EN
The author outlines the history of the Olympic Games, which he compares to war hostilities. While proposing the organisation of cyclical international sport competitions, Baron Pierre de Coubertin referred to the tradition of the Greek games. The author considers sport not as a venture involving cooperation or a great humanitarian idea, but as an invaluable safety valve to alleviate confrontations and nationalism by relegating them to the sidelines and onto a relatively controlled course. Just as the rivalry of creeds inevitably resulted in religious wars, so strife on the playing fields, in one form or another, becomes transferred to the stands.