The Olympic Games have an extensive history, but the modern
epoch of this worldwide sporting event is marked as having been
initiated in 1890 (Roche 92-93) and it is this period that this
history of the modern Olympic Games begins. Just a few years
earlier, the French aristocrat Pierre de Coubertin, a sports fan
and enthusiast of Hellenic history, had learned of
archaeologists’ discovery of the ancient games site at Olympia
and, by all accounts, became obsessed with the idea of reviving
the Olympics (Roche 92). During the same period, Dr. William
Penny Brookes, described by historians as a “leading British
sports culture enthusiast,” was also pursuing his dream of
reviving the Olympics, and had, by 1890, staged several small-
scale international sporting expositions, as had de Coubertin
(Roche 92). Just before the turn of the century, the spirit of
sport was at its height, as was the international community’s
interest in short-term collaborative events that brought
countries and their citizens together to shar