It's time for the real story of the Olympics

Unless you are living in an alternate reality you have certainly been exposed to the de Coubertin myth, a myth created by himself, peddled by a bunch of sycophants and sanctified by the multinational mastodon that has become the IOC. 

He was touted as the founder, father, saviour, reviver, restorer, creator, originator, initiator, pioneer, forerunner, progenitor, innovator, mastermind, prophet, inspirer, luminary, rebuilder, rejuvenator, patriarch, godfather of the Olympics. He was hailed as the guiding spirit of the modern Olympics, the architect of Olympic revival, the torchbearer of the Olympic ideal, the moral engineer of athletic renaissance. He is revered as the patron saint of modern sport. 

The list goes on and on, repeating ad nauseam the laudatory clichés and panegyrics for de Coubertin. But one should not swallow the platitudes of the de Coubertin hagiographies. The reality is totally different from what the baron himself pretends. In a letter, written in 1934, when people had (he hoped) forgotten the real history, he claims:

It has been said that Olympism was 'in the air' and likely to be revived somehow or other. It was not.

And just a month before, in an article celebrating the 40th anniversary of the re-establishment of the Olympic Games he wrote:

Vainement, des perfidies ultérieures s'exerceront-elles à faire prédominer la notion d'une création incertaine dont les étapes se seraient succédées timidement au hasard des circonstances. La vérité est différente. L'Olympisme est né cette fois tout équipé, comme Minerve! — avec son programme complet et sa géographie intégrale; la planète entière serait son domaine.

(In vain will later perfidies try to impose the notion of an uncertain creation whose stages would have timidly followed one another, at the whim of circumstance. The truth is otherwise. Olympism was born this time fully armed, like Minerva — with its complete program and its entire geography; the whole planet was to be its domain).

He implies that Olympism was born out of his own head, with no other parent, that there was really no "Olympism" in the air. 

Those are unashamed lies.

When Pierre de Coubertin visited William Brookes in Much Wenlock, England, in 1890, he knew nothing about the Olympics. His trip was driven by his interest in education, especially physical education and sport, a subject dear to Brookes at the time. Once in Much Wenlock, however, the baron stumbled upon the local Olympic revival movement, the very initiative that later inspired the modern Olympic Games. It was this movement that Coubertin would subsequently claim to have founded himself, single‑handedly.

I feel it is time for the real story of the Olympic revival to be told. There were, in the last half of the 19th century, two serious and significant national olympic revivals: one in Greece, and one in England. And, moreover these two revivals were interconnected. In a series of posts, I will tell their story, and how de Coubertin, in an act of perfidy (to use his own word), sought to expunge the Greek and English origins from Olympic history.

Sub-2 marathon: the writing was on the wall

That was the only occasion on which I disagreed with Ross Tucker. (If you read my blog, you know he is a leading South African sports physiologist for whom I have the greatest respect). In a post on The Science of Sport (with Jonathan Dugas), titled “The sub-2 hour marathon? Don’t hold your breath, just yet”, he offered a cautious outlook. Admittedly, the article dates back to 2013, but toward its end Tucker made some predictions. (For context, it was published just after W. Kipsang had lowered the world record by 15 seconds to 2:03:23). I repeat Tucker’s conclusion verbatim:

Bottom line is that talking about a sub-2 hour performance after seeing a 2:03:38 improve to a 2:03:23 is just not feasible.  The next barrier is 2:03, and I'm sure will go within five years.  Then we can begin to work towards 2:02, which will take another ten years, perhaps.

It's a great period for marathon running - every season, fall and spring, we get to anticipate a record at least twice.  2013 has delivered a successful attempt, but it shouldn't lull us into expectation that more of the same is just around the corner.

If I interpret Tucker’s timeline correctly, a sub-2 marathon might have been expected around 2040–45. On this occasion, however, his prediction proved overly conservative.

Running in London, last year’s top “out-of-stadium” athlete, S. Sawe, broke the barrier with a time that would have seemed unthinkable a decade ago. His 1:59:30 not only improved K. Kiptum’s official record of 2:00:35 but also surpassed E. Kipchoge’s unofficial 1:59:41 exhibition performance. The first half was covered in 1:00:29; then, propelled by two blistering 5 km splits of 13:54 and 13:42 between 30 and 40 km, he completed the second half in 59:01.

He was not alone. Y. Kejelcha also broke the 2-hour barrier with 1:59:41, on his marathon debut (!). J. Kiplimo, meanwhile, dipped under the previous world record with 2:00:28. (I had expected the record to come from Kiplimo, and in a sense he delivered—only two runners finished ahead of him).

Sawe’s run was not the only record. In the women’s race (women-only), T. Assefa improved her own world record of 2:15:50, set in London the previous year, to 2:15:41. (She still holds a faster personal best of 2:11:53 from a mixed race). H. Obiri and J. Jepkosgei finished second and third in 2:15:53 and 2:15:55—both just seconds outside the previous world record.

I was not planning to publish anything before later this week but when I saw the results from London I could not resist the temptation.

Walk for your life (where I do not write about race-walking)

From time to time, I publish an article that is not directly related to Athletics but still concerns physical activity. This time, I was intrigued by a striking title: “How we walk might reveal our risk of death”. The piece was written in a popular-journalism style, yet it referenced a scientific publication from a research team at the University of Leicester, published in Mayo Clinic Proceedings. I decided to dig deeper and tracked down the original paper.

This led me into the field of risk prediction, an area of research that is clearly flourishing. Insurance companies rely on precise risk assessment for their business survival, and life insurance is crucial for both insurer and insured. Many risk scores already exist, usually combining nonmodifiable factors (such as age, sex, or chronic disease history) with modifiable ones like blood pressure, cholesterol, smoking habits, and obesity. In recent years, researchers have shown growing interest in using simple physical behaviours as indicators of mortality risk. For example, resting heart rate has proved a convenient proxy for both physical fitness and a lower risk of death.

The University of Leicester team sought to determine whether measures of physical behaviour, such as leisure-time activity and sleep duration, and indicators of physical function and fitness, including resting heart rate and walking pace, could enhance or even replace traditional risk factors in predicting mortality. They analysed data from half a million individuals, divided into four groups: healthy women, unhealthy women, healthy men, and unhealthy men.

I will not go into all the details of their study. (If you are truly interested, I suggest you look it up and read it here: https://www.mcpiqojournal.org/article/S2542-4548(26)00017-2/fulltext). I will not go into all the details of their study but will focus instead on two graphics that I found particularly striking. 

The first concerns resting heart rate: the horizontal axis represents the heart rate in beats per minute, and the vertical axis the associated risk factor. It is remarkable that, at least for men, the correlation is almost perfect—notice the very small error bars. 

A resting heart rate below 50 corresponds to roughly a 25% reduction in risk, and this holds even for individuals with at least one existing chronic illness. (It is unclear why, for women, a low resting heart rate does not lead to a similar reduction; the authors do not comment on this point.)

The second graphic deals with walking pace—the paper’s main focus. Unfortunately, because walking speed was self‑reported, only three data points are available: brisk, steady, and slow pace.

Still, the effect is clearly visible. A brisk walking pace is associated with a notably reduced risk, whereas a slow pace corresponds to an increased one.

What is particularly noteworthy is that considering physical behaviour and fitness led to equally consistent conclusions for individuals with existing health conditions. Traditional risk scores, which rely mainly on non-modifiable factors or markers managed through medication, offer little incentive for behavioural change. The Leicester team’s study showed that adding measures of physical behaviour and fitness can significantly improve risk prediction—and among all predictors, walking pace proved the strongest, especially for those with a prevalent health condition.

These findings align with earlier work by the same researchers, who demonstrated that while increasing total exercise lowers the risk of heart attack, reaching the same total through higher intensity brings substantial additional benefit. To make this even more explicit: adding just ten minutes of brisk walking to the daily routine of inactive men and women aged 60 and above was linked to an increase of roughly one year in life expectancy.

So don’t hesitate—get out there and walk. Briskly!

PS I apologise for the somewhat prolonged silence but as you can gather from the photo below I was otherwise occupied recently.

Add to this the fact that the championship was taking place in Egypt, which is a great place for tourism, and you can understand why writing had to take a brief back seat.