Dimitrios Vikelas
Until 1894 he had never been involved in sport. He was not an athlete, a gymnast or a sports official. His name is not included in those, who played a leading part in the foundation of sports associations and in the organization of games, like for example Ioannis Fokianos, Ioannis Chrysafis, Spyridon Lampros, Konstantinos Manos, Timoleon Filimon and other pioneers of Greek sport. Until then, Dimitrios Vikelas was a wealthy former merchant and at the same time a known literary man, who had lived most of his life in London and Paris. His stay in Paris and the prestige he had acquired in circles of scholars and men of letters, but also the still meagre development of sports institutions in Greece, were the favourable circumstances for the invitation addressed to him to represent the Panhellenic Gymnastic Society in the International Sports Congress organized by Pierre de Coubertin in Paris, in 1894, for the organization of the first modern Olympic Games.
Accepting the proposal and participating in the congress was for Vikelas an opportunity to "promote" an embellished picture of Greece, which had inherited and maintained an ancient civilization positively viewed by Europe, and in the name of which he was authorized to raise claims. What is more, his proposal that the first modern Olympic Games be organized in Athens in 1896 instead of Paris in 1900, as was Coubertin's initial proposal, was accepted by the participants in the congress. According to the statute, president of the IOC would be appointed the representative of the country that would undertake the organization of the Games and his term of office would be completed upon the termination of the Games. As a result, Vikelas was made "out of the blue" the first president of the IOC. As noted in the letter by which he informed Fokianos of the final decisions of the congress (27/4/1894), "I, too, was designated member of the committee and, what is more, I will preside during the first Olympiad until 1896".
Dimitrios Vikelas was born in Ermoupoli, on the island Syros. His father and his uncles from his mother's side were engaged in trade, especially in the transport of wheat from Russia to the countries of the West. Ermoupoli, a major centre of transit trade in the mid-19th century, Constantinople and Odessa were the centres of his father's commercial activities. In these cities did Vikelas spend his childhood years, until the collapse of his father's business and his return to Ermoupoli. He stayed there until he was 17 years old, in 1852. Then he went to London to work in the commercial firm of his uncles, Leon and Vasilis Melas. Soon he became a partner to the company and worked there for more than twenty years, until its dissolution in 1876.
Having created a fairly large property, he decided to remain in Europe and engage more in literature and writing. The novel Loukis Laras made him quite known among the literary circles of London and Paris, where he settled in the mid-1880s. The fact that he was now recognizable led Ioannis Fokianos to propose to him in 1893 to represent the Panhellenic Gymnastic Society in the IOC founding congress. At that time in Greece there was not any sports federation and the Panhellenic Gymnastic Society, which was the only sports association, was invited by Coubertin to represent the country in the International Sports Congress.
He settled in Athens in the autumn of 1894, about the same time that the National Society was founded, and he engaged actively in the organization of the Games. After the termination of the Games and hence the end of his term as president of the IOC, he stopped being actively involved in the country's sports affairs. Until the end of his life, in 1908, his activity was associated with the visions of the Great Idea and harmonized with the irredentist practices of the time. Therefore, in cooperation with Georgios Drosinis he founded the Syllogos pros Diadosin Ofelimon Vivlion (Society for the Dissemination of Useful Books) and organized the first educational congress. His cooperation with Georgios Drosinis and his close relation to Pavlos Melas - they were cousins - led him to the famous National Society, among the eminent members of which were Spyridon Lampros, Konstantinos Manos, Anastasios Metaxas (the architect of the reconstruction of the Panathenaic Stadium) and several others among those who were involved in the organization and management of the sports institutions.
The connection of the first networks of Greek sport with the Greek irredentism networks in the late 19th century, as is revealed through the people that were involved in them, throws light on the core of meanings that sport and the Olympics acquired among the elite of the Greek society. It is therefore a key to understanding and interpreting the involvement of Vikelas in the sports affairs of the country. He dealt with the Olympics as if they were a "national affair" and to a large extent he made them so, achieving the mobilization of the Palace, the eminent families and the Greek society on the whole for the materialization of that goal, despite the initial reaction of the government. Of course we don't know what the development of Greek sport would be, had Vikelas not accepted the invitation of the Panhellenic Gymnastic Society or had he not proposed Athens. What we do know is that the organization of the first modern Olympic Games in Athens in 1896 was the milestone event in the history of Greek sport, the connecting point in the processes for the creation of the networks, institutions and mechanisms of Greek sport and for the definition of its "ideology".

 

The Olympic Games in Antiquity:
From ancient Olympia to Athens of 1896