Pierre de Coubertin and The Modern Olympic Movement Essay

The Olympic games originated in Athens in 776 B.C. The more popular modern day Olympic games began nearly 2300 years later in 1896. The games no longer represented a religious festival, but a sports competition instead. The games can be studied via multiple aspects such as political, social, and economic, but this paper will concentrate on the economic aspect of the games and more specifically, the macroeconomic impacts the games possess.

The Olympics have shown over the decades that they can be affected by political conflict. However, it seems that this is the point of the Olympics, to illustrate national pride, by competition. Bloodshed should not be the way for pride of one’s country to be shown, but it should be shown through competition, in the words of the founder of the modern Olympic movement, Pierre de

Some factors that shaped the modern Olympic movement from 1892 to 2002 were the increased participation of women in the games due to women’s suffrage, the rising nationalism and superiority over competitors that took place, and the increase in trade and funding.

Ever since its inception in 1896, the Modern Olympics has hosted an invisible sport: politics. The Olympics calls for “a halt to all conflicts … [and to] strive towards a more peaceful world,” but politics soon spoiled its biennial message. “As the Olympics continue to dissolve into … a political competition … they no longer … justify the time and trouble,” Dave Anderson, Pulitzer Prize winner for his sports column, wrote in the New York Times in 1984. The Olympic spirit has routinely been used as an outlet for political agendas. With political and Olympic ambitions intersected, the great international sports festivity negatively affects all nations involved.

The Olympics are held every four years and are used as a global stage for many thousands of sportsmen and women who come from many different countries around the world to demonstrate their abilities ranging from running to rowing. In theory, the Olympic Games are supposed to be free from any politics and be purely about the athlete’s competition and celebrations. It is supposed to be non-gender, non-religion and non-race biased to show the accomplishment of the athletes that compete. Sporting officials are also supposed to be un-biased offering equal opportunities to all athletes.

In a nutshell, the Olympics have been massively affected over the time span from 1892 to 2002. Factors that enabled this metamorphosis to take place include: political tensions between countries, economic opportunities that arose, and the social impact through the endorsement of Women’s

Document #2 is a picture of a female British athlete who was able to participate in the Olympics. The document states that the 1908 games were held in Great Britain and 2% of the athletes were female. The Olympics had brought everyone together and as such made it so that females were able to participate, although only a few did participate it showed that the Olympics were the start of a new era of equality. In document #6 it talks about how due to the Soviet Union being peaceful they were able to host the Olympic games in Moscow 1980, this shows how the Olympics provided equal opportunities to everyone to not only host the games, as long as you had abided by the rules and not start wars, but as well as athletes of all kinds. In document #7 it talks about how 9 large corporations were selected as the top sponsors for the 1988 Olympics, it talks about how South Korea did not get on the list and put themselves out there in order to promote trade to a worldwide audience. Although this may seem like they were exploited but in fact it was extremely equal, it gave them an opportunity to get themselves out there and promote themselves rather than just giving the top sponsors to the big countries without even trying to take in smaller countries into consideration. In document #8 the speaker is a female competitor from Algeria. She talks about how her victories give her confidence

As a sporting mega-event, the Olympic Games have numerous social impacts on the people, not only on those from the host country, but on individuals all over the globe.

The Olympic Games are recognized globally by billions of people. This event is the biggest sporting event not only because it comes once every four years, but also because the world’s best athletes come together to compete for world fame and glory. Hosting the games seems like an honor for most people, however there is numerous risks involved

With the multi-billions of dollars that the Olympics earn and spend, it’s certainly is in the best interest of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to remain under the circumstances of keeping sport open to professional athletes, not only financially, but as well as the majority of their viewers. In this position statement, I will use historic International Olympic Committee guidelines (1964) and official IOC reports as a basis for proving that professional athletes should be allowed to participate in the Olympic Games.

Although the original ancient Olympic Games can be traced back to 776 B.C, Homer’s Iliad indicates they may have existed as early as the twelfth century BC. The Games were then continued for twelve centuries and were devoted to Olympian deities. Olympia turned into the site of these memorable ancient Olympic games that scattered the seeds for the largest global sporting events of current times, the Modern Olympics. The location of the Ancient Olympics is situated in the western part of Peloponnese. The Ancient Olympic Games continued until 393 A.D when Emperor Theodosius I of Rome discontinued them. There were not any more Olympic games for fifteen hundred years before they were resurrected in 1896 in the city of Athens. The man in charge of the recreation of the Olympic games was a Frenchman named Baron Pierre de Coubertin, who introduced the thought in 1894. He proposed to stage the games in Paris in 1900 but representatives, from thirty-four nations were so captivated with the idea that they persuaded him to move the Games up to 1896 and have Athens serve as the host.

While there are clear contrasts between the ancient and the modern Olympics there is still the respect for the athlete striving to perform at the highest level. Today, the Olympic Games are the world's largest carnival of athletic skill and competitive spirit. They are displays of nationalism, commerce, and politics. These important elements of the Olympics are not a modern invention, as the first Olympics was in 776 BC in Ancient Greece. After 1503 years, in 1896 the Olympic Games were recreated as what we know today. The Ancient Games were once dedicated to the Olympian God, Zeus Olympios and were staged on the ancient plains of Olympia, which is also how the word ‘Olympics’ originated from. The modern Olympics is the largest international sporting event, which feature both summer and winter sports competitions in which thousands of respectable athletes from over 200 different nations compete against one another. There are clear contrast between the modern and ancient forms of the Olympic Games regarding uniforms, participants, religion, events, politics and the concept of amateurism. However both the Ancient Greeks and the people in the modern world still respect and admire the athletics achievements of the participants making the Olympics the most highly regarded contest in sport.

"...Sport is prostituted when sport loses its independent and democratic character and becomes a political institution...Nazi Germany is endeavoring to use the Eleventh Olympiad to serve the necessities and interests of the Nazi regime rather than the Olympic ideals."

Sport plays a huge role in today’s society. It contributes to one’s health and fitness, social interaction, social and motor skills, patriotism, fun and entertainment. It also stimulates the economy and tourism leading to interaction between different cultures, for example the Olympics, and sport role models. Sports clearly are an important part of cultures and societies around the world as such events as the Olympics

Despite determining to achieve the “joy of effort” among the athletes, as well as the people who are interested in and watch the Games, the IOC constantly reminds the public of the significance and the power of winning the Games and receiving the medals. As found in many official Olympics websites from the Sochi Olympics 2014, London Olympics 2012, dated back to Beijing Olympics 2008, and also more, the ranking of the medals for each country could easily be located, while the Olympic Charter (2015) itself states that “the IOC and the OCOG [the Organising Committees for the Olympic Games] shall not draw up any global ranking per country” (as cited in Davis, 2014). Even though the instinct to win might already be innate or pre-constructed in humans, clearly, the act of the IOC in illustrating the medal rank of each country can influence the degree of awareness in the concept of winning and losing, as well as the physical and emotional aspects of an intense competition resulted from nationalism. Therefore, regardless of the goal of the IOC to uphold the ideals of the Olympics, the standards cannot be completely achieved because the IOC also violate the value of “joy of effort”