Syracuse

Toward a definition of Olympism / Jeffrey Owen Segrave

Segrave, Jeffrey Owen

“The Olympic Games are the most powerful expression of international sport. That they are ultimately only an expression of a deeply profound belief in the education value of sport is perhaps less known. But for Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the modern Olympic Movement, the Games represented the institutionalization of an ideal that extolled sport as a moral and social endeavor. Coubertin's vision was derived from a synthesis of ideas that he drew from both classical Greek and a 19th-century English public school conception of sport. Although he initially enlisted these ideas in support of a social reform platform directed against his native France, he ultimately internationalized his thinking to generate a philosophy that placed sport at the center of a universal campaign for peace and international understanding. He called his philosophy of social reform Olympism". From this preamble, Jeffrey Owen Segrave sets out to define the concept of Olympism, conceiving it as a specific set of goals or aspirations that provides the blueprint for the conduct of the Olympic Games in particular, and for the conduct of sport in general. According to him, the aspirations of Olympism are: education, international understanding, equal opportunity, far and equal competition, cultural expression, independence of sport, excellence.

• Subject
• Description
• Contains
• Work