Georges Duperron

Georges Duperron (Georgy Aleksandrovich Dyuperron, 1877 to 1934) was a Russian sports journalist, football organizer and one of the founders of the Olympic movement in Russia. Born in Saint Petersburg to a family of French descent, he wrote his first article on Russian sport at eighteen, contributed to the magazines Samokat and Tsiklist, and from 1900 worked at the weekly magazine Sport, which he edited in the early 1900s. In 1900 he went to the Paris Olympic Games at his own initiative as the first Russian sports journalist. He helped organize the first Saint Petersburg football league, served as secretary of the Russian Olympic Committee from its founding in 1911, sat on the International Olympic Committee from 1913 to 1915 and took part in the first Russian delegation to the 1912 Stockholm Games. From 1915 he chaired the All-Russian Football Union. He later worked at the Lesgaft Institute of Physical Education, where he directed its sports museum, and he was rehabilitated in 1989 after two arrests under the Soviet authorities.