President of the International Olympic Committee congress. Athens was approved to host the 1896 Olympic Games, being the original home of the Olympics, and Vikelas was duly chosen as the first President of the IOC. Pierre, Baron de Coubertin, took over the IOC presidency when Demetrius Vikelas stepped down after the Olympics in his own country. Despite its initial success, the Olympic Movement faced hard times, as the 1900 Games (in de Coubertin's own Paris) and 1904 Games were both upstaged by World's Fairs—Exposition Universelle in 1900 and Louisiana Purchase Exposition in 1904—and received little attention. The 1906 Intercalated Games revived the momentum, and the Olympic
Secretary-General to the President a claim Moynihan ridiculed in papers now available in the National Archives of Ireland. In the 1990s, the title of chief civil servant in the Irish government was changed from "Secretary to the Department" to "Secretary-General to the Department". The post of "Secretary to the President" however was left unchanged because the Office of the President was not technically a department. In 2004 a Bill was introduced into the Oireachtas to change the title from "Secretary to the President" to "Secretary-General to the President". The name change came into force in 2005. Secretary-General to the President The Secretary-General to the