Olympism: a bee in de Coubertin's bonnet (part 5 of "the real story of the Olympics")

De Coubertin visited Wenlock in October 1890. At that time, he was deeply interested in physical education, believing that its inclusion in the curriculum of French schools would contribute to France’s “grandeur”, both political and military. He had already been to England in the 1880s, but this visit to Dr. Brookes came after he had founded, in 1888, the Comité pour la Propagation des Exercises Physiques (also known as the Comité Jules Simon). It was his shared (with Brookes) enthusiasm for general education, physical training, and sport that prompted the journey, and once there, de Coubertin discovered the Olympic movement.

Brookes introduced him to the idea of an Olympic revival and told him about earlier efforts, his own Olympian festivals in Much Wenlock, as well as those held in Greece under Zappas’ patronage. By then, however, the Olympic movement in Greece was all but dead. The “Committee for the Olympics”, which administered Zappas’ legacy, was dominated by persons openly hostile to athletic competition. They had begun diverting the funds meant for the Games into industrial projects instead. As for Brookes’ festivals, they too were fading: the “amateur” victory of the elitist clubs had drained the movement’s vitality. Old and ailing, Brookes had already seen his appeal to Greece for an “International Olympic Movement” and an Olympian festival in Athens blocked by the anti-athletic clique. Yet, when de Coubertin arrived, he could not resist speaking of his cherished Olympic vision.

Back in Paris, de Coubertin behaved as though he had conceived a wholly new idea. During the annual meeting of the Union des Sociétés Françaises de Sports Athlétiques (USFSA) in November 1892, he proposed “the restoration of the Olympic Games”. He later claimed that his audience was baffled by the novelty of the suggestion, though in practice his speech received polite applause and little follow-up. Most sporting associations were absorbed in managing their everyday affairs. Yet de Coubertin persisted. The following year, he organized an International Athletic Congress to be held in Paris in June 1894.

By April, de Coubertin had barely advertised his congress, and almost no delegates had registered. David C. Young recounts what happened behind the scenes, altering the course of history: in early April, at the baron’s request, de Coubertin’s friend Charles Waldstein “laid the question before the Greek royal family”. Waldstein secured a long audience with Constantine, heir to the Greek throne. In mid-April, he wrote to de Coubertin that Prince Constantine would serve as an honorary member of the Paris Congress. This prompted de Coubertin to dispatch a flurry of invitations for the June event, alongside a request that delegates submit their views on amateurism and the Olympic revival in advance. When Brookes received his invitation, he replied by advocating Greece as the permanent Olympic site—though he allowed that rotations “in or near the Capitals of all nations might also suffice"—and contacted his old friend Charilaos Trikoupis, then prime minister of Greece.

It is striking that de Coubertin deemed it unwise to sideline Greece in his Olympic revival (his anti-hellenic feelings would surface later). And the efforts of his intermediaries, Waldstein and Brookes, bore fruit. Demetrios Vikelas, a Greek who had spent most of his adult life in England and France, had no prior involvement in athletics; but in early June 1894, while residing in Paris, he received a certificate naming him a member of the Panellinios Athletic Club. Soon after came a letter from a friend, urging him to represent the club at de Coubertin’s Congress (as Fokianos, in poor health and lacking foreign languages, could not attend). And at the Congress itself, “as if by previous agreement”, Vikelas was elected chairman of the sub-committee on the Olympic Games.

The common lore holds that Vikelas became the first president of the IOC when, all on his own (as he later claimed), he proposed on the Congress’s final day, June 23, that the Olympic Games begin in Athens, a motion approved by acclamation. In truth, the story unfolded quite differently. According to David C. Young, the Congress was a scripted drama, with delegates as unwitting actors. The minutes reveal that several days earlier, they had voted in favour of inaugural games in London, despite de Coubertin’s proposal for Athens. Curiously, Vikelas did not support the baron’s Athens motion on that first occasion. Later that day, de Coubertin sent a telegram to King George of Greece, who replied with thanks to the Congress and best wishes for the Olympic revival. The only logical explanation, for this exchange and Vikelas’s change of heart, is that de Coubertin and the Greek royal family had already agreed to hold the first modern Olympics in Athens before the Paris Congress convened.

All of a sudden, Vikelas shifted his stance. He attributed this to a discussion with an unnamed friend who “happened to pass through Paris on the evening of June 22”. Most probably, Vikelas—thrust onto the stage without a script—had been unaware of the prior arrangements until King George’s telegram arrived, clarifying his role. During the final plenary session on June 23, he delivered that stirring, patriotic plea on Greece’s behalf; the delegates voted unanimously for Athens, and the rest is history. Vikelas and de Coubertin now faced the task of organizing the Olympics—with less than two years to do so. But that is a story for the next post.

Thiam is back

The last heptathlon Nafi Thiam had completed was the one that earned her a third successive title at the 2024 Paris Olympics. Then came 2025, when Thiam was obviously not in top shape and dropped out after the fifth event in the Worlds. She did participate in the Ratingen Meerkampf meeting in June this year, but it was clear from the outset that she would not contest the full event, only selected disciplines. (If you consult the Ratingen results on the World Athletics website, you will see “NM” next to Thiam’s long jump, which might appear to indicate that she fouled in the event. However, when you track down the official results from Ratingen, Thiam is correctly listed as DNS – i.e. as not having started).

So everyone was looking forward to Thiam’s first heptathlon appearance in almost a year. (And I suspect the person most anxiously awaiting this moment was Thiam herself). And she did not disappoint. Her performances were reasonably good, although I find her jumps somewhat below par. Here are the details:

100 m hurdles: 13.73 s

High jump: 1.85 m

Shot put: 15.10 m

200 m: 24.92 s

Long jump: 6.05 m

Javelin throw: 51.51 m

800 m: 2:13.66

for a total of 6482 points – the sixth-best performance this year. It is clear that simply by improving her jumps she could add more than 200 points to her score, bringing it to around 6,700 points. Only three women have scored above 6700 points this year: A. Kälin with 6813 (though she was almost 200 points behind that mark at the Europeans, finishing fourth), K. O’Connor with 6751, and E. Oosterwegel with 6713. And let’s not forget S. Dokter, who scored 6664 points for bronze at the Europeans. So even with a potential 6700-point score, Thiam would still be rather vulnerable. And things may be worse if A. Hall, who took a year off to recover and build towards the 2027 Beijing World Championships and the 2028 Olympics, returns in strong form.

I guess Thiam’s plan is more or less the same, perhaps with a focus solely on the 2028 Olympics and one or two low-key competitions in 2027 instead of the World Championships. Will she be able to win a fourth gold in Los Angeles? I am afraid that is a very tall order. But even if she manages to win a medal of any colour, that would be something no woman has done before. (Another great female athlete, A. Włodarczyk, also has three golds like Thiam, but “only” two fourth places – in her first and, for now, last participation). Thiam is a great athlete  (the best in the post-doping-control era) so I will keep my fingers crossed and follow her activities closely over the next two years.

PS. In case you are interested in combined events (and I assume that if you are reading this post and you are not a robot scraping it, you should be interested), you should visit my friends F. and P. Gousset’s Décapassion page. They have excellent videos from the Talence Décastar. And while you are there, bookmark their page and visit it regularly. It is the best page on combined events – and one of the, alas very few, promoting the women’s decathlon.

PS2. And a detailed article on the Décastar is now published on the Décapassion blog. Reading the article it's a little bit as if you were present at the competition (Frédéric Gousset was indeed there). Don't waste any time. Go and read it. 

The Ultimate Championship: a success

In several posts I voiced my reservations about the Ultimate Championship. As it turned out, those reservations were not justified. The championship was a real success. That said, several of my criticisms still stand. I still do not understand what dictated the choice of events. Why eliminate the men’s triple jump? Would it really have been so taxing for the programme to include the shot put?

But let us start at the beginning. The Ultimate Championship was advertised as an event that would bring the best athletes into the limelight. And to a certain extent, that is exactly what happened. The red carpet and the media day allowed fans to see their champions in a different light. Just look at the eminently photogenic E. Karalis posing in a burgundy (the trending colour of the year) coat. (Of course we also had to endure the ever present N. Lyles who, thanks to Lord Sebastian, monopolises the images even when he is not competing). Hoever, since there was no formal presentation of the participants, several of them remained simply invisible. As for the non-competing athletes, it is clear that the late date of the championship meant that the lists on the “road to Budapest” page kept changing due to injuries accumulated over the long season. But I understand that the logic of the “ultimate” makes it imperative that the event be held at the end of the season.

From a technical point of view I have several remarks. First, I do not see the logic of the relays. Since the competition is open to the best athletes, regardless of nationality (6 Ethiopian women in the 5000 m), why include events involving national teams? Although I love mixed relays, I would have preferred an Ultimate Championship without them. The four attempts in the horizontal jumps and the throws did not turn out to be the game-stopper I feared, but they still represent a major change of habits. I saw this with Tentoglou, who took his first three jumps with a huge margin just to play it safe. And when conditions are unhelpful, as with the slippery throwing circle in the hammer throw, the consequences can be disastrous. E. Hummel fell in his second attempt but, in his case, without consequences, whereas for Katzberg, who had produced a first 80+ throw just outside the authorised sector, his loss of equilibrium in the second attempt meant elimination. Staging both the semi-finals and the final of the 200 m on the same day (less than two hours apart) showed that this is not detrimental to performance. This could encourage adaptations to the programme of future championships. We did not have the chance to see a tie-break in the vertical jumps. To tell the truth, I strongly oppose the obsession with a single winner (which leads to the aberrant millisecond chase in sprint events). But to finish on a positive note, I must say that the three wild cards awarded were an undisputed success. All three, Tamberi, Ingebrigtsen and Kerr, went on to win their event. Much as I like to criticise Sir Sebastian, I must admit that in this case he nailed it.

M. Jefferson‑Wooden was the queen of the sprints. She beat J. Alfred and S. Richardson in the 100 m, 10.62 to 10.74 and 10.76. (P. Van der Vaeken was the first European in the event, beating A. Hunt). Jefferson went on to win the 200 m ahead of G. Thomas, 21.47 (third all‑time performance) to 21.77. S. Miller‑Uibo, coming back to high‑level competition after a series of injuries, was disqualified for a lane violation in the semis. (You have to look very carefully to see it). 

K. Bednarek imitated Jefferson, winning both the 100 m, beating O. Seville 9.85 to 9.90, and the 200 m, beating L. Tebogo with 19.52 (seventh all‑time performance) to 19.76. M. Paulino won the women’s 400 m easily in 49.07 ahead of H. Jaeger in 49.28 (both would run in the 48s one week later). The race saw the elimination in the semis of N. Bukowiecka and L. Manuel, while S. Eid Nasser, who qualified for the final, finished last. B. Kebinatsipi was manifestly unhappy with his time in the 400 m final, despite a national record of 43.39. R. Benjamin won his first “silver” (though there were no medals at this championship, only a trophy for the winner) before presenting himself an hour and a half later for the hurdles semis.

In the women’s 800 m, it was as if K. Hodgkinson was resigned to not fight A. Werro but to guarantee second place (which she did). Werro, Hodgkinson and Bol finished in that order in 1:55.88, 1:56.26 and 1:56.74 respectively. The men’s race was much more interesting. Entering the final stretch, M. Arop was leading and it was clear that E. Wanyonyi was running out of steam. But the final word belonged to D. Sedjati, who with a devastating sprint passed everybody, winning in 1:41.91. K. Kazimierska is having her best season. After a silver at the Europeans and winning the Diamond League final, she became the absolute champion of the 1500 m with 3:57.55 (and backed it up with a victory in the mile one week later). J. Kerr was invited on a wild card (after having set a world record in the mile with 3:42.66 in July). He put that to good use, winning the men’s 1500 m in 3:29.35 ahead of 20‑year‑old C. Myers in 3:29.68. (You can be sure that I will keep an eye on Myers in the years to come). J. Ingebrigtsen was another who profited from a wild card. When he unleashed his sprint at the end of the men’s 5000 m, nobody could catch him: he won in 12:59.24. The situation was totally different in the women’s race. L. Amebaw (an athlete I have been following for some time) took control at mid‑race and built an advantage of more than 50 m. It turned out to be impossible to reel her in, and she went on to win in 14:13.20, with J. Hull second in 14:18.42.

The hurdles did not reserve any surprises for us. Well, almost. In the final of the men’s high hurdles, C. Tinch looked the winner, but he crossed the line upright and J. Tharp, dipping strongly, stole the victory, 12.94 to 12.95. 

Third finisher B. Franklin was another under‑13 hurdler, with 12.99 in the semis. M. Russell was never challenged in the women’s 100 m hurdles, winning in 12.22 ahead of T. Amusan in 12.34 and N. Visser in 12.39. In the women’s 400 m semis, it became clear that the athlete to beat was neither E. Zapletalová nor A. Cockrell but J. Jones. And, in fact, the latter went on to win the final in 52.45, with Zapletalová second in 52.68 and Cockrell third in 53.09. The great S. Muhammad was again among the best, finishing fourth in 53.11. Two weeks after his world record, A. Dos Santos ran once more under 46 seconds in the 400 m hurdles. He won in 45.98, with R. Benjamin second in 46.40 and K. Warholm in 46.78. E. Agyekum, whom I had noticed at the Europeans, was fourth in 47.10. Barring injuries, I expect him to be the next sub‑47 hurdler (he is already 10th on the all‑time list).

M. Tentoglou won his first Ultimate Champion title in the long jump. It crowned an exceptional season that dispelled any doubt that could have arisen after the injury‑ridden 2025. It was not an easy victory. Over‑cautious, he jumped with 20+ cm of margin, and when on his last attempt he let himself go free, he fouled an 8.50–8.55 m jump. And a moment of pure suspense ensued as B. Saraboyukov responded to Tentoglou’s 8.35 m best with a jump that turned out to be 8.34 m. L. Iapichino and J. Sawyers repeated their European one‑two in the women’s long jump. This time they were separated by more than 10 cm, since they finished with 6.90 and 6.78 m. S. Sarr won her first major title in the women’s triple jump with 15.06 m, in a scenario akin to that of the men’s long jump, since D. Velazco was second just 2 cm from the winner.

I have already written that, to my eyes, G. Tamberi is the best high jumper ever. And he gave another proof of it in Budapest. With J. Harrison, they were the only two to have cleared 2.30 m, with Tamberi leading on count‑back. And then Harrison decided to play a losing game. After one miss, he went successively from 2.33 to 2.37 and 2.39 m (something presumptuous and borderline irrational, but something that pushed Tamberi towards higher heights). So Tamberi cleared 2.33 and 2.35 on his first attempt, indicating by gesture and words that “è basso”. Then he succeeded at 2.37 on his second and asked for a bar at 2.41 m. It has been almost 10 years since anybody has jumped over 2.40 (M. Barshim in 2018, and I refuse to count doping offender D. Lysenko). It was perhaps the best moment of the Ultimate Championship. Y. Mahuchikh won an uninteresting women’s event with 1.99 m, and I must say clearly that I was disappointed by all the participants in the women’s high jump. S. Morris has never won anything outdoors in the pole vault (she has two world indoor titles) despite being the physically stronger female pole vaulter (albeit with a so‑so technique). But at 34 years of age she managed to win her first major title, clearing 4.90 on her second attempt, while H. Moll (13 years her junior) needed three tries. While I admire the female pole vault champions, I feel that the discipline has slowed down and there is no sign of recovery in the near future. And the situation is the perfect opposite in the men’s discipline. What makes it even more interesting is that the absolute supremacy of M. Duplantis is now challenged by the emergence of M. Karalis. Just look at the results: Duplantis 6.20 m, Karalis 6.15 m and Guttormsen 5.95 m. (And, of course, Karalis, when he fouled at 6.20 m, decided to go higher at 6.25 m, forcing Duplantis to gamble on Karalis not succeeding. Men’s pole vault, which became interesting when Duplantis came of age, is now becoming breath‑taking).

The only thing I will say about the three throwing events included in the programme is that I considered the inclusion of the women’s javelin downright stupid. Well, it turned out not to be stupid at all. Z. Yan took control of the event with 68.05 m on her first attempt, but she injured herself and could not continue. And then H. Kitaguchi threw a humongous 68.92 m, clinching victory. (In case you were wondering, I am not changing my opinion on Kitaguchi: for me, she is not a great champion but is simply profiting from the ambient mediocrity of the event). M. Hummel, coached by K. Klaas, won the men’s hammer with 81.46 m (despite his spectacular fall in his second attempt). E. Katzberg, who was the number‑one favourite, finished the competition with two fouls – proof, if we ever needed one, that the current system for throws is a highly risky one. R. Pathirage took control of the men’s javelin with his third throw, and he could have won with that. But something was missing, and at his fourth attempt he unleashed an over‑90‑m throw, confirming his supremacy.

As I said at the beginning of the article the championship was a success. But why on Earth did they have to paint the field black?