President of the IOC from 1894 to 1896
The first President was a Greek. He was born in Ermoupolis, on the
island of Syros, on 15 February 1835. The Regulations drawn up by Pierre de
Coubertin stipulated that the President of the International Olympic Committee
should be chosen from the country where the next Games were to be held.
Mr Vikelas was thus President from 1894 to 1896. He had no particular
connection with sport when he came from Greece to represent the Pan-Hellenic
Gymnastic Club at the Congress in Paris in 1894. The original idea was to stage
the first Games in Paris in 1900, but Mr Vikelas was able to convince the
Committee that they should be held in Athens in May 1896.
After the conclusion of the first Games, he devoted himself to the promotion
and popularisation of general education, which he claimed was urgently needed in
Greece.
With his erudition to which we owe a scholarly work on "Byzantine and Modern
Greece", he combined a fertile and whimsical imagination which gave us "Louki
Laras" and "Tales from the Aegean". He died in Athens on 20 July
1908.
