DAY 267 - VICENNES TO THE SORBONNE, PARIS: 5.3 MILES (10,600 STEPS)

Saturday 14 January, 2012

5.3 miles (Total: 2566.7 miles)– 10,600 steps (Total: 5,801,601 steps)

This was a very special day. Thanks to the good offices of James Barr at the British Embassy, I had been extended the great honour of being allowed a private visit to the room in The Sorbonne University where, on 23 June 1894, Baron Pierre de Coubertain founded the International Olympic Committee. As the birthplace of the Modern Olympic Games, the sense of awe was every bit as profound as when I had stood in Olympia as the birthplace of the Ancient Games some nine months and 2366 miles earlier.

Two great themes in Coubertain’s life crossed to generate the idea of resurrecting the ancient games: the first was as a student of Ancient Greek culture, especially the idea of the Athenian gymnasiums as a place for the physical and intellectual development of young men. The second was an interest, almost an obsession, in the use of sport in the English public school system, most notably under Thomas Arnold at Rugby, and the ideal of amateurism. Coubertain linked embracing competitive sports to the expansion of the British Empire through the development of high quality leaders and the use of competitive sports in strengthening military tactics and performance.

The later point of the military advantages of competitive sports should not be underestimated. Coubertain grew up in a period following the French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, a defeat that was viewed as a national humiliation for France as it led to the fall of Paris. At the settlement of the First World War at Versailles, the French were keen to repay in full the price extracted by the Prussians for their earlier defeat. Finally, the defeat gave birth to the modern state of Germany and the rest they say is history…

So Coubertain looked to Classical Greece and Victorian England to provide a recipe for the development of a new generation of French leaders, who could rediscover national pride. This is an important point because the genesis of the Modern Games differed from the Ancient Games. The former was formed specifically to overcome division and tensions between the rival City-States of Ancient Greece by bringing together athletes onto the neutral and sacred ground of Olympia where athletes competed as Olympians and competed naked so as to remove any identity of which city state they represented. The whole raison d’être for the Ancient Games was peace, represented through the sacred ‘Olympic Truce’. In contrast, the Modern Games were hard wired as a competition between nations and even systems, which was taken to its extreme both in Berlin in 1936 and in Moscow in 1980. Even today, nations will set their ambitions on ranking above other nations in the medal league table; for Britain this is expressly to finish fourth or better and to beat the Aussies. Some sporting facilities are even designed to favour the athletes of the host nation – not quite the ideal of ‘it’s not the winning but the taking part’.

The tradition of amateurism in sport bit the dust in Baden-Baden Olympic Congress in 1981 and immediately strengthened the commercial appeal of the Games to sponsors and broadcasters, which in all fairness is why the games are such a runaway success today. The ancient ideal is more visibly seen today in the spirit and conduct of the Paralympic Games. But for this reason, from the outset the Modern Olympics have seen the Olympic Truce regarded as largely symbolic rather than sacred, represented by the Olympic Torch Relay, the Olympic Village where all the athletes live, and the Closing Ceremony where all athletes come into the stadium together, rather than in national teams. Even in London 2012, we have seen the international leg of the Olympic Torch relay dropped because of the experience of the protests during the Beijing Relay. Moreover, in the Olympic Village some of the major national teams will also now insist on their own national buildings, furnished in their own national style and serving national food.

As I stood in that room, I wondered what it would take for someone to bring the Olympic movement back to its roots to re-discover the ancient purpose of the Olympics and the modern potential of the Games for promoting peace and reconciliation through sport. It would require someone with the vision and credibility of Baron Coubertain to carry it. Just two days later, I was to have the enormous privilege of meeting the ideal candidate in the French Minister of Sport and double Olympic gold medallist David Douillet. If anyone has the charisma, credibility, and humanity to pull of such a meeting, then it is Douillet. If there was any place that such a meeting should take place, then it would be The Sorbonne, Paris.