The First International Recreation Congress in Los Angeles in 1932 and Its Importance as a Stage for the National Recreation Association and the International Olympic Committee

In 1932, as a prelude to the Los Angeles Olympics, an international gathering of supporters of ‘Sport for All’ held the first International Recreation Congress. The meeting sought to revive the original connection established during the early decades of the Olympic Movement by the Baron Pierre de Coubertin between the elite sporting spectacles he created and his commitment to active mass recreation for modern societies. The International Olympic Committee had a long and complex relationship with ‘Sport for All’ programmes, as revealed in this initial meeting of mass recreation enthusiasts and the subsequent congresses that followed. The International Olympic Committee leaders who inherited Coubertin's mantle used the recreation conclave to push the responsibility of implementing ‘sport for all’ onto other agencies rather than returning the Olympic Movement to the centre of the struggle – as Coubertin desired. While scholars have paid considerable attention to other elements of the 1932 Los Angeles games, the International Recreation Congress has been neglected, even though it created important legacies for the struggles between elite and mass sport during the rest of the twentieth century.