The 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta mark the centenary of the modern Olympics. The man universally credited with reviving the games is Baron Pierre de Coubertin, believed to be solely responsible for the vision behind Olympiad I in Athens in 1896. Now, in The Modern Olympics, classicist David C. Young challenges this view, revealing that Coubertin was only the last and most successful of many contributors to the dream of the modern Olympics.

Based on thirteen years of research among previously neglected documents, Young's reconstruction of the fascinating and almost unknown history of the Olympic revival movement in the nineteenth century includes two long-forgotten Olympiads - one in London in 1866 and another in Athens in 1870. He traces the idea for the modern Olympics to a pair of poems published by an obscure Greek poet in 1833 and follows the sinuous tale to the small village of Wenlock, England, where W. P.

Brookes held local Olympiads, founded the British Olympic committee, and attempted to organize an international Olympics.

Young contends that Coubertin was inspired by Brookes and that, until the two met in 1890, Coubertin had no interest at all in reviving the Olympic Games. Instead of a singular vision, Coubertin's contribution to the founding of the modern Olympics was the zeal he brought to transforming an idea that had evolved over decades into the reality of Olympiad I - vividly described in the book's last chapter - and of all the Olympic Games held since.