Note to recorder:
Natural speed please.
I prefer UK English.
In 1894, the first meeting of the newly created International Olympic Committee took place at the Sorbonne University in Paris. A historic decision was made to revive the Olympic Games, starting two years later in Athens.
The man largely responsible for this decision was a French aristocrat called Baron Pierre de Coubertin. His motives are disputed, but he was strongly influenced in childhood by the defeat of the French army in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-1871. The defeated French soldiers were perceived as physically and morally weak. The enemy had qualities the French were seen to lack.
