INTERNATIONAL OLYMPIC ACADEMY 7th JOINT - IOA

were initially restricted to French education, he swiftly realised that to
internationalize sports within the framework of the Olympic Games
would be an incentive to his country to revitalize the much-neglected
physical education and sport.
Coubertin had initially valued sport as being capable of playing a
major role in the training of an energetic and virile national elite. He
now saw another possible dimension to it that is the ‘sports for all’
dimension.
“All types of sport for everyone, that slogan will undoubtedly
be called widely utopian. It matters little, I have weighed it and
examined it at length; I know it is both possible and precise.
All my remaining strength and years shall be employed in
making it triumph”.
(La gazette de Lausanne, LETTRE OLYMPIQUE, 13 th January)
He continued to pursue the same goal through the Bureau of
Sporting Education and finally the Bureau established the CHARTE
DE LA REFORME SPORTIVE on 30 th September 1930:
“.. the establishing of a clear distinction between physical
education and sports education on the one hand, sports
education and competition on the other.”
He demanded again in a message over radio in 1935 (cf. THE
OLYMPIAN) - set the tone for the last lines of the MEMOIRES
OLYMPIQUE (p. 218).
“Do not hope to rid yourselves of it without destroying
everything. Resign yourselves, therefore, all of you, followers
of the unnatural utopian of moderation, to seeing us continue to
put into practice the motto formerly given by Father DIDON to
his pupils and which has become the motto of the Olympism:
citius, altius, fortius”.
For Coubertin, his definition of sport was printed in the first
edition of LECONS DE PEDAGOGIE SPORTIVE in Lausanne in
1921:
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