107. [134] Ibid., 107–8. For a fuller description of the ceremony, see Mémoires olympiques, 205–8. On the monument, he was careful to note, his name was inscribed in French and in Greek. [135] Mémoires olympiques, 214.