Page "1896 Summer Olympics" Paragraph 4

During the 18th century, several small-scale sports festivals across Europe were named after the Ancient Olympic Games.

The 1870 Olympics at the Panathenaic stadium, which had been refurbished for the occasion, had an audience of 30, 000 people.

Coubertin adopted Dr William Penny Brooke's idea to establish a multi-national and multi-sport event — the ancient games were in a sense international, because various Greek city-states and colonies were represented, but only free male athletes of Greek origin were allowed to participate.

In 1890, Coubertin wrote an article in La Revue Athletique, which espoused the importance of Much Wenlock — a rural market town in the English county of Shropshire.

It was here that, in October 1850, the local physician William Penny Brookes had founded the Wenlock Olympian Games, a festival of sports and recreations that included athletics and team sports, such as cricket, football and quoits.

Coubertin also took inspiration from the earlier Greek games organized under the name of Olympics by businessman and philanthropist Evangelis Zappas in 1859, 1870 and 1875.

The 1896 Athens Games was funded by the legacies of Evangelis Zappas and his cousin Konstantinos Zappas and by George Averoff who had been specifically requested by the Greek government, through crown prince Constantine, to sponsor the second refurbishment of the Panathinaiko Stadium.

This the Greek government did despite the fact that the cost of refurbishing the stadium in marble had already been funded in full by Evangelis Zappas forty years earlier.