PLAYING THE GAME

On the 6th April 1896 the first modern Olympic Games opened in Athens at the Panathinaiko Stadium, Athens, Greece.  Athens was perceived to be an appropriate choice to stage the inaugural modern Games. It was unanimously chosen as the host city during a congress organized by Pierre de Coubertin, a French educator and historian, in Paris, on June 23, 1894. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) was also established during this congress.

Statue in Atlanta

Coubertin was 33 years old when the games opened. Coubertin's advocacy for the Games centered on a number of ideals about sport. He believed that the early ancient Olympics encouraged competition among amateur rather than professional athletes, and that the ancient practice of a sacred truce in association with the Games might have modern implications, giving the Olympics a role in promoting peace. This role was reinforced in Coubertin's mind by the tendency of athletic competition to promote understanding across cultures, thereby lessening the dangers of war. In addition, he saw the Games as important in advocating his philosophical ideal for athletic competition: that the competition itself, the struggle to overcome one's opponent, was more important than winning. He had spent a bit of time with Thomas Arnold, the Head Master of Rugby School, in 1883 when he was just 20, and this was an important influence on his thoughts about sport and education. Coubertin expressed this ideal: 

The important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle, the essential thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well.

This sentiment has been expressed down trough the ages. It has been mentioned time and again as "It's not whether you win or lose it's how you play the game. I sought to find out where that phrase originated and have only come up with a section of a poem by noted American sports writer Grantland Rice, who wrote in a poem entitled Alumnus Football (c.1920):

"For when the One Great Scorer comes

To write against your name,

He marks - not that you won or lost -

But how you played the Game."

He wrote quite a number of poems, but was a much better sports writer than poet. An interesting man with a curious sense of duty. It is reported that before leaving for service in World War I, he entrusted his entire fortune, about $75,000, to a friend. On his return from the war, Rice discovered that his friend had lost all the money in bad investments, and then had committed suicide. Rice accepted the blame for putting “that much temptation” in his friend’s way. Rice then made monthly contributions to the man’s widow for the next 30 years.

Although he was a great supporter of sports persons and defended the right of football players and tennis players to make a living as professionals, he also decried the warping influence of big money in sports, once writing in his column:

"Money to the left of them and money to the right

Money everywhere they turn from morning to the night

Only two things count at all from mountain to the sea

Part of it's percentage, and the rest is guarantee"

He wrote that in a piece for the New York Times in 1917. It seems quite appropriate today.