The glorious Ancient Games, interrupted on 393 AC by Emperor
Theodosios I, had its rebirth at the end of the XIX century. The
main factor that influenced the Olympics rebirth idea was the excavations, in
1852, of the Olympia Temple ruins,
where the Ancient Games took place. This had a major
impact over the ancient Greeks sports values rebirth and
influenced the French Charles
Louis de Feddy, most known as Baron Pierre de Coubertin.
The Baron
words could give us a good picture about the circumstances that
culminated with the Olympic Games rebirth:
"The idea of the revival of Olympic Games was not a passing fancy: it was the logical culmination of a great movement. The 19th century saw the taste for physical exercises revive everywhere ... At the same time the great inventions, the railways and the telegraph have abridged distances and mankind has come to live a new existence; the peoples have intermingled, they have learned to know each other better and immediately they started to compare themselves. What one achieved the other immediately wished also to endeavour: universal exhibitions brought together to one locality of the globe the products of the most distant lands; Literary or scientific congresses have brought together, into contact, the various intellectual forces. How then should the athletes not seek to meet, since rivalry is the basis of athletics, and in reality the very reason of its existence?"
(Baron Pierre de Coubertin, 1896)
So, on
July 23, 1894, the Baron convoked a cultural/sports congress and
presented his proposal for the return of the Olympic Games. The 12
countries officials were so thrilled by the project that they immediately
scheduled
the first edition of the Modern Olympic Games to take place in
Athens in 1896.
Although
the Baron is worldwide know as the responsible by the Olympics
rebirth, there were, before his birth, other attempts to bring
back the Games by the Greeks. In the XIX century's Greece, the
Ancient Olympic Games ideal wasn't completed forgotten and it
is known that in 1838, the city of Letrini, near the ancient
Olympia, decided to bring the Olympic Games back. The plan was
to have the Games each 4 years in the city of Pyrgos, but there
isn't information about this Games and historians believed they
never happened.
Other
attempt, more successful, was undertook by the wealth Greek Evangelos Zappas
with the Zappian Olympic Games. There were four editions in the
years of 1859,
1870, 1875 and 1889 with prize money for all winners.
