In which year was the International Olympic Committee formed?

Correct — D. The International Olympic Committee was founded on 23 June 1894, at the international congress Pierre de Coubertin convened at the Sorbonne in Paris to revive the Olympic Games.

The congress resolved to hold the first modern Games two years later, and the IOC was created to organise them. 23 June is still kept as Olympic Day for that reason. The body comes first in 1894, the Games follow in 1896 — option (d).

Why the others are wrong

• (a)
  1898 — 1898 marks no step in the Olympic revival — neither the committee nor the first Games. It is on the list to catch a candidate who remembers only 'the late 1890s'.
• (b)
  1892 — 1892 is the year Coubertin first publicly called for reviving the Olympic Games, in a lecture at the Sorbonne. The idea dates from then, but the committee did not yet exist.
• (c)
  1896 — 1896 is the first modern Olympic Games, held at Athens — the event, not the body that organised it, and the closest of the four wrong readings.

Two Olympic dates sit two years apart, and SSC works the gap between them.

1894 is institutional: the congress at the Sorbonne, the founding of the IOC, Coubertin as its moving force. 1896 is sporting: the first modern Games, at Athens, in the Panathenaic Stadium.

Keep the order in your head — the organisation had to exist before it could stage anything — and the pair stops being confusable.

Key facts

• The International Olympic Committee was founded on 23 June 1894 at the Sorbonne congress in Paris.
• The first modern Olympic Games were held at Athens in 1896.
• Demetrios Vikelas of Greece was the first President of the IOC, and Pierre de Coubertin succeeded him.
• The IOC is headquartered at Lausanne in Switzerland.

Common traps

• Answering 1896, the year of the first Games, instead of 1894, the year of the committee.
• Assuming Coubertin was the first President, an office first held by Demetrios Vikelas.

No directly related past PYQ was found.