They may well have been of some use this week as the IOC Executive Board confronted the tense and delicate matter of boxing at the Olympics.

This week 60 years ago, the IOC were also meeting in Lausanne, to consider political interference in sport in a meeting with the representatives of the International Federations.

In those days, the President of what was then known as the Amateur International Boxing Association (AIBA) was persona grata in the Olympic movement.

AIBA President Lieutenant-Colonel Rudyard Russell was even one of those entrusted with drafting a response to one of the trickier problems confronting the Olympic movement in 1963.

Jakarta had hosted the 1962 Asian Games, but the Indonesian Government had refused entry to Israel and Taiwan and President Sukarno was planning politically motivated rebel Games to be known as "Games of the New Emerging Forces" or GANEFO.

After a meeting dealing with political problems, the chance to reconnect with Coubertin must have come as a welcome respite for Olympic officials.

As the meetings, held at the Hotel de La Paix came to a close, IOC President Avery Brundage "thanked all who had taken part for their presence and for their interest in the Olympic cause".

Brundage also announced "there would be an inauguration of a monument to the memory of the Baron de Coubertin, which had been given to the city of Lausanne by the Hellenic Olympic Committee".

This was placed in the wooded gardens close to the Chateau of Mon Repos, which was then the IOC headquarters.

The actual anniversary of Coubertin's birth fell on New Year's day 1963, but the commemoration ceremony took place in June.

It was attended by Brundage, Lausanne Mayor Georges-Andre Chevallaz, Ryotaro Azuma, Governor of Tokyo, and officials from the Greek Embassy. 

Bad weather forced the curtailment of the ceremony before the members returned to Mon Repos for a reception.

It was also a bittersweet moment for another reason.

It came only a few weeks after the death of De Coubertin’s widow Marie at the age of almost 102.

It was a ceremony which brought together two places which had made a profound impact on Coubertin in his lifetime, for the memorial unveiled in Lausanne was a stele made as a replica of that which had been erected some 36 years earlier in Ancient Olympia.

"This gracious gesture of the Greek Committee has been greatly appreciated, as much by the City of Lausanne as by the International Olympic Committee," the Olympic Review noted.

Coubertin had first been entranced by Ancient Olympia on a visit in 1894.

He returned in 1927, two years after finally standing down as IOC President, to attend the inauguration of a monument commemorating his efforts to revive the Olympics for the modern era.

"We passed near a sort of obelisk covered with tarpaulins," Coubertin wrote.

"It was the white marble monument erected by the Greek government and on which I knew that my name was engraved in both Greek and French letters."

For the unveiling, the stele was draped in the Greek and French flags.

"Three priests decked in their robes, sang psalms and intoned prayers in quavering voices that seemed to rise up out of a Byzantine past, heir to Christianised Hellenism," Coubertin recorded.

After the Ceremony in Olympia, he sent a message "to the youth of the world" from the ancient site.

"Today, amidst the glorious ruins of Olympia, has been inaugurated the monument in commemoration of the re-establishment of the Olympic Games thirty-three years ago," he began.

"Thanks to the generosity of the Hellenic Government, the initiative it was good enough to honour has now materialised into an event of historic importance, it belongs to you now to keep the flag flying."

In ancient times, there had been a remarkable sporting complex at Olympia.

"Nothing disturbs the grandeur of the sacred precincts and the pious reveries of the pilgrims who visit them," Coubertin continued as he related how he had sat in quiet contemplation amongst the ruins.

The outbreak of the first World War prompted Coubertin to move the headquarters of the Olympic movement to neutral Switzerland.

Coubertin already knew the city of Lausanne well because the 1913 Olympic Congress had also taken place there.

When Coubertin chose Lausanne as the site for the Olympic headquarters, he also hoped to establish an Olympic Institute in the area.

It appears he had been contemplating such an idea for almost a decade.

"If only one day, a new Olympia could be founded somewhere in Europe, it is probably on the shores of a Swiss lake that the shores would rise up," he wrote in 1906.

Coubertin hoped that his institute would represent the revival of the ancient gymnasia seen at the original Olympics.

He did at least start the first Olympic museum, a modest display in the Mon Repos Chateau.

Coubertin finally stood down from the IOC Presidency in 1925 but continued to advocate "Olympism" for the remainder of his life and even made use of what was then the new medium of radio.

His idea of an Olympic institute eventually found expression in the International Olympic Academy in Ancient Olympia which held its first session in 1961.

Much later, the establishment of an Olympic Museum and Studies Centre above the lake at Ouchy in Lausanne and a world wide network of Olympic museums and universities would surely have exceeded Coubertin's wildest expectations.

He died in 1937 after collapsing during a walk in Geneva.

He was buried at Vaud Cemetery not far from the present IOC headquarters in Olympic House at Vidy.

A few months after his death, officials again travelled by train to Ancient Olympia for a ceremony to inter his heart in the stele.

"It will rest here for eternity near the spot where those who were the founders of the Games of Greece in the epoch of her splendour sleep their last sleep, and not far from the site where is lit the torch that goes to bear the sacred fire to the stadia," IOC President Count Henri Baillet Latour said.

Since then the stele has been moved to a tree-lined avenue known as Coubertin Grove.

Next April, when the Flame begins its journey from Ancient Olympia to Paris, the first Torchbearer will make his way to the stele to pay a silent tribute to the man who set in motion the Modern Olympic Games.