Sokol Festivals

Prague, Czech lands. Mass gymnastics festivals that shaped modern Olympic pageantry

Overview

The Sokol movement, founded in Prague in 1862, staged vast gymnastic festivals called slets that drew tens of thousands of performers in synchronized mass drills. Pierre de Coubertin admired the huge crowds and collective display, and the festivals influenced the ceremony of the modern Games. The slets survived two world wars and the Cold War, and the movement still holds them today.