Modern Olympics Revived
In April 1896, Athens hosted the first modern Olympic Games, reviving a festival that had last been held in antiquity. Roughly 240 athletes from 14 nations took part, according to the figures usually cited, though historians note that records from the period are imperfect and that counts of participants and countries vary slightly depending on how national affiliations are assigned. The Games mattered because they launched what became the world's largest international sporting event, and a model of regular, rotating, multi-sport competition that still endures.
The idea owed much to the French educator and aristocrat Pierre de Coubertin, who believed that organized athletics could improve education and promote international understanding. He drew on several earlier inspirations: the ancient Olympics held at Olympia in Greece, the local "Olympic" festivals staged in places such as Much Wenlock in England, and the Zappas Olympics, which Greek benefactors had sponsored in Athens in the nineteenth century. In 1894, Coubertin convened a congress in Paris that founded the International Olympic Committee and agreed to hold the first Games in Athens two years later. The Greek choice carried symbolic weight, though funding was a struggle for the hosts.
The Games opened in early April 1896 in the Panathenaic Stadium, a marble arena reconstructed on the site of an ancient one. Events included athletics, gymnastics, swimming, cycling, fencing, shooting, tennis and weightlifting. Competitors were men only; women did not compete until the 1900 Games in Paris. Many athletes were amateurs who happened to be in Athens or who paid their own way, and delegations from Greece, Germany, France, Britain, Hungary and the United States were among the most prominent. American athletes did especially well in track and field, with James Connolly winning the triple jump and becoming the first modern Olympic champion.
The marathon, a new event inspired by the legend of a messenger running from Marathon to Athens, produced the Games' most celebrated moment. The Greek runner Spyridon Louis won, to enormous public enthusiasm, after Greek competitors had failed to win other track events. His victory became a point of national pride.
The Athens Games were not flawless, and the next two Olympics, in Paris in 1900 and St. Louis in 1904, were overshadowed by world's fairs and were poorly organized. Yet the Olympic movement survived, gradually gaining structure and prestige. Over the following century it expanded to include winter sports, women's events, and nearly every country in the world, while also becoming entangled with politics, commercialism and debates over amateurism. The 1896 Games remain its symbolic starting point.