The ambitions of the founding father of the modern Olympic Games, the Frenchman Baron Pierre de Coubertin — that they should be ‘the free trade of the future’ and provide ‘the cause of peace’ with a ‘new and mighty stay’ — were at once wildly optimistic and strangely prescient. Considering that they were first conceived of as a festival of sporting excellence in a spirit of internationalism, the Olympics have had an enduring habit of stirring up displays of humanity at its worst.
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