Who was Baron Pierre de Coubertin?

It was a diminutive, 19th-century French aristocrat, Baron Pierre de Coubertin (pictured, left), who came up with the idea of reviving the Olympic Games while studying in Paris. He was a sporting sort himself, and had also long despaired of what he perceived as French degeneracy; his country had been humiliated by the loss of the Franco-Prussian War and he attributed this to his countrymen's lack of moral fibre.

- Ettie Neil-Gallacher

De Coubertin's solution to this national problem had a surprising source: the British public school system. Or more specifically Rugby School, which was at the peak of its influence after the incumbency of its legendary headmaster Thomas Arnold. In the 1880s he made several visits to Britain, spending time at Rugby, and became convinced of the importance of sport for mental strength and character development. While he was in England, he also became obsessed with the game of rugby and was one of the founding figures in its establishment in France.

One of his visits to England was to meet Dr William Penny Brookes, a man with many strings to his bow (he was a botanist, a surgeon and a magistrate), but it was his articles on physical education that had impressed de Coubertin, so he came to England to discuss them with him. But Brookes didn't want to talk about the importance of sport for schoolboys; he was more interested in the Olympics, which he'd been trying to revive for 25 years. He'd even convened a British Olympiad in 1866, which had been rather a triumph but the follow-ups were less successful. This didn't deter Brookes, and he continued to campaign for the founding of a modern-day, international Olympics festival in Athens.