Without a Bréal brainstorm and a letter he wrote in 1894, the number of people who run marathons each year would be zero instead of more than 1 million. A lot of Saturday mornings would be freed up for something other than long runs. Bibs would be reserved for babies.
Bréal, three decades Coubertin's senior, was a leading intellectual of the day, a commander of the French Legion of Honor: the sort of person needed to bring gravitas to the idea of an international festival of athletics.
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