ANCIENT OLYMPIA, Greece — Simply outdoors the positioning of the traditional Olympic Video games, hooting owls break the nighttime silence at a white marble monument containing what’s left of a singular Frenchman’s coronary heart.
Baron Pierre de Coubertin was the driving pressure behind the fashionable Olympics, and as head of the Worldwide Olympic Committee oversaw the final Video games to be held in Paris, precisely 100 years in the past.
On Tuesday, the flame that can burn at this summer season’s Olympics — the French capital’s third — is to be lit among the many ruined temples and sports activities venues of Olympia in southern Greece.
And its first cease on the relay that culminates within the July 26 opening ceremony shall be at this cypress-ringed memorial to Coubertin, the place the torchbearer will mild an altar in his honor.
That occurs at each lighting ceremony, however this yr it would have a particular resonance, in keeping with Spyros Capralos, head of the Greek nationwide Olympic committee.
“We pay respect to the (monument) of Coubertin each time … the flame goes first there,” Capralos advised The Related Press. “And now, 2,800 years after the primary Olympic Video games, we’re completely satisfied that the (Video games) are returning to Paris, birthplace of Pierre de Coubertin.”
The French aristocrat’s efforts, impressed by the traditional video games and his want to invigorate a up to date sports activities tradition, led to the inaugural trendy Video games being staged in Athens in 1896.
The seat Coubertin used on the renovated historical marble stadium within the Greek capital continues to be preserved, together with his identify carved on it.
Earlier than he died in 1937 and was buried in Lausanne, Switzerland, Coubertin left particular instructions for his coronary heart: It was to be eliminated and positioned contained in the monument erected in his honor ten years earlier simply outdoors the ruins of historical Olympia.
The longer term King Paul of Greece carried out the ceremony in March 1938, following a blessing by black-robed Greek Orthodox clergymen. The grove is now a part of the Worldwide Olympic Academy, an institute established to advertise training on the historical past and ideas of the fashionable Video games.
Born in 1863, Coubertin was the second president of the IOC — after Greece’s Demetrios Vikelas — serving from 1896-1925. His tenure included the video games held in Paris in 1900 and 1924.
On a private stage, his life was marred by household tragedy which may clarify his single-minded dedication to the Olympics. His son suffered extreme mind harm at a younger age, and his daughter struggled with psychological well being points all through her life. Coubertin had no different kids, and two shut nephews have been killed in World Struggle I.
