Revival.

In the 1890s Baron Pierre de Coubertin, a wealthy French aristocrat, revived the Olympic Games. Interest in the Olympic Games, which had last been contested in 776 B.C., had increased significantly since the early 1880s, after a team of German archaeologists unearthed the ruins of Olympia, the site of the ancient Greek athletic festival. In 1894 Coubertin held a conference in Paris to establish an organization to govern the Olympic Games and the principles upon which to restore them. From this conference emerged the International Olympic Committee (IOC), with Coubertin as its secretary-general, and an accord that the games would be held in a different city every four years, that only modern sports would be contested, and that only amateur adult males would be allowed to compete. In 1895 the IOC selected Athens to host the first modern Olympic Games in 1896. Greek athletes dominated...