de Coubertin, the founder of the modern Olympics, wanted no women to compete in his event.
France really does not know how to honor the father of the modern Olympics. Is Baron Pierre de Coubertin a good guy or a bad guy? In 1894, de Coubertin founded the International Olympic Committee to help build a peaceful and better world by educating young people through sports. de Coubertin didn’t think women should be taking part in athletics. The first Olympic Games of the modern era was held in 1896 in Athens, Greece.
de Coubertin said the Games were created for “the solemn and periodic exaltation of male athleticism” with “female applause as reward. That women shouldn’t compete in the Games was self-explanatory as no women participated in the Ancient Games, there obviously was to be no place for them in the modern ones.” There were women who competed in women’s Ancient Games. “It is indecent that spectators should be exposed to the risk of seeing the body of a women being smashed before their eyes. Besides, no matter how toughened a sportswoman may be, her organism is not cut out to sustain certain shocks. Her nerves rule her muscles, nature wanted it that way.” Women were admitted in 1900 as participants in sports that were considered to be compatible with their femininity and fragility, but were excluded from the showpiece events of track and field. The 1900 Paris Games included 22 women. de Coubertin tried to marginalize women’s sports. After the 1912 Stockholm Games, he and many of his IOC colleagues believed “an Olympiad with females would be impractical, uninteresting, unaesthetic and improper.” It would be “the most unaesthetic sight human eyes could contemplate.” The 1914 IOC general session made clear: “No women to participate in track and field, but as before—allowed to participate in fencing and swimming.” After de Coubertin was gone, women were allowed to fully compete in the Olympics.
Pierre de Coubertin
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