Who brought the Olympics back in 1896, and why?

Pierre de Coubertin, a French educator and historian, brought the Olympics back because he wanted to teach through sport and thought the ancient Games were a model worth reviving. He is called the father of the modern Games and co-founded the International Olympic Committee, and in 1896 Athens hosted the first modern Olympics.

The idea grew from schools. As a young man he went to England and studied physical education at Rugby School, convinced that students who learn fair play on the sports field apply those lessons later in life. When his efforts to bring more physical education into French schools failed, the idea of reviving the Olympic Games followed.

Coubertin did not invent the idea alone. In England, a doctor named William Penny Brookes had run his own "Meetings of the Olympian Class" since 1850, and in Greece the Zappas cousins had funded Olympics on Greek soil and paid for restoring the stadium used in 1896. Brookes wrote to Coubertin in 1890. Coubertin's later writings largely neglected to mention Brookes' role.

The congress that made it happen met at the Sorbonne in Paris on 23 June 1894. To win support, Coubertin had promoted it as a conference on amateurism, which led some to say that participants were persuaded to come under false pretenses. It proposed Games every four years and chose Athens for 1896 and Paris for 1900.

The 1896 Games were small by today's standards: 14 nations by the IOC's count and 241 athletes, all of them male, with over 65 percent of them Greek. The marathon was held for the first time in international competition, and the water carrier Spyridon Louis won it and became a national hero.