The Olympic Flame & Torch Relay
Although a rather late addition to the ceremonies, the Olympic flame and the torch relay that takes on its long journey to the Olympic site are rooted in traditions of ancient Greece.
The Greeks maintained perpetual fires at sacred places, including the altar of the goddess Hestia in the sanctuary of Olympia. At the opening of the ancient Olympic Games, fires were lit elsewhere in the sanctuary, including the altars of Zeus and Hera, from Hestia's perpetual fire. If a sacred flame happened to go out, it was relighted by focusing the rays of the sun on some dry grass, which was then used to ignite the fire.
There was no torch relay in the Greek Olympics - none was needed, since the sacred flame was already on the grounds - but there was a custom of sending heralds out to proclaim the sacred truce that was in effect among Hellenic states during the Games. That custom was the inspiration for the first Olympic torch relay.
The idea of relaying a flame from Greece to the Olympic site was first proposed in 1928 by Theodore Lewald, a German member of the International Olympic Committee. A tower was designed and built at the Amsterdam stadium specifically to hold the flame, but the relay idea was abandoned because of logistical problem. Nevertheless, the Olympic flame was lit for the first time at Amsterdam and the organizers of the 1932 Olympics at Los Angeles carried on the idea.
Another German, Carl Diem, Secretary General of the Organising Committee for the 1936 Berlin Games, revived the idea of a relay at the May 1934 meeting of the IOC. It was approved and this time around, the logistical problems were overcome, though it wasn't easy.
The famous (or infamous) Krupp armaments company manufactured more than 3,000 torches of a design developed by German chemists after a great deal of experimentation. The Zeiss optical equipment firm produced a parabolic mirror to concentrate the sun's rays in order to ignite the original flame. Exemptions had to be obtained from customs officers of a half-dozen European countries to allow the bearers to carry the torches and their inflammable chemicals across borders without hindrance.
On July 20, 1936, a "high priestess," the leader of a group of 15 Greek maidens in classical dress, used the Zeiss mirror to ignite tinder at the end of a wand. Then she and her cohort filed from the ancient stadium of Olympia into the Altis, Olympia's sacred enclosure, where she used the wand to ignite a flame in a brazier at the fire altar.
Then a Greek youth lit the first torch from the brazier and began the first leg of the run to Athens, which took 335 runners, each covering one kilometer. After a welcoming ceremony at the ancient stadium that had been rebuilt for the first modern Olympics in 1896, the flame traveled to and through Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Austria, and Czechoslovakia before reaching Germany. On the morning of August 1, it reached Berlin. That afternoon, the last runner carried the flaming torch into the Olympic stadium to a trumpet fanfare. He glided up a stairway to a marble dias holding a brazier on a tripod. There he plunged the torch into the brazier to light the Olympic flame.
There were two more flame lighting ceremonies for the 1936 Olympics. Torch relays brought the Olympic fire 347 kilometers from Berlin to Kiel, where the yachting comptition was to be held, and 37 kilometers to Gr¨nau, the site of canoing and rowing events.
Since 1936, the Olympic torch relay has followed the pattern laid down for the Berlin Games. Obviously, the route and distance to be traveled vary from one Olympiad to another, but it all still begins with the lighting of the flame at Olympia, followed by the journey to Athens, where the Greek Olympic Committee passes the torch to a representative of the host country. And it still culminates with the arrival of the last runner carrying the torch into the stadium for the lighting of the Olympic flame.
Flames burned at the Oslo Winter Olympics in 1936 and 1948, but the first torch relay for the Winter Games wasn't held until 1952, and it was quite different from the Summer Games relay. The flame was lit from the hearth of a chalet in Morgedal, the birthplace of Sondre Norheim, a pioneer Norwegian skier. Morgedal is in the Telemark region, considered the birthplace of skiing. From there, the flame was carried by a relay of 94 skiers to Oslo, only 225 kilometers away.
The 1956 Winter Games were staged in Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy. The Olympic flame was lit at the Capitole in Rome, which had just been selected to host the 1960 Summer Olympics. The torch then went by air to Venice, and a torch relay covered the final 162 kilometers to Cortina d'Ampezzo.
In 1960, the flame was again lit in Morgedal and then flown across the Atlantic before beginning a 19-day journey by relay to the Winter Olympic site in Squaw Valley, California.
Since 1964, the flame for the Winter Olympics has originated in Olympia, as for the Summer Games. The only difference in the ceremony is that the flame is given to the first runner near a monument to Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the modern Olympics, before beginning its journey to Athens.
In the formative days of the tradition, the torch relay was pretty straightforward. The goal was simply to get the Olympic flame from Greece to the host city and available methods of transportation were rather limited.
The relay has evolved into a way of publicizing the Games and it often has its own symbolic purposes. While the basic method of transportation is still a runner carrying a torch, many other modes of travel for portions of the long journey. The selection of the person who lights the flame in the stadium has often had a symbolism of its own.
Here are some highlights of the torch relays, with interesting tidbits of information, in chronological order:
1948 London Summer Games
For the first Olympics after World War II, peace was the theme of the relay. The first runner, Dimitrelis, had been a corporal in the Greek army during the war. Before carrying the flame, he changed from his military uniform into his running clothes and laid down his arms, signifying the return of peace to Europe. The relay included a ceremony at the tomb of Pierre de Coubertin, founder of the modern Olympics. John Mark, a British Olympic athlete, lit the cauldron.
1952 Oslo Winter Games
As noted above, the entire relay was done by skiers, most of them either famous in Norway or descendants of famous skiers of the past. The Olympic cauldron was lit by Eigil Nansen, grandson of Fridtjof Nansen, the explorer, scientist, and humanitarian who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1922. During his days as an explorer, he led an expedition that crossed Greenland on skis.
1952 Helsinki Summer Games
The flame traveled by plane for the first time, from Greece to St. Moritz, Switzerland. In Finland, tt was mingled with flame ignited from the midnight sun. The final runner was Paavo Nurmi, who had won nine gold medals and three silver medals at three Olympics. He passed the torch to another former Finnish Olympian, Hannes Kolehmainen, who lit the cauldron. Kohlemainen had won a total of three Gold Medals at the 1912 and 1920 Olympics.
1956 Cortina d'Ampezzo Winter Olympics
After a flight from Rome to Venice, the flame was carried by relay Cortina d'Ampezzo. The cauldron was lit by Guido Caroli, Italian speed skating champion.
1956 Melbourne Summer Olympics
The torch was flown from Greece to Australia, with stopovers in Calcutta, Bangkok, Singapore and Djakarta, and was then relayed from Cairns to Melbourne. The cauldron was ignited by Ron Clarke, world junior champion distance runner, who went on to win a bronze medal in the 10,000-meter run at the 1964 Olympics.
1956 Stockholm Equestrian Games
Because of Australia's embargo against horses entering the country, the 1956 equestrian competition was relocated to Stockholm, Sweden, and a second torch relay brought the Olympic flame to the Olympic site there. Most of the distance from Greece to Stockholm was covered on horseback. The cauldron was ignited Hans Wilke, captain of the Swedish equestrian team.
1960 Squaw Valley Winter Games
The flame was flown from Norway to the United States and relayed across country to California. Ken Henry, 1952 Gold Medalist in the 500-meter speed skating event, lit the cauldron.
1960 Rome Summer Games
The relay visited several ancient monuments in both Greece and Italy. From the port of Piraeus in Greece, a ship named Amerigo Vespucci brought the flame to Syracuse, Sicily, and from there it was relayed through southern Italy to Rome. Giancarlo Peri, a young middle distance runner of Greek ancestry, lit the flame in the stadium.
1964 Innsbruck Winter Games
This was one of the flame's shortest overland journeys, since it was flown from Greece to Vienna and then relayed to Innsbruck. Josef Rieder, 1958 world slalom champion, lit the cauldron.
1964 Tokyo Summer Games
At the time, this was the longest trip taken by the Olympic flame, 26,065 kilometers by air, land and sea, and its first journey through and to the Orient. The flame was flown from Athens to Istanbul, then by land through Beirut, Tehran, Lahore, New Delhi, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Manila and Hong Kong, then by ship to Okinawa, and finally to Tokyo, where the flame was lit by Yosinori Sakai, who had been born in Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, the day the first atomic bomb was dropped on that city.
1968 Grenoble Winter Games
The most interesting feature of this relay was that a swimmer carried the torch across the port of Marseilles after its arrival in France. Alain Calmat, 1964 silver medalist in figure skating, lit the cauldron at Grenoble.
1968 Mexico City Summer Games
This was the first elaborately symbolic torch journey. It retraced Christopher Columbus's journey to the New World, including a visit to the Canary Islands. The last runner in Spain was Cristóbal Colón de Carbajal, a direct descendant of Columbus. A boat carried the flame to waters off Veracruz, where swimmers brought it to shore. During its trip through Mexico to the Olympic site, the flame was taken to the Great Pyramid of the Moon in Teotihuacan, where an Aztec fire ceremony was re-enacted. Waterskiers were also included among the torch bearers, and the flame in the stadium was lit by a woman, hurdler Enriqueta Basileo, for the first time.
1972 Sapporo Winter Games
The flame was flown from Greece to Okinawa, then traveled 4,753.5 kilometers on land, carried by a total of 16,300 torchbearers, aged 11-20. The final torchbearer was Hideki Takada, a high school student athlete from Sapporo.
1972 Munich Summer Games
This journey was very similar to the original 1936 torch relay, except that it included Turkey and the destination was Munich, not Berlin. The flame traveled from Greece through Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania, Yugoslavia, Hungary and Austria. Motorcyclists were included among the torchbearers. Gunther Zahn, a world junior track champion, lit the cauldron at the Munich Olympic Stadium. When he entered the stadium, he was accompanied by four other runners, one from each of the other four continents represented by the Olympic Rings.
1976 Innsbruck Winter Games
To symbolize the fact that the Winter Olympics had already been staged in Innsbruck, in 1964, there were two torch relays in the country, one taking a northern route, the other a southern route, and two flames were lit simultaneously by two Gold Medalists from 1964, luger Josef Feistmantl and skier Christl Haas.
1976 Montreal Summer Games
This was easily the fastest journey from continent to continent. After the flame was lit in Olympia and carried to Athens, its heat was carred by a laser beam, bounced off a satellite, to light a flame in Ottawa. From there, it had to travel only 775 kilometers overland to Montreal, where two people lit the cauldron simultaneously. They were 16-year old, French-speaking Stephane Prefontaine and 15-year old English-speaking Sandra Henderson. The report that they later got married is untrue.
1980 Lake Placid Winter Games
The flame was flown from Greece to Langley, Virginia. From there it was carried by just 50 torchbearers to Lake Placid, a distance of 1,600 kilometers. The torchbearers represented each state in the Union and were divided equally by six, 25 males and 25 females. One of them was 16-year-old Bonnie Warner, representing California. She saw the sport of luge for the first time at Lake Placid and decided to try it. She was the top American luger in the 1984, 1988, and 1992 Winter Olympics. The cauldron was lit by Dr Charles Morgan Kerr, an Arizona psychologist selected for the honor by his fellow torchbearers.
1980 Moscow Summer Games
The torch relay was entirely on foot, as the flame traveled 4,915 kilometers through Greece, Bulgaria, Romania and the Soviet Union to reach Moscow, with nearly 5,000 runners taking part. Sergei Belov. the star of the 1972 Gold Medal basketball team, lit the cauldron.
1984 Sarajevo Winter Games
Since Greece and the former Yugoslavia were neighbors, the flame didn't have very far to go to Sarajevo, although the distance was greater than for the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow. But there were two routes in Yugoslavia itself, a western route of 2,602 kilometers and an eastern route 2,687 kilometers in length. The cauldron was lit by Sanda Dubravcic, a figure skating finalist in 1980 who also reached the finals in 1984.
1984 Los Angeles Summer Games
Controversy surrounded the flame and torch relay this time around. The Greek Olympic Committee refused to take part because the Los Angeles organizers had auctioned off every inch of the relay in the United States (which raised $11 million). The flame was ignited, as usual, at Olympia, then taken by helicopter to Athens and from there a plane furnished by the White House flew it to New York for the beginning of the relay. It traveled across country on a circuitous 15,000-kilometer route through 33 states. Rafer Johnson, gold medalist in the decathlon at the 1960 Olympics, lit the cauldron.
1988 Calgary Winter Games
After being flown from Greece to Canada, the flame traveled 18,000 kilometers, including a trip into the Arctic Circle at Inuvik in the Northwest Territory. The torch was carried by snowbike and skidoo at various stages. Robyn Perry, a 12-year-old schoolgirl and figure skater, lit the cauldron.
1988 Seoul Summer Games
The flame flew more than 10,000 kilometers to Korea and was then taken on a zigzag course, symbolizing the balance between two opposite poles, that covered 4,714 kilometers. During one stage, the torchbearers were a dozen mothers of babies born in 1988. The last three torchbearers were three students representing the arts, the sciences, and sport. The cauldron was lit by Sohn Kee-Chung, who had won the 1936 Olympic marathon under the name of Kitei Son. At the time, Korea was under Japanese rule and he was forced to run under the Japanese flag.
The ceremony was marred by the arrival of dozens of doves, just released, who landed on the rim of the cauldron just as it was being lit and were scorched to death. Since then, the doves haven't been released until after the lighting has taken place.
1992 Albertville Winter Games
The flame traveled from Athens to Paris aboard the Concorde, at supersonic speed, and was then taken to Albertville by torch relay. Michel Platini, manager of the French national soccer team, carried the flame into the stadium and handed it over to a local schoolboy, 8-year-old Francois-Cyrille Grange. The boy lit the cauldron by sending a fireball up a slender cable.
1992 Barcelona Summer Games
The flame was carried on the frigate Cataluña from Greece to Empuries, Spain, a major archeological site that contains ancient Greek and Roman ruins. On the torch relay from Empuries to Barcelona, 9,849 runners covered 3,060 kilometers and 599 cyclists traveled the remaining 1,490 kilometers. Antonio Rebollo, a Paralympic archer, lit the cauldron by shooting a flaming arrow into it from 30 meters away.
1994 Lillehammer Winter Games
With the return of the Winter Olympics to Norway, there were two flames, the traditional one lit at Olympia and the flame lit in Morgedahl, as it had been for the 1952 Oslo Games. The flames were carried in separate torch relays to Oslo, where they were united. Along the way, runners, skiers, horseback riders, reindeer sleighs, wheelchairs, and parachutists transported torches. For the grand finale, Stein Gruben flew down a ski jump with the torch and made a perfect landing in the stadium. He was a replacement for Gunnar Fidjestol, who had been injured in a practice run. Gruben handed the torch on to Prince Haakon Magnus of Norway, who lit the cauldron.
1996 Atlanta Summer Games
After arriving in the United States by plane, the flame followed an itinerary recreating much of American history. In its 25,749-kilometer journey, it was transported by Indian canoe, Pony Express, Mississippi steamboat, and the Union Pacific railroad, as well as 12,467 torch bearers. The cauldron was Muhammad Ali, who had won a boxing Gold Medal in 1960 as Cassius Clay.
1998 Nagano Winter Games
The torch was flown from Greece to Japan and the ensuing torch relay wound through all 47 of the country's prefectures. There were 6,901 torchbearers, including Kristi Yamaguchi, the American figure skater of Japanese ancestry who won a Gold Medal in 1992. The torch was lit by Midori Ito, who had finished second to Yamaguchi.
2000 Sydney Summer Games
The flame visited many Pacific islands, including Guam, Palau, Micronesia, the Solomons, Samoa, the Cook Islands, Fiji, and New Zealand, before reaching Australia, where it was carried underwater at the Great Barrier Reef by a diver with a specially-constructed torch. The first torchbearer in Australia was the Aboriginal field hockey player, Nova Peris-Kneebone. When the flame reached Sydney, it was greeted by more than a million people. The cauldron was lit by Cathy Freeman, who went on to win the Gold Medal in the 400-meter run.
2002 Salt Lake City Winter Games
After being flown from Greece to Atlanta, the site of the 1996 Summer Olympics, the flame went on a 13,500-mile journey that included 46 states and all of the other Olympic sites in the United States: St. Louis, Lake Placid, Squaw Valley, and Los Angeles. There were 11,500 torchbearers, and flame was also carried by ski, dog sled, horse-drawn sleigh, and snowmobile. Members of the 1980 "Miracle on Ice" Olympic hockey team lit the cauldron.
2004 Athens Summer Games
With Olympia as the starting point and nearby Athens as the destination, the Olympic torch went on its longest journey ever, visiting all five continents, including South America and Africa for the first time. The 78,000-kilometer trip was to take 78 days, including two extended journeys within Greece.
2006 Turin Winter Games
A new type of torch was created for Turin. It had an aluminum shell with multiple performations around the top so the flame would envelop the torch rather. After arriving in Italy, more than 10,000 torchbearers carried it on its journey to Turin, with a stop at the Vatican so it could be blessed by Pope Benedict XVI. Alpine skiing hero Alberto 'La Bomba' Tomba carried it into stadium, where several Italian medalists from past Olympics took over. Stefania Belmondo, a two-time gold medalist in cross-country skiing, lit the Olympic cauldron.