The 1894 Congress decided that the 1896 Olympics would be held in Athens. And now Vikelas and de Coubertin had to organise them. In less than two years’ time!
Vikelas was the first to go to Athens, in October 1894. He hoped that, by working with the Zappas Committee, he would be able to form a local Olympic Organizing Committee. But he learned that his wife had fallen seriously ill, and he left precipitously for France. So it was up to de Coubertin to take the relay. And what a disaster it was!
De Coubertin arrived knowing nothing about Greek politics. He met Crown Prince Constantine, and the latter agreed to preside over the organizing committee. But when de Coubertin met Prime Minister Trikoupis, he got a resounding “No” on the question of whether the Games would even be held. He got the same answer from Dragoumis, head of the Olympic Committee (and a political ally of Trikoupis). Of course, de Coubertin ignored the fact that Prince Constantine and Trikoupis were political enemies. After meeting with Dragoumis, de Coubertin decided to form his own Greek organizing committee. Dragoumis gave him a meeting room in the Zappeion and suggested some names for the committee, as per de Coubertin’s (naïve, as it turned out) request. The names that Dragoumis gave were essentially anti‑royalist; and when de Coubertin convened the group and announced that Prince Constantine would preside, the committee waited for de Coubertin to leave for France and promptly dissolved itself.
His wife dead and buried, Vikelas rushed back to Athens to repair the damage done by de Coubertin’s ignorance (and, perhaps, haughtiness). Together with Prince Constantine he formed another committee and proceeded to organise the 1896 Games. And they got lucky. Trikoupis lost the elections and was replaced by Deligiannis, who was in favour of sports (and had given substantial support to the Fokianos Panhellenic Games of 1891). Under the new prime minister, the Olympic Games preparations proceeded apace. The message was that these Games were the fulfilment of Zappas’ dream.
But still, Vikelas felt that de Coubertin’s support was missing. In December 1894 and early 1895, in letter after letter, Vikelas begged Coubertin to be more active: to write to specific men about the preparations; to help make decisions on facilities; to send the plans the Baron had promised for the velodrome; to come to Greece himself to work with the organizing committee. All to no avail. De Coubertin, occupied with writing a French history book and preparing for marriage, switched his focus away from the Olympic Games, in which he had lost interest. He refused to come to Athens to help and did very little for the 1896 preparations. At one point, it seems, he even tried to resign from the IOC. (Vikelas refused to accept his resignation). So the Games were organised by Vikelas, Constantine, and the Greek Olympic organising committee.
The Athens 1896 Olympics were a success. I will not give details of the competition itself. The literature on this abounds. But this success was not obtained thanks to de Coubertin, who arrived just ten days before the Opening Ceremony, after many of the other spectators.
Of course, when the 1896 Games succeeded, Coubertin claimed that he had been “the sole author of the entire project”. And he later complained that the ungrateful Greeks refused to give him credit, snubbed him, and had refused his suggestions about the Games, refused to let him take an active part in the 1896 organisation—doing everything on their own. This last point is true. The Greeks did nearly everything on their own. They had to. For the Baron was amazingly unhelpful, incredibly aloof from the actual preparation for the Games.
But the last act was written after the Games. Up to that point, de Coubertin was on excellent terms with the Greek royal family. In fact, when preparing the Paris Congress and fearing opposition (or perhaps mere lack of interest) to an Olympic revival, de Coubertin asked his archaeologist friend Charles Waldstein, then excavating in Greece, to approach the Greek royal family about his Olympic plan. Prince Constantine and Waldstein had a long talk about the Olympics, and the latter wrote to the Baron that Constantine had agreed to serve as an honorary member of the Paris Congress. However, after the successful Games, the royal family made clear their desire to keep the Games permanently in Greece. And at that point the schism became permanent.
De Coubertin went to great lengths to avoid Greece becoming the permanent organiser of the Olympics, up to and including rewriting history and covering up the very existence of the Zappas Olympics (which he knew very well; Vikelas himself had reminded him of it in no uncertain terms in a letter sent just after the 1896 Olympics: “… As you know, the idea of re‑establishing the ancient Games dates from far back. Evangelis Zappas, one of Greece’s benefactors …”). It probably has to do with the fact that de Coubertin felt that he had not been the most important person during the Athens Olympics, and he resented the fact. Be that as it may, from then on, de Coubertin was a sworn foe of Greece. And so, when Greece organised the Intercalated Games of 1906—the Games that saved the Olympics after the fiascos of Paris and St Louis—he excluded those Games from the official Olympic sequence, exacting revenge on the Greeks.
This completes “the real story of the Olympics”. I may write about the Paris and St. Louis Games one day, and perhaps about the Athens 1906 Games. But this is not a formal promise, so don’t hold your breath.
