Born into a French aristocratic family, Coubertin became an academic and studied a broad range of topics, most notably education and history.

[5] His father Charles was a staunch royalist and accomplished artist whose paintings were displayed and given prizes at the Parisian salon, at least in those years when he was not absent in protest of the rise to power of Louis Napoleon.

His paintings often centered on themes related to the Catholic Church, classicism, and nobility, which reflected those things he thought most important.

[6] In a later semi-fictional autobiographical piece called Le Roman d'un rallié, Coubertin describes his relationship with both his mother and his father as having been somewhat strained during his childhood and adolescence.

His memoirs elaborated further, describing as a pivotal moment his disappointment upon meeting Henri, Count of Chambord, whom the elder Coubertin believed to be the rightful king.

[7] Coubertin grew up in a time of profound change in France: defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, the Paris Commune, and the establishment of the Third Republic[8] but while these events were the setting of his childhood, his school experiences were just as formative.

[10] As was common in the French educational system at the time, Coubertin studied ancient Greece and Rome, which led to an appreciation of the Olympics at an early age.

In 1883, at the age of twenty, he visited England for the first time, and studied the program of physical education instituted under Thomas Arnold at the Rugby School.

He referenced both the Rugby School and the novel as helping him to appreciate the role of athletics in education, saying that students who learn about fair play and morality on the sports field will be able to apply those lessons in various aspects of their adult life.

[14] What Coubertin saw on the playing fields of the English schools he visited was how "organised sport can create moral and social strength".

[16] While Coubertin was certainly a romantic, and while his idealized vision of ancient Greece would lead him later to the idea of reviving the Olympic Games, his advocacy for physical education was also based on practical concerns.

The failure of this endeavor, however, was closely followed by the development of a new idea, the revival of the ancient Olympic Games as a festival of international athleticism.

[16] He was the referee of the first-ever French championship rugby union final on 20 March 1892, between Racing Club de France and Stade Français.

In 1850, he had initiated a local athletic competition that he referred to as "Meetings of the Olympian Class"[18] at the Gaskell recreation ground at Much Wenlock, Shropshire.

[19] Along with the Liverpool Athletic Club, who began holding their own Olympic Festival in the 1860s, Brookes created a National Olympian Association which aimed to encourage such local competition in cities across Britain.

While Brookes' contribution to the revival of the Olympic Games was recognized in Britain at the time, Coubertin in his later writings largely neglected to mention the role the Englishman played in their development.

The ancient practice of a sacred truce in association with the Games might have modern implications, giving the Olympics a role in promoting peace.

This role was reinforced in Coubertin's mind by the tendency of athletic competition to promote understanding across cultures, thereby lessening the dangers of war.

[29] Coubertin expressed this ideal thus: L'important dans la vie ce n'est point le triomphe, mais le combat, l'essentiel ce n'est pas d'avoir vaincu mais de s'être bien battu.

By 1894, the year the Congress was held, he publicly criticized the type of amateur competition embodied in English rowing contests, arguing that its specific exclusion of working-class athletes was wrong.

Coubertin had originally opposed the choice of Greece, as he had concerns about the ability of a weakened Greek state to host the competition, but was convinced by Vikelas to support the idea.

[35] Following the Congress, the institutions created there began to be formalized into the International Olympic Committee (IOC), with Demetrios Vikelas as its first president.

[39] De Coubertin believed strongly that both art and sport should be featured at the Olympics, and in 1904, he wrote the following in the French newspaper Le Figaro: "The time has come to take the next step, and to restore the Olympiad to its original beauty.

During his tenure as president, Coubertin finally succeeded in having art competitions included as part of the Olympic Games, something he had advocated for since the founding of the IOC.

Coubertin won the gold medal for literature at the 1912 Summer Olympics for his poem "Ode to Sport," which was the first time the arts competitions were included at the Games.

[44] Coubertin entered the poem under the pseudonym of Georges Hohrod and M. Eschbach which were the names of villages close to his wife's place of birth.

[46]Following Francisco Amoros' ideas, De Coubertin developed a new type of utilitarian sport: "les débrouillards" (the "resourceful men") from 1900.

The first débrouillards season was organized in 1905/1906, and the program was wide: running, jumping, throwing, climbing, swimming, sword fighting, boxing, shooting, walking, horse riding, rowing, and cycling.

Marie and Pierre tried to console themselves with two nephews, but they were killed at the front in World War I. Coubertin died of a heart attack in Geneva, Switzerland, on 2 September 1937 and was buried in Bois-de-Vaux Cemetery in Lausanne.

[62] The Pierre de Coubertin Medal is a special decoration awarded by the International Olympic Committee since 1997 that "pays tribute to institutions with a pedagogical and educational role and to people who, through their research and the creation of intellectual works in the spirit of Pierre de Coubertin, contribute to the promotion of Olympism.