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All forms of sport for everyone. No doubt people will say this is a madly utopian idea. I don’t care. I know it is possible.

All forms of sport for everyone; that is no doubt a formula which is going to be criticized as madly utopian. I do not care. I have weighed and examined it for a long time; I know it is accurate and possible. The years and the strength which remain to me will be employed to ensure its triumph; it will be my contribution to those social reforms whose principle was the basis of the pact of sacred union during this long war and whose achievement will have to be honest and swift if we do not want civilization to blow up like a boiler without a valve.

Pierre de Coubertin’s Olympic Letter XI: The Sporting Spirit of Students, La Gazette de Lausanne, 1919