#coubertin

[postcard-from-the-past]

Château de Coubertin in Saint-Rémy-lès-Chevreuse, Yveline region of France

French vintage postcard

[daimonclub]

Olympic Games Quotes

Paris Olympic Games 2024 Olympic games quotes, aphorisms and ideas by great authors and world athletes by the World of English blog and Carl William Brown If you want to know more about the Paris 2024 Summer Olympic Games visit its website. Follow the worlds top athletes as they go for gold in France (Jul 26-Aug 11, 2024). Paralympic Games – Wednesday 28 August to Sunday 8 September. So you wish to conquer in the Olympic games, my friend? And I too, by the Gods, and a fine thing it would be! But first mark the conditions and the consequences, and then set to work. You will have to put yourself under discipline; to eat by rule, to avoid cakes and sweetmeats; to take exercise at the appointed hour whether you like it or no, in cold and heat; to abstain from cold drinks and from wine at your will; in a word, to give yourself over to the trainer as to a physician. Then in the conflict itself you are likely enough to dislocate your wrist or twist your ankle, to swallow a great deal of dust, or to be severely thrashed, and, after all these things, to be defeated. Epictetus Why is luge a sport? You dress up like a giant sperm and go sledding really fast. That’s hardly athletic. Phallic and sexy, yes. But hardly athletic. Jessica Park I think my favorite sport in the Olympics is the one in which you make your way through the snow, you stop, you shoot a gun, and then you continue on.  In most of the world, it is known as the biathlon, except in New York City, where it is known as winter.  Michael Ventre The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not winning but taking part; the essential thing in life is not conquering but fighting well. Pierre de Coubertin Finishing second in the Olympics gets you silver.  Finishing second in politics gets you oblivion.  Richard Nixon The Olympics remain the most compelling search for excellence that exists in sport, and maybe in life itself. Dawn Fraser I won it, at least five million times. Men who were stronger, bigger and faster than I was could have done it, but they never picked up a pole, and never made the feeble effort to pick their legs off the ground and get over the bar. Bob Richards The Olympic games should be a matter between individual athletes and the gods. Noisy flag-waving dishonors gods and men alike.  Dave Beard The first is to love your sport. Never do it to please someone else. It has to be yours. Peggy Fleming The Olympics are a wonderful metaphor for world cooperation, the kind of international competition that's wholesome and healthy, an interplay between countries that represents the best in all of us.  John Williams If you don't try to win you might as well hold the Olympics in somebody's back yard. The thrill of competing carries with it the thrill of a gold medal. One wants to win to prove himself the best. Jesse Owens When anyone tells me I can't do anything, I'm just not listening any more. Florence Griffith Joyner The important thing in life is not victory but combat; it is not to have vanquished but to have fought well. Pierre de Coubertin Passover and Easter are the only Jewish and Christian holidays that move in sync, like the ice skating pairs we saw during the Winter Olympics.  Marvin Olasky It is the inspiration of the Olympic Games that drives people not only to compete but to improve, and to bring lasting spiritual and moral benefits to the athlete and inspiration to those lucky enough to witness the athletic dedication. Herb Elliott

Olympic Sports quotes and aphorisms A lo largo de los años he aprendido mucho del deporte, he vivido momentos muy importantes para mí que me han marcado y me han hecho madurar. Ona Carbonell For athletes, the Olympics are the ultimate test of their worth. Mary Lou Retton There can be distractions, but if you're isolated from the heart of the Games, the Olympics become just another competition. Mary Lou Retton It never gets tiring coming to Paralympic Games and crossing the line first. It is like a fairytale that just doesn't seem to end, each time I come out. Jason Smyth My dream was to win the World Championships and I did it. So I said my next dream was to win the Paralympics. So what's my next dream? It is sleeping. Daniel Martins We are all humans, we spend almost all our career together so when a teammate suffers, I suffer too. Omara Durand The Olympic Games is a celebration of discipline. Sunday Adelaja It was not the money that was my main motive; it was the challenge and the thrill where I got my kicks. Armed robbery to me was like a sport. To take on an armored vehicle with two armed security guards - it was like an athlete attending the Olympic Games. Drexel Deal In Hollywood you can see things at night that are fast enough to be in the Olympics in the day time.  Will Rogers Estoy convencida de que estamos aquí para retarnos día a día a hacer grandes cosas. Porque sólo atreviéndonos a luchar para conseguir nuestros sueños podremos hacerlos realidad. Ona Carbonell Arguing is the Olympics of talking Stewart Stafford Performing enhancing drugs are banned in the Olympics.  Okay, we can swing with that.  But performance debilitating drugs should not be banned.  Smoke a joint and win the hundred meters, fair play to you.  That's pretty damn good.  Unless someone's dangling a Mars bar off in the distance.  Eddie Izzard Here's a good trick:  Get a job as a judge at the Olympics.  Then, if some guy sets a world record, pretend that you didn't see it and go, "Okay, is everybody ready to start now?"  Jack Handey

Olympic Sports quotes and aphorisms You can also read: The History of Olympic Games Paris 2024 Olympic Games The Paralympic Games Great Sports Quotes Sports News https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZZD70wA3k4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSf7-LsmU3Y Read the full article

[pyxisbr-blog-blog]

A Dignidade e as Olimpíadas, da Série "Entre sem bater".

O espírito olímpico é somente um ideal.

O nível do evento tem pouco do que imaginou Coubertin.

#Olimpiadas #Entresembater #Coubertin #Desigualdade #Dignidade #Humanista

[empirearchives]

Apparently the guy who said that is considered the father of the modern Olympics, and he’s a fan of Napoleon, so that’s interesting.

Coaches doing the most random things to prepare for games.

I don’t even care about American Football but the article alleges that some of Napoleon’s tactics have inspired and been used in different plays and this part sent me:

[a-modernmajorgeneral]

At the ancient Olympics in Greece, athletes weren’t the only stars of the show. The spectacle also attracted poets, who recited their works for eager audiences. Competitors commissioned bigger names to write odes of their victories, which choruses performed at elaborate celebrations. Physical strength and literary prowess were inextricably linked.

Thousands of years later, this image appealed to Pierre de Coubertin, a French baron best known as the founder of the modern Olympics in 1896. But today’s Games bear little resemblance to Coubertin’s grand vision: He pictured a competition that would “reunite in the bonds of legitimate wedlock a long-divorced couple—muscle and mind.”

The baron believed that humanity had “lost all sense of eurythmy,” a word he used to describe the harmony of arts and athletics. The idea can be traced back to sources such as Plato’s Republic, in which Socrates extolls the virtues of education that combines “gymnastic for the body and music for the soul.” Poets should become athletes, and athletes should try their hand at verse.

That philosophy was a driving force at the 1912 Stockholm Games, where organizers introduced five arts competitions as official Olympic events. Modern history’s first written work to win an Olympic gold medal was “Ode to Sport,” a prose poem by Georges Hohrod and M. Eschbach. It begins:

O Sport, delight of the Gods, distillation of life! In the grey dingle of modern existence, restless with barren toil, you suddenly appeared like the shining messenger of vanished ages, those ages when humanity could smile.

Over the following eight verses, the poets sing Sport’s praises. “O Sport, you are Honor! The titles you bestow are worthless save if won in absolute fairness. … O Sport, you are Joy! At your call the flesh makes holiday and the eyes smile. … O Sport, you are Fecundity! … O Sport, you are Progress!” And so on.

Today’s readers are often underwhelmed by the first poem to win gold, describing it as “florid,” “saccharine” or “overblown.” But as far as the 1912 jury was concerned, Hohrod and Eschbach knocked it out of the park.

“The great merit of the ‘Ode to Sport,’ which, in our view, was far and away the winner in the literature competition, was that it is the very model of what the competitions [were] looking for in terms of inspiration,” wrote the jurors in their report.

It’s perhaps unsurprising that Hohrod and Eschbach understood the spirit of the competition, the fabled marriage of muscle and mind, so acutely. That’s because they were pseudonyms for the man who had conceived the whole idea: The author of “Ode to Sport” was none other than Coubertin himself.

The first major excavations at Olympia, the Greek sanctuary that hosted the ancient Games, began in the 1870s. While previous digs had revealed ruins around the Temple of Zeus, the large-scale efforts that followed uncovered sprawling structures and thousands of artifacts.

At the time, Coubertin was a teenager living in France. He had already seen the ruins of ancient Rome on family trips as a young boy, and now he was hearing all about the excavations at Olympia. He had recently started attending a Jesuit school, which provided him with a classical education and strengthened his burgeoning interest in ancient Greece.

“[Coubertin] was raised and educated classically, and he was particularly impressed with the idea of what it meant to be a true Olympian—someone who was not only athletic, but skilled in music and literature,” Richard Stanton, author of The Forgotten Olympic Art Competitions, told Smithsonian magazine in 2012. “He felt that in order to recreate the events in modern times, it would be incomplete to not include some aspect of the arts.”

The baron’s fellow organizers never fully shared his vision. After a few false starts, Coubertin formed the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in 1894, and the first modern Olympics took place in Athens two years later. But the inaugural 1896 Games included only athletic competitions, such as the discus throw, swimming, fencing and pole vaulting. Several new events debuted in 1900 (among them water polo and archery) and 1904 (boxing and lacrosse), but muscle and mind remained firmly at odds.

Coubertin pressed on. When officials announced that Rome would host the 1908 Olympics, the ancient city’s selection evidently set the baron’s gears churning. On August 5, 1904, he published an article titled “The Roman Olympiad” on the front page of the French newspaper Le Figaro, writing:

The time has come to enter a new phase, and to restore the Olympiads to their original beauty. At the time of Olympia’s splendor … the arts and literature joined with sport to ensure the greatness of the Olympic Games. The same must be true in the future. … Let the Romans now give us such a typical Olympiad and reopen the temple of sport to the ancient companions of its glory.

Coubertin argued that the partnership of sport and art had “outlasted the destruction of Olympia,” and the time had come to “restore this ideal completely.” Now that the first three modern Games had gotten the ball rolling, it was “possible and desirable to bring muscles and thought together again.”

Two years later, the IOC held a conference to seriously consider “to what extent and in what form the arts and literature can participate in the celebration of the modern Olympiads.” The event program listed several arts categories that were under consideration. Under “literature” were two bullet points: “possibility of setting up Olympic literary competitions; conditions for these competitions” and “sporting emotion, source of inspiration for the man of letters.”

Coubertin gave a rousing opening speech, doubling down on the metaphor of muscle and mind’s remarriage. “I would verge on being untruthful if I said that ardent desire compels them to renew their conjugal life today,” he said. “Doubtless their cooperation was long and fruitful, but once separated by adverse circumstances, they had come to a point of complete mutual incomprehension. Absence had made them grow forgetful.”

Officials ultimately agreed to add five arts competitions to the upcoming Olympics in 1908: literature, painting, sculpture, music and architecture. All works entered into these categories, collectively named the Pentathlon of the Muses, would need to be inspired by sports, restoring the ancient harmony that Coubertin had envisioned.

[fallensapphires]

Events: Summer Olympics

Holding an Olympic Games means evoking history.

Requested by @sleepymr

[nickysfacts]

The Olympic Games use to be far more artistic!

🎨🎼🏛️

[youreamonocoque]

i'm really not sure about the whole "distant future traveller has discovered the olympics again" i don't get it?

[thepastisalreadywritten]

By Nicolás de Cárdenas

26 July 2024

The motto of the modern Olympic Games, “Faster, Higher, Stronger,” was coined by French Dominican friar Louis Henri Didon (17 March 1840 – 13 March 1900), who became friends with the founder of the modern Olympic Games, Baron Pierre de Coubertin (1 January 1863 – 2 September 1937), five years before the 1896 Athens Games.

Baron Pierre de Coubertin is known as the Father of the Modern Olympic Games. 

The motto, originally formulated in Latin as “Citius, Altius, Fortius," was used before the modern Olympic movement at St. Albert the Great School in Paris, where the Dominican friar was the principal.

Born on 17 March 1840, Didon entered the Rondeau Minor Seminary in Grenoble, France, beginning at the age of 9.

During his youth, he stood out for his ability as an athlete.

After visiting the Carthusian monastery in Grenoble, he decided to follow a religious vocation and took the habit of the Order of Preachers (Dominicans) at the age of 16.

Six years later, after a period of formation in Rome, he was ordained a priest at age 22.

Military chaplain, prisoner, and refugee

Didon soon gained fame as a preacher.

During the brief Franco-Prussian War, which broke out in July 1870, he was a military chaplain and for a time was held as a prisoner.

When he fell ill, he ended up as a refugee in Geneva, Switzerland.

From there, he was sent to Marseille, where he resumed his sometimes controversial preaching activity, which led to his being sent to Corsica in 1880. 

A decade later, he was appointed principal of St. Albert the Great School in Paris where he established sports as part of the school’s educational program and promoted sports competition.

This decision was the result of the belief in the value of sports and the contact he had with Pierre de Coubertin since 1891.

In the first race they organized, the Dominican decided to embroider on the school flag the famous motto, which would become an Olympic motto during the first Olympic Congress held in Paris in 1894.

Two years later, Athens hosted the first Olympic Games, which have since been held every four years.

It was interrupted only three times due to World Wars I and II (1916, 1940 and 1944) and postponed from 2020 to 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

—

This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.

[adreamthatsworthkeeping]

Why isn't Ben Willabond out there singing about the history of the Olympics dressed as Baron de Coubertin.

[postcard-from-the-past]

Farm of the Château de Coubertin in Saint-Rémy-lès-Chevreuse, Yveline region of France

French vintage postcard

[galerymod]

Que la joie et la bonne entente règnent, et qu'ainsi la flamme olympique poursuive son chemin à travers les âges, augmentant la compréhension amicale entre les nations, pour le bien d'une humanité toujours plus enthousiaste, plus courageuse et plus pure.

Pierre de Coubertin

May joy and good fellowship reign, and in this manner, may the Olympic Torch pursue its way through ages, increasing friendly understanding among nations, for the good of a humanity always more enthusiastic, more courageous and more pure.

Pierre de Coubertin

[rwpohl]

tatort 15: wenn steine sprechen, erich neureuther 1972

[lolochaponnay]

[vqtblog]

Agustín Sciammarella: Pierre de Coubertin