Whenever we heard the train coming, my father once told me, all the young boys in the village would run as fast as we could through the apple orchard to greet the passing Americans.

How easily this ideal could be corrupted by distinctly ungentlemanly politics was already clear in 1936, when Coubertin s doddering speech about peace and fair play was played over the loudspeakers of the Olympic Stadium in Berlin, while Hitler and his henchmen raised their arms to salute the Nazi flag.