Nick Ripatrazone at Literary Hub:
At the 1912 Olympic Games in Stockholm, Sweden, Jim Thorpe easily won the decathlon in the first modern version of the event. The grueling, ten-part feat was not the only addition to the burgeoning modern games. Other events that debuted at the 1912 Olympics included architecture, sculpture, painting, music… and literature.
Although often separated, athletes and artists are both performers; they create, and perhaps crave, spectacle. The ancient union between sport and the arts appealed to Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the creator of the modern Olympics. In his official report on the 1896 games in Athens, de Coubertin parried away critics with a confident, and true, pronouncement: “I hereby assert once more my claims for being sole author of the whole project.”
His vision for the modern games was quite literary; in fact, de Coubertin created a monthly journal, La Revue Athlétique, “hoping to raise the interests in manly sports in France.”
More here.
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