A flame lit at Rugby

 Pierre, Baron de Coubertin (1863-1937) was a very odd cove. Inspired as much by a rural fête in Shropshire known as the Much Wenlock Olympics as by ancient Greece, he invented the modern Olympic Games. The original spur for his sporting endeavour was the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, which ended in a terrible French defeat. Coubertin, scion of a minor aristocratic family, became obsessed with French weakness. His aim was to, as he put it, ‘rebronze’ the male population, to bolster French virility through regular exercise and sports.

When we think of sports now, we think mainly of athletics (derived from ancient Greece) and team sports (derived from England). In the Baron’s day, the dominance of Greek and British games was not yet so clear. The Germans, stimulated by a hearty nationalist named Friedrich Jahn (1778-1852), also known as the Turnvater, still preferred mass callisthenics, or Turnen, hence Jahn’s sobriquet.