If there is a single day when the modern Olympic movement can be said to have taken root, it must be April loth 1896, when a Greek farm boy, Spyridon Louis, won the marathon in the first Olympic Games of modern times. At about 5 o'clock in the afternoon, the sweat-stained, dark-haired young man, with no record of sporting prowess, came panting into the Athens stadium, a brand new replica of an ancient arena, after pounding 25 miles through his native Attica in just under three hours. (The current length of the mar-athon-26 miles 385 yards-was not set until the games of 1908.) The crowd that day went wild. Two princes of the Greek royal family ran down to join Louis on his final lap (see above). Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the Frenchman who masterminded the revival of the ancient games, said the Louis victory was "one of the most extraordinary sights" of his life; it convinced him that "spiritual forces" have a role in sport. For the baron, the marathon result was a vindication of his long struggle to prove that amateur sport, as practised in ancient Greece, could be an inspiration for humanity in all ages, and a force for peace. He also felt justified in his support of the modern Greek kingdom, a new polity struggling to live up to its glorious past, as the starting-point for his revival.
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