'On 5 April 1896 James B Connolly of the Suffolk Athletic Club, Boston, projected himself 13m and 71cm through the Attic air in the newly restored Panathenaic Stadium of Athens, in the hop, step and jump, and became the first Olympic victor for more than 1,500 years.'
That opening sentence gives the flavour of a rich and often entertaining work of history that brings together the following intriguing strands: the rise of amateur athletics in Britain, the US, France, Germany and other western countries, each with its own particular stamp; the enormous interest aroused by the excavation of ancient Olympia, the site of the ancient Games; the determination of the eccentric French aristocrat Baron Pierre de Coubertin to embody the amateur athletic ideal in a revival of the Games; and a perception by politicians and the Greek royal family that hosting the Coubertin Games could help to put down the young Greek state on the European map.
