现代奥运会之父：皮埃尔-德-顾拜旦

现代奥运会之父：皮埃尔-德-顾拜旦

皮埃尔-德-顾拜旦1863年1月1日出生于法国巴黎。作为一名贵族家庭的'孩子，他接受了良好的教育，并对文学和历史产生了浓厚的兴趣。为了更好地为民众服务，顾拜旦拒绝了家人为他在军队中谋取的职们，还放弃了前程似锦的仕途之路。

Pierre Frédy, Baron de Coubertin, was born in Paris in 1863. His family originated in Normandy where he spent many of his summers in the family Chateau de Mirville, near Le Havre. He refused the military career planned for him by his family, as well as renouncing a promising political career. By the age of 24 he had already decided the aim of his life: he would help bring back the noble spirit of France by reforming its old-fashioned and unimaginative education system.

Coubertin, whose father was an artist and mother a musician, was raised in cultivated and aristocratic surroundings. He had always been deeply interested in questions of education. For him, education was the key to the future of society, and he sought the means to make France rise once more after its defeat in the war in 1870.

Coubertin was a very active sportsman and practiced the sports of boxing, fencing, horse-riding and rowing. He was convinced that sport was the springboard for moral energy and he defended his idea with rare tenacity.

It was this conviction that led him to announce at the age of 31 that he wanted to revive the Olympic Games. He made this announcement in a meeting at the Union of French Societies of Athletic Sports (USFSA), for which he was Secretary General. No one really believed him and his statement was greeted with little enthusiasm.

Coubertin, however, was not discouraged and on 23 June, 1894 he founded the International Olympic Committee in a ceremony held at the University of Sorbonne in Paris. Demetrius Vikelas from Greece became the first president of the IOC.

Two years later, in 1896, the first Olympic Games of the modern era were held in Athens. On that occasion Coubertin was elected the second president of the IOC and he remained president until 1925. Due to the 1st World W