Einleitung

Nanjing in China is the setting for the second Youth Olympic Games in 2014. They are the most recent addition to the Olympic cycle and were the brainchild of Jacques Rogge, the immediate past president of the IOC. In the years before he became an IOC Member he was one of the prime movers in the establishment of Youth Olympics in Europe. In fact, targeting the young was an important part of the work of Baron Pierre de Coubertin himself. His work in developing Olympism on an international basis rather than in a single country such as Greece, England and Germany (cf. Naul, 1997) has been well documented. Coubertin’s work as the founding father of the modern Olympic Games is often highlighted by historians and politicians alike. His work as an educator is less well documented. He really wanted to achieve much more than just a four year rhythm in celebration of the Olympic Games. In one of his Olympic letters, letter No. V, published in the Gazette de Lausanne in November 1918, he wrote: This Olympic pedagogy which I recently said was based at once on the cult of effort combined on the cult of eurhythmy – and consequently on the love of excess combined with the love of moderation – is not sufficiently served by being glorified before the world once every four years in the Olympic Games. It needs permanent factories. The Olympic factory for the ancient world was the gymnasium. The Olympiads have been renewed, but the gymnasium of antiquity has not – as yet. It must be. (Coubertin, 2000, p. 217)