Revival.

During the late nineteenth century, sports enthusiasts around the world called for the revival of the Olympic Games. Interest in the Olympic Games, which had been first contested in 776 B.C. and had continued until the fourth century A.D., increased significantly after German archaeologists, in the early 1880s, unearthed the ruins of Olympia the site of the ancient Greek athletic festival. The chief supporter for the revival of the Olympic Games was Baron Pierre de Coubertin, a wealthy French aristocrat, whose concern over the physical fitness of French youth following France's defeat in the Franco-Prussian War led to reform of physical education. The International Olympic Committee was organized in 1894, and Coubertin was selected as its secretary-general. IOC members also decided then that the games would be held in a different city every four years, that only modern sports would be contested, and...