Page "Pierre de Coubertin" Paragraph 17

Thomas Arnold, the Head Master of Rugby School, was an important influence on Coubertin's thoughts about education, but his meetings with Dr. William Penny Brookes also influenced his thinking about athletic competition to some extent.

A trained physician, Brookes believed that the best way to prevent illness was through physical exercise.

In 1850, he had initiated a local athletic competition that he referred to as " Meetings of the Olympian Class " at the Gaskell recreation ground at Much Wenlock, Shropshire.

Along with the Liverpool Athletic Club, who began holding their own Olympic Festival in the 1860s, Brookes created a National Olympian Association which aimed to encourage such local competition in cities across Britain.

These efforts were largely ignored by the British sporting establishment.

Brookes also maintained communication with the government and sporting advocates in Greece, seeking a revival of the Olympic Games internationally under the auspices of the Greek government.

There, the philanthropist brothers Evangelos and Konstantinos Zappas had used their wealth to fund Olympics within Greece, and paid for the restoration of the Panathinaiko Stadium that was later used during the 1896 Summer Olympics.

The efforts of Brookes to encourage the internationalisation of these games came to naught.

However, Dr Brookes did organise a national Olympic Games in London, at Crystal Palace, in 1866 and this was the first Olympics to resemble an Olympic Games to be held outside of Greece.

But while others had created Olympic contests within their countries, and broached the idea of international competition, it was Coubertin whose work would lead to the establishment of the International Olympic Committee and the organisation of the first modern Olympic Games.