On April 6, 1896, the inaugural Olympic Games kicked off in Athens, Greece. Harkening back to the mythologised Olympic games from ancient Greece, the Games were an overwhelming success, paving the way for modern sports competition as we know it.
However, most people know little about the genesis of the modern Games beyond the fact that it was the brainchild of French Baron Pierre de Coubertin. The history of the modern Olympic Games predates de Coubertin, beginning all the way back in 1830s Greece.
Poet Panagiotis Soutsos wants to restore the glory of newly independent Greece
Modern Greece emerged from the throes of revolution which lasted from 1821 to 1829. After four centuries of Ottoman rule, Greeks gained their independence, with borders of the new state being finalised in 1832.
Around this time, like many of his contemporaries, poet Panagiotis Soutsos wrote zealously to celebrate the birth of the new Greek nation. But, after centuries of foreign rule, Greece, once considered to be the zenith of human civilisation, lagged behind much of Europe both economically and culturally.
Writers like Soutsos believed that to gain the respect of the world again, Greece had to restore its ancient glory. In the early 1830s, Soutsos wrote a number of poems reflecting this sentiment. One of them, “Dialogues of the Dead” (1833), saw the ghost of Greek philosopher Plato gazing at modern Greece from the underworld, only to be dismayed at its state.
“Where are all your theatres and marble statues? / Where are your Olympic Games?” says Plato in the poem.
Two years later, Soutsos wrote a long letter to the Greek Minister of the Interior, proposing that March 25, the anniversary of the outbreak of the Greek War of Independence, should be declared a national holiday, marked by festivities including a revival of the ancient Olympics.
But it was not until 1856 that someone else backed this idea.
Evangelos Zappas funds the ‘first’ Olympic Games
By the 1850s, Evangelos Zappas, a veteran of the Greek War of Independence, was one of the richest men in Eastern Europe, making a fortune in land and agriculture. When he heard about Soutsos’ idea, he liked it so much that in 1856, proposed to the Greek government to hold the Olympics, which he would fund from his own pocket.
Finally, in 1859, after three years of lobbying the Greek government, Zappas’s Olympics were held in a city square in Athens. A bunch of competitions were organised, including running, discus, javelin throwing, wrestling, jumping, and pole climbing – all events described to have taken place in Ancient Greek Olympics. Zappas promised cash prizes to winners.
Zappas left his fortune for funding future Olympiads and such games were repeated in 1870, 1875, and 1888, held in the newly-built Panathenaic Stadium (again, funded by Zappas).
But Greece was not the only place where attempts were on to revive the ancient Olympics.
William Penny Brookes and the English Olympics
Dr WP Brookes lived and practised medicine in a small English village called Wenlock. A student and admirer of ancient Greece, by 1859, he was holding annual village games which he called “Meetings of the Olympian Class”. When he read about the upcoming Olympics organised by Zappas, he decided to hold his own, organising the “Annual Wenlock Olympic Games” in 1859 itself. In 1866, Brookes would organise the first “National Olympic Games” in London, drawing athletes and spectators from all of Britain.
But not everyone was happy with Brookes’ new (and successful) venture. Among the class conscious members of Britain’s aristocracy, there was great opposition to Brookes’ idea of “allowing everyone to participate”. Soon, the Amateur Athletic Club, run by British aristocrats, pushed to restrict participation only to “gentlemen” – basically men who did not earn their living by doing labour.
This move towards amateurism would also be copied in Greece and by the 1870s, the once-promising “Olympic movement” had been run to the ground in both countries, with quality of the 1875 Greek Olympics dipping substantially.
Internationalising the Olympics
In a bid to re-energise the Olympics, in 1880, Brookes proposed, for the first time, the idea of an international Olympic games. Thus far, both in Britain and Greece, the Olympics had been restricted to nationals. In his letter proposing the idea, Brookes wrote that he hoped to see athletes of various nations “contending in a generous rivalry with athletes of other nations in the time-consecrated stadium at Athens”.
It is this idea that would eventually be picked up by French Baron Pierre de Coubertin. De Coubertin was born into an aristocratic French family and was interested in introducing physical education to the curricula of French schools. He was also someone who was not shy of taking credit for ideas which were not his own.
The French baron met Brookes, who was similarly interested in physical education, in Wenlock in 1890. Brookes even held a special edition of his Wenlock Olympic Games in his honour. A couple of years later, now back in France, he suddenly made a public proposal for an Olympic revival, maintaining that it was a novel idea, and all his own.
However, what de Coubertin can be credited for is organising the “Congress for the Revival of the Olympic Games” in 1894 in Paris. This conference, which had delegates from across Europe, would last several days and it was here that the first International Olympic Games, to be held in Athens in 1896, were proposed.
Athens 1896: the first Olympic Games
The Athens Olympics, held under the aegis of the newly founded International Olympic Committee, would be a rousing success. Held in the Panathenaic stadium, it was the first international sports meet of its scale to ever be organised. The Games attracted athletes from 14 nations, with the largest delegations coming from Greece, Germany, France and Great Britain.
