--- title: Photos From the 1896 Olympics in Athens description: See the athletes who made first Olympics of the modern era a success, during the week of April 6, 1896, in Athens canonical: https://time.com/4408161/first-modern-olympics-photos/ author: Olivia B. Waxman article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-08-04T12:30:32.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-05-11T04:50:26.776Z article:section: History og:title: Photos From the 1896 Olympics in Athens og:description: See photos from 1896 in Athens og:url: https://time.com/4408161/first-modern-olympics-photos/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt6815f96358430c99/69889c1bab6d7728176aa774/160715-1896-olympics-07.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: 1896 Summer Olympics og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Photos From the 1896 Olympics in Athens twitter:description: See photos from 1896 in Athens twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt6815f96358430c99/69889c1bab6d7728176aa774/160715-1896-olympics-07.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # The Feats of Athleticism of the First Modern Olympics by [Olivia B. Waxman](https://time.com/author/olivia-b-waxman/) and [Liz Ronk](https://time.com/author/liz-ronk/) Aug 4, 2016 12:30 PM UTC  Members of the athletics team of the US Princeton University pose at the first modern International Summer Olympic Games held at the Panathinaiko Stadium in April 1896 in Athens. From left to right: Francis A. Lane, Herbert Jamison, Robert Garrett and Albert Tyler. Members of the athletics team of the US Princeton University pose at the first modern International Summer Olympic Games held at the Panathinaiko Stadium in April 1896 in Athens. From left to right: Francis A. Lane, Herbert Jamison, Robert Garrett and Albert Tyler.AP Photo by [Olivia B. Waxman](https://time.com/author/olivia-b-waxman/) and [Liz Ronk](https://time.com/author/liz-ronk/) Aug 4, 2016 12:30 PM UTC The first Olympics of the modern era began on April 6, 1896, in Athens. It was the first successful attempt to revive the competition that had started in ancient Greece, with centuries having passed since Roman Emperor Theodosius I abolished the event in 393 A.D. because, as part of religious festivals honoring the Greek god Zeus, he believed it promoted pagan worship over Christianity. Though [14 nations](https://www.olympic.org/athens-1896) participated—compared to the more than 200 going to Rio—the majority of athletes represented Greece, Great Britain, Germany and France. The United States sent about a dozen athletes (compared to the roughly [550 athletes](http://www.teamusa.org/road-to-rio-2016/team-usa/athletes) representing Team USA in Rio). The above photos show some of the highlights, from James Connolly, a 27-year-old Harvard student who became the first champion of the modern Olympic era when he won the triple jump, to Spyridon Louis of Greece, who became the first marathon champion at the games with a time of 2:58:50\. (Though ancient Olympians didn’t run marathons, the race is said to have been included as a nod to the story of the messenger Pheidippides, who ran from Athens to Sparta to ask for help fighting the Persians, as one retelling of the [legend](http://time.com/4295749/boston-marathon-history-evolution/) goes.) [_Get your history fix in one place: sign up for the weekly TIME History newsletter_](http://time.com/newsletter) The competition was the brainchild of Baron Pierre de Coubertin, a French aristocrat and educator who founded the International Olympic Committee in 1894\. His philosophy on sports was influenced by his country’s hugely “humiliating” defeat in the Franco-Prussian War of the 1870s and by a “romanticized” vision of the ancient Greeks that was common among the well-educated at the time, according to Tony Perrottet, author of [_The Naked Olympics: The True Story of the Ancient Game_ _s_](https://books.google.com/books?id=B2VPMUBAxUUC&printsec=frontcover&dq=amateurism+coubertin+Tony+Perrottet&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjk9aHD0Z7OAhVFFR4KHVEWD6QQ6AEIKjAC#v=onepage&q=coubertin&f=false)_._ “The war got Pierre de Coubertin thinking that French youth need to be much more physically fit, ” he says_._ “He very much admired the British, who had sports in schools, so he started campaigning to get sports into the curriculum.” He imagined all wars stopped during the ancient Olympics, so he thought the games would lead to international cooperation and a more peaceful world. And by bringing back the Olympics, he hoped to support the notion of competing for a mere olive wreath, which must mean a love of sport, a view that the Victorian era’s British scholars chose to emphasize over the reality that ancient athletes also received huge cash awards from their home cities, says Perrottet. These principles — which became known as “amateurism” — ended up favoring those who could afford to train on their own and not be paid, so many athletes in the first modern Olympics came from the world’s finest colleges. TIME once [described](http://time.com/vault/issue/1984-04-30/page/92/) this notion of amateurism as “a snooty Victorian conceit, installed by the modern Games founder, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, to prevent working-class men from competing against the aristocracy,” and in another article [explained](http://time.com/vault/issue/1992-07-27/spread/60/) that, “Bound up as well in the ideal was a desire to maintain the barriers of class.” Yet [one aspect ](http://registration.olympic.org/en/faq/detail/id/193)of Coubertin’s philosophy on sports is something that everyone can relate to, even today, whether they’re athletic or not: “The important thing in life is not the triumph, but the fight; the essential thing is not to have won, but to have fought well.”  A general view of the Olympic stadium in Athens, Greece, in 1896. © 1896 / Comité International Olympique (CIO)  Spyridon Louis of Greece, the winner of the first marathon in the 1896 Summer Olympic Games held in Athens. ullstein bild—Getty Images  International Olympic Committee (IOC) members in Athens during the 1896 games. © 1896 / Comité International Olympique (CIO) / Meyer, Albert  James Brendan Bennet Connolly from South Boston, USA, poses with a flag at the first modern International Summer Olympic Games held at the Panathinaiko Stadium on April 6, 1896 in Athens, where he won the gold medal in triple jump with 13.71 meters. AP Photo  Members of the France cycling team, Léon Flameng and Paul Masson at the 1896 Olympic Games in Athens. © 1896 / Comité International Olympique (CIO) / Meyer, Albert  Robert Garrett (USA) wins the gold in the discus at the 1896 Athens Olympics. Getty Images  Pan-Athenian stadium before a hurdles event at the 1896 Olympic Games in Athens. © 1896 / Comité International Olympique (CIO)  Members of the athletics team of the US Princeton University pose at the first modern International Summer Olympic Games held at the Panathinaiko Stadium in April 1896 in Athens. From left to right: Francis A. Lane, Herbert Jamison, Robert Garrett and Albert Tyler. AP Photo  Member of the German gymnastics team Karl Schumann (also Carl Schuhmann), shows his gold medal winning routine at the vaulting horse at the first modern International Summer Olympic Games held at the Panathinaiko Stadium on April 9, 1896 in Athens. AP Photo  Preparation for the 100-meter race at the Olympic Games, 1896. Fine Art Images/Heritage Images—Getty Images  Harvard student Ellery Harding Clark from Boston, USA, poses with a flag at the first modern International Summer Olympic Games held at the Panathinaiko Stadium on April 7, 1896 in Athens, where he won the gold medal both in high jump (2.81 meters) and long jump (6.35 meters). AP Photo  A fencing match in the Zapeion Hall at the Olympic Games in Athens in 1896. © 1896 / Comité International Olympique (CIO) ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4408161/first-modern-olympics-photos/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4408161/first-modern-olympics-photos/"},"headline":"The Feats of Athleticism of the First Modern Olympics","datePublished":"2016-08-04T12:30:32.000Z","dateModified":"2026-05-11T04:50:26.776Z","description":"Plus, a brief history of the modern Olympics","url":"https://time.com/4408161/first-modern-olympics-photos/","keywords":["Sports topic","photography","Summer Olympics"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt6815f96358430c99/69889c1bab6d7728176aa774/160715-1896-olympics-07.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Olivia B. 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