The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not winning but taking part; the essential thing in life is not conquering but fighting well.

Despite these challenges the USFSA continued its planning for the games adopting in its first program for the meeting eight articles to address only one of which had to do with the Olympics. Young also suggests that the story about Coubertin's having sketched the velodrome were untrue and that he had in fact given an interview in which he suggested he did not want Germans to participate something he later denied in a letter to the Kaiser. Coubertin himself was frustrated by the Greeks who increasingly ignored him in their planning and who wanted to continue to hold the Games in Athens every four years against de Coubertin's wiPierre de Coubertins.

He is considered the father of the modern Olympic Games. Born into a French aristocratic family he became an academic and studied a broad range of topics most notably education and history. Pierre de Frédy Baron de Coubertin (French pronunciation: ​[pjɛʁ də kubɛʁtɛ̃]; 1 January 1863 – 2 September 1937) was a French educator and historian and founder of the International Olympic Committee.