Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the controversial French founder of the modern Olympics, is proving to be a divisive figure for organisers of the Paris Games. Yet while some deplore his sexist and colonialist remarks, others have praised his dedication to using sport to promote peace, viewing him as a visionary and a humanist.
The Paris-born aristocrat who founded the International Olympic Committee (IOC) at the end of the 19th century is once again proving to be a divisive figure ahead of the Paris Olympics. While Baron Pierre de Coubertin has been slammed for his views on women and colonialism, others have praised his dedication to using sport to promote peace and see him as a visionary.
“The Olympic Games and the sporting model he created have stood the test of time. That's why France can be proud of Coubertin and his legacy,” said Thomas Bach, president of the IOC, at a June 23 conference at the Sorbonne.
Bach called for de Coubertin to be judged on the values of his era, describing him as a "peace activist" who had defied the rising tide of nationalism in Europe.
"Every human has the right to be judged only and uniquely in the context of his time," said Bach. "I would like our visionary founder to be judged in the same way."
His detractors point out that de Coubertin was – in his own words – a “fanatical colonialist” who believed the White race to be superior and who opposed women taking part in public sporting competitions.
Throughout the preparations for the Paris Games, which kick off on July 26, de Coubertin’s role as the founder of the modern Olympics has been greatly downplayed. He does not feature prominently in any of the official narrative around the Games, and is very rarely name-checked by Paris 2024 organisers.
‘We're not here to glorify the man, but to understand his character’
De Coubertin’s family is angry that the baron has been relegated to the shadows in the run-up to the Games.
His great-great-grandniece, Alexandra de Navacelle, is head of the Pierre de Coubertin Family Association, which promotes his legacy.
She wants to take advantage of the Paris Games to show a different side to de Coubertin.
"We're trying to make people understand where he came from, why he had this incredible idea and what he did to achieve it,” she says.
She is all too aware of the misgivings about his views.
“We're not here to glorify the man, but to understand his character. We have to put him in context to make sure we see all the facts and judge him on his actions,” she says.
Born in Paris in 1863, de Coubertin travelled widely during his youth, particularly to England and America, where he was impressed by the emphasis on sport in the education system.
De Coubertin was a keen sportsman himself and practised boxing, fencing, horse riding and rowing.
Upon his return to France, he set out to import the British and American models and promote physical exercise. He also set up the Comité pour la Propagation des Exercises Physiques, a committee to encourage physical exercise in education.
To make sport more popular, he also felt it needed to be internationalised.
Like many others before him, he wanted to revive the ancient Olympic Games, which began in Olympia, Greece, in 776 BC and were held every four years for 12 centuries before being abolished. On June 23, 1894, the baron founded the International Olympic Committee and, two years later, the first revived Olympic Games were symbolically held in Athens.
‘Even when you contextualise his views, they are reprehensible’
De Coubertin banned women from participating in these Games.
"The real Olympic hero is, in my eyes, the individual adult male,” de Coubertin said in a 1935 radio interview. “I personally do not approve of women taking part in public competitions, which does not mean that they should refrain from practising a large number of sports but without making a spectacle of themselves.
“At the Olympic Games, their role should be – above all, as at the old tournaments – to crown the winners."
But de Navacelle believes that de Coubertin “was not against women”. She feels that he “sought to protect them from the male gaze” at a time when “women were not ready to be seen in sportswear and bare calves”.
Louis Violette, a specialist in sport history at La Réunion University, says it’s important to put de Coubertin in context.
“If you look at Pierre de Coubertin through today's eyes, he comes across as a misogynist,” says Violette. “But at the time, at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, there were very few feminists, and even fewer in the upper echelons of power. It was a man's world, with very little room for women, and it was against women's sport.”
Julie Gaucher, a sport historian at Lyon 1 University, was more critical.
“Even when you contextualise his views, they are reprehensible,” she says.
“The women's sport movement already existed and he refused to take this into account with extremely misogynistic comments, in which women were ultimately supposed to remain in their place.”
De Coubertin also strongly objected to the efforts of Alice Milliat, an advocate for women's sports at the time. Milliat asked the IOC to include athletics events for women at the Olympic Games but without success.
Women were finally allowed to compete in athletics and gymnastics at the 1928 Games in Amsterdam. But they were only allowed to participate in five women's track and field events while men were allowed to compete in 22.
For Milliat, this was not enough. But exhausted from years of lobbying for female athletes to be taken seriously, she retired from the sporting scene in 1935. Milliat died in total anonymity in Paris in 1957 and her name was quickly forgotten.
But Milliat’s pioneering role is now being remembered: Unlike de Coubertin, she is being celebrated with pride at the 2024 Games. Biographies have been published about her, exhibitions have been organised on her life, and stadiums and gymnasiums have been named after her.
But women were only allowed to participate in five women's track and field events while men were allowed to compete in 22. For Milliat, this was not enough. Exhausted from years of lobbying for female athletes to be taken seriously, she retired from the sporting scene in 1935.
She died in total anonymity in Paris in 1957 and her name was quickly forgotten.
But Milliat’s pioneering role is now being remembered. For unlike de Coubertin, she is being celebrated with pride at the 2024 Games. Biographies have been published on her, exhibitions have been organised on her life and stadiums and gymnasiums have been named after her.
‘You have to look at things from a different angle’
France is finding it much easier to celebrate a fighter for women's sport than de Coubertin, whose legacy of racism is hard to ignore.
“From my early days, I was a fanatical colonialist ... The races are of different value, and to the white race, of superior essence, all the others must pledge allegiance,” de Coubertin wrote in his memoirs, which are preserved in the IOC archives.
Yet his great-great-grandniece believes that his comments are simply indicative of ideas that were widespread in the era in which he wrote them.
“There were abuses and unacceptable things, but they were all colonialists at the time. There were no other options,” de Navacelle says.
Violette, the sport historian, agrees, saying that this was “the thinking of the time”.
“He was an outspoken colonialist. He thought it was for people’s benefit, particularly for the local populations. At the time, there were very few members of the elite to refute and criticise colonisation,” adds Violette.
De Coubertin has also been criticised for having supported the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games organised by Nazi Germany. Even though he had already withdrawn from the IOC and did not attend in person despite an invitation from Adolf Hitler, he praised the Games in lavish terms.
“The grandiose success of the Berlin Games served the Olympic ideal magnificently. The French, who are almost alone with their Cassandra complex, are very wrong not to understand or not to want to understand,” he wrote in August 1936.
“In Berlin everything was done for propaganda purposes, but what he saw was the spectacle and the success of these Games beyond the political aspect,” says Gaucher. “He didn't want to see what was going on, whereas he could have kept quiet and not taken sides in defence of the Games.”
A few months later, in September 1937, de Coubertin died of a heart attack.
One hundred and thirty years after the creation of the IOC, the reputation of the father of the modern Olympic Games is significantly tarnished.
But even Gaucher believes it’s wrong to criticise Coubertin too vehemently. “I'm not in favour of slamming Coubertin, because there are also things that were interesting and that really need to be looked at in the context of a certain period.”
“You really need to take a nuanced view,” she says. “It's only when you've accepted the darker side of the character that you can recognise his contribution.”
Since de Coubertin’s controversial ideas the Games have also evolved considerably, now transformed into a huge commercial enterprise generating billions of euros.
De Navacelle says it’s a pity that the Games have become so commercialised. “The original spirit of the Games has been lost,” she says.
And despite the controversies, she chooses to focus on de Coubertin’s role in reviving the Games and the progress that has been made since.
“The Paris Games will be the first Olympic Games with parity between male and female athletes,” she points out. “There is also an identical logo for the Olympic and Paralympic Games, using the same competition venues.”
“It is this progressive dynamic that de Coubertin wanted to set in motion,” she says.
(With AFP)
This article has been adapted from the original in French.
