Talk:Pierre de Coubertin medal

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[edit] Not a medal, but an award

I sugest this subject should be grouped into "award", and not a "medal". The main difference is, of course, that this award is given by opinion & judgement, and not by competition. -DePiep 20:01, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

Good thoughts, but the IOC itself refers to this as the Pierre de Coubertin Medal. See here (search for "Pierre de Coubertin Medal"). I think what the official awarding body calls this takes some precedence. --Deathphoenix 20:40, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
Thanks for your reply. But I do not think we should copy their (IOC's) opinion. We are independent. (I knew a country called ".. Democratic Republic" etc.). This is not an Olympic medal in the sense of, eh , an Olympic medal. I think it is an Olympic symbol, like the flame, the flag etc. -DePiep
You have a good point there, but I think that since they issue the actual award itself, we should leave it as what they name it. A "medal" can mean anything, since there's no official designation for what constitutes an award and what constitutes a medal (or what constitutes a trophy, for that matter). I suggest a compromise: I say we should leave the title as "Pierre de Coubertin medal", but we can define it as an award. In other words, right now, the opening sentence says is The Pierre de Coubertin medal (also known as the De Coubertin medal or the True Spirit of Sportsmanship medal) is a special medal given...
How about we change this first sentence to say The Pierre de Coubertin medal (also known as the De Coubertin medal or the True Spirit of Sportsmanship medal) is a special award given... But only that one. The award itself is an actual medal, so I don't see anything wrong with leaving it as medal, but here, at least we explicitly state that it is an award. What do you think? Oh, and one more thing. It's not a medal in the sense of the gold, silver, or bronze medals, I agree. However, it is actually considered to be better. It's much more rare, and to be given this award is very much in line with the original spirit of sportsmanship that the Olympics are supposed to represent. --Deathphoenix 00:17, 30 July 2005 (UTC)
First thing: agree, I didn't think about changing their name(s). Article name stays '... medal' =OK (I could have been clearer indeed).
Second thing: let's describe it as a 'award' (or so) as proposed. By giving it a different category + description, it is separated by logic. That's my idea too. Whether it's more or less important than a medal-from-competition - no subject to me. This one is awarded by judgement primarily (only), and thus very politic (POV by IOC). (0f course, we know about figure-skating & judgement, but alas). -DePiep 10:38, 1 August 2005 (UTC)
Oh, I see, you were talking about Categories. Hmmm... well, Category:Olympic medals is pretty bare, so I think that either that category be left as is, renamed to Category:Olympic awards (but only if we get a consensus to do so), or deleted entirely. --Deathphoenix 00:46, 2 August 2005 (UTC)
Sorry, I do not get your text here. Indeed, cat:Olympic medal should be kept unchanged, for the other articles (about medals-by-competition). A new cat "Olympic awards" doesn't seem a good idea, because I can only see one article (ie this one). Maybe create cat:Olympic symbols, including flag, ceremonies, rings, etc.? -DePiep 13:21, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

I think the article links the wrong Franz Jonas -evilmousse

Category:Olympic symbols

[edit] Two awards?

When doing some research for an article on Raymond Gafner, I noticed that a) there is no online evidence of him ever winning the award, and b) apparently there are two different awards or two categories of winners: there are the athletes who get the extremely rare award for exceptional fair play: Long, Zatopek, Monti, Lernieuw and de Lima, and then there are the officials (IOC members or members of an organising committee), who get the award a lot easier and for completely different reasons, namely "for exceptional services rendered to the cause of the Olympic Movement for many years", and is awarded to not only Klee, Jonas, Eccles and apparently Gafner, but also to (at least) Avery Brundage, Mautner Markhof, and others see page 9. Does anyone know more about this or have more info on this? I'll leav the article as it is for now, but I think some changes wil be necessary. Fram 12:44, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Hello, here's a source which states Gafner received the award from the IOC Executive Board. Parutakupiu 17:34, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
Thank you very much, I missed that one! From reading the reason why someone gets the medal, it sure looks like there are two different medals, one for the sporters and one for the organizers... Fram 07:01, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
I noticed the same basic thing. Note the text on this page ("given by the International Olympic Committee to those athletes who demonstrate the spirit of sportsmanship in Olympic events." and the text on Raymond Gafner ("pays tribute to those who, through their teaching, research and writing of Intellectual works, have contributed to the promotion of Olympism in the spirit of Pierre de Coubertin"). It sure seems like there's two different categories, or criteria, or something. 98.216.109.205 (talk) 17:38, 21 April 2008 (UTC)