Just a hundred years ago, the Olympic Games were nothing more than ancient history.

It took a history professor and a French educator who both had high ideals about athletics and academics to bring them back to life.

That's the story painted by William Sloane II, grandson of William Sloane, the Princeton University history professor who, with Baron Pierre de Coubertin, helped revive the concept of the Olympic Games.

Professor Sloane, said his grandson, met the Baron on his frequent forays to France while researching his four-volume history of Napoleon Bonaparte. From conversations the two men engaged in grew the dream of a modern version of the Olympic Games.

While the Baron gathered a group of European athletes, Sloane did the same, finding several from the ranks of Princeton University itself and others from Boston. They met to compete in Athens, Greece in 1896.

"People began to recognize them when they came back," the professor's namesake said, and his grandfather continued his involvement by serving as the first president of the American Olympic Committee for some 10 to 15 years and later served on the International Olympic Committee for more than 30 years. "It was a tremendous undertaking, one that he saw through to a successful end."

Among the family lore about the Olympics is this tidbit: It seems the first American Olympians trained at a small private school near Cherry Valley Road. The woman who ran the school not only offered the grounds but made the athletes' uniforms. After the success of the first Games, Professor Sloane returned to thank the woman and ask what he might do to repay her in some way. The woman allegedly asked the professor to use his influence to allow women to compete in the Games. It took a while, said Sloane's grandson, but women started to compete in 1912, when the Games were held in Stockholm.

When the Olympic Torch Relay comes through Princeton June 18, it will make a brief stop at the gravesite of Professor William Sloane. William Sloane II said he has been talking to the current Olympic Committee about being part of the ceremony in a special way. He would like his son, William Sloane III, to take the flame from the relay runner at the gates of the cemetery and bring it to his ancestor's grave. At the gravesite would be the grandson of Robert Garrett, one of the professor's first Olympic recruits who returned from Athens with several awards. Garrett's grandson would carry the flame back to the Olympic torch relay runner for the continuation of its journey.

These plans have not been approved, but a stop at the cemetery is planned. A proud William Sloane II will be there.

For more information on the Olympic Torch Relay through Mercer County, contact Linda Martin of the United Way of Greater Mercer County, (609) 637-4910.