Speaking both as a Coubertin biographer and as a professional cultural anthropologist, my analysis will consist largely of an up-date of what the founder already understood, and understood perhaps better than many of his successors do today.

The hegemonic of “default” conception of culture that still dominated Olmypic Lausanne today may be dangerously narrow and seriously out of touch with the “cultures of ‘culture'” dominant or emergent in other sectors and regions of contemporary world affairs.

Coubertin has thoroughly deconstructed the monolithic humanistic understanding of culture as cultivation into several different aspects and formulations. Culture is not only fine arts, but also folk arts, crafts, and music. Culture is language and poetics. Culture is also the logic of social organization, multiple conceptions of life, and systems of belief.

If the IOC Culture and Education Commission, the new IOC Department of Education and Culture, the Olympic Museum, the International Olympic Academy, and all of the other key agencies and sites abandoned their claims to being “fountains of universal truth” and instead set themselves the alternative task of becoming communicative centers and laboratories of multi-cultural exploration, where all of the different Olympic cultures assembled to endeavor to articulate to one another, and in their own ways and terms, the multiplicities of cultural understandings and symbolizations of Olympic meanings, then the IOC might have its world cultural relevance back.

Of the three components of this topic: sport, culture and education, culture is the most important and the most basic. Distinct cultures are passed on without being expressly taught. Education is the process through which cultures continue to exist.

In traditional societies, sport and games developed from daily activities. Many of these activities were functional. The diverse societies in the world have over a period of time evolved what they identify as the sports enshrined in their cultural and educational values.

Currently in Zambia, there are two kinds of sport. The first is made up of the successors to the traditional games, widely played, which are purely social and recreational. The second is that of games that are originally from other countries. These sports were introduced in schools and in community centres, mainly in urban areas. A new aspect of competition was introduced where players were rewarded for winning. These sports, which developed out of the cultures which devised them, were introduced into Zambian systems of culture and education.

In a real sense, sport and education are both cultural activities that play major roles in shaping an individual’s personality and also give a people some identity through their traditions. Where a society treats sport, culture and education as interrelated factors of human development, people benefit from all three. They are fit, educated to meet the needs of the society and secure in their cultural identity.

Since Seoul 1998, our research group at the University of Mainz has examined, inter alia, how the ideas of Coubertin and the Olympic Games are reflected in the experience of young people.

In addition to the philosophical interpretation and educational application of Olympism, art, with its opportunities for “expressive symbolization”, is another of its essential elements. To what extent and how well this has been acknowledged has been the subject of little scientific analysis. Any discussion of the relationship between sport and culture has mostly been limited to the theory that sport is part of culture has mostly been limited to the theory that sport is part of culture or to a discussion of the similarities and differences between the two systems.

Sport itself has aesthetic qualities, which ensures closeness to artistic productions. Sportswear and equipment are becoming increasingly aestheticized. The experience of sports architecture and the opening and closing ceremonies on television or at the stadium is setting new cultural trends. By and large, each foreign visitor has a considered encounter with the culture of the Games’ organizers.

As regards the Cultural Olympiads themselves, however, there is often a blatant discrepancy during the sports festival between the high quality of events on offer and the low demand among the public.