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The Olympic Flame or Olympic Torch is a symbol of the Olympic Games.[1] Commemorating the theft of fire from the Greek god Zeus by Prometheus, its origins lie in ancient Greece, when a fire was kept burning throughout the celebration of the ancient Olympics[citation needed]. The fire was reintroduced at the 1928 Summer Olympics in Amsterdam, and it has been part of the modern Olympic Games ever since. The torch relay of modern times which transports the flame from Greece to the various designated sites of the games had no ancient precedent and was introduced by Carl Diem, with the support of Joseph Goebbels, at the controversial Berlin Olympics as a means to promote Nazi ideology.[2]
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Usage
The Olympic Torch today is ignited several months before the opening celebration of the Olympic Games at the site of the ancient Olympics in Olympia, Greece. Eleven women, representing the roles of priestesses, perform a ceremony in which the torch is kindled by the light of the Sun, its rays concentrated by a parabolic mirror.
The Olympic Torch Relay ends on the day of the opening ceremony in the central stadium of the Games. The final carrier is often kept secret until the last moment, and is usually a sports celebrity of the host country. The final bearer of the torch runs towards the cauldron, often placed at the top of a grand staircase, and then uses the torch to start the flame in the stadium. It is considered a great honor to be asked to light the Olympic Flame. After being lit, the flame continues to burn throughout the Olympics, and is extinguished on the day of the closing ceremony.
Since the first Olympic games celebrated in modern time, the Olympic Torch has become a symbol of the peace between the continents (as well as the Olympians that share this role in our modern celebration).
History
Ancient Olympics
For the ancient Greeks, fire had divine connotations — it was thought to have been stolen from the gods by Prometheus. Therefore, fire was also present at many of the sanctuaries in Olympia, Greece. A fire permanently burned on the altar of Hestia in Olympia, Greece. During the Olympic Games, which honored Zeus, additional fires were lit at his temple and that of his wife, Hera.[citation needed] The modern Olympic flame is ignited at the site where the temple of Hera used to stand.
The modern era
The Olympic Flame from the ancient games was reintroduced during the 1928 Games. An employee of the Electric Utility of Amsterdam, lit the first Olympic flame in the Marathon Tower of the Olympic Stadium in Amsterdam.
The modern convention of moving the Olympic Flame via a relay system from Olympia to the Olympic venue began with the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, Germany.
The relay, captured in Leni Riefenstahl's film Olympia, was part of the Nazi propaganda machine’s attempt to add myth and mystique to Adolf Hitler’s regime. Hitler saw the link with the ancient Games as the perfect way to illustrate his belief that classical Greece was an Aryan forerunner of the modern German Reich.[3]
Although most of the time the torch with the Olympic Flame is still carried by runners, it has been transported in many different ways. The fire travelled by boat in 1948 to cross the English Channel and was carried by rowers in Canberra as well as by dragon boat in Hong Kong[4] in 2008, and it was first transported by airplane in 1952, when the fire travelled to Helsinki. In 1956, all carriers in the torch relay to Stockholm, where the equestrian events were held instead of in Melbourne, travelled on horseback.
Remarkable means of transportation were used in 1976, when the flame was transformed to a radio signal. From Athens, this signal was transmitted by satellite to Canada[5], where it was received and used to trigger a laser beam to re-light the flame. In 2000, the torch was carried under water by divers near the Great Barrier Reef. Other unique means of transportation include a Native American canoe, a camel, and Concorde.[6] In 2004, the first global torch relay was undertaken, a journey that lasted 78 days. The Olympic flame covered a distance of more than 78,000 km in the hands of some 11,300 torchbearers, travelling to Africa and South America for the first time, visiting all previous Olympic cities and finally returning to Athens for the 2004 Summer Olympics.
The climactic transfer of the flame from the torches to the cauldron at the host stadium concludes the relay and marks the symbolic commencement of the Games. Perhaps one of the most spectacular of these ceremonies took place at the 1992 Barcelona Games, when Paralympic archer Antonio Rebollo ignited the cauldron by shooting a burning arrow over it from the stage in the stadium. The arrow wasn't intended to make it into the cauldron,[citation needed] but to pass over a stream of natural gas which keeps the cauldron burning once activated. However, an enterprising news crew had stationed themselves outside the stadium and their footage shows that the arrow well and truly missed the cauldron vertically. Official footage from inside the stadium also shows the flame igniting from the base not from a gas stream above the cauldron and the ignition lacks the characteristic flare that would arise had a necessarily large volume of flammable gas been present in the air. Given that natural gas is heavier than air, this would have presented a fire hazard as the flammable gas would have sunk and the flame would have extended well below the height of the cauldron.[citation needed] Two years later, the Olympic fire was brought into the stadium of Lillehammer by a ski jumper. In Beijing 2008, Li Ning 'ran' on air around the Bird's Nest and lit the flame.
Below is a list of all Olympic torch relays.
Summer Olympic Games
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Winter Olympic Games
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Lighters
Over the years, it has become a tradition to let famous athletes or former athletes be the last runner in the relay. The first well-known athlete to light the fire in the stadium was ninefold Olympic Champion Paavo Nurmi, who excited the home crowd in Helsinki in 1952. Other famous last bearers of the torch include French football star Michel Platini (1992), heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali (1996) and Australian aboriginal runner Cathy Freeman (2000).
On other occasions, the people who lit the fire in the stadium are not famous, but nevertheless symbolise Olympic ideals. Japanese runner Yoshinori Sakai was born in Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, the day the nuclear weapon Little Boy destroyed that city. He symbolised the rebirth of Japan after the Second World War when he opened the 1964 Tokyo Games. At the 1976 Games in Montreal, two teenagers — one from the French-speaking part of the country, one from the English-speaking part — symbolised the unity of Canada.
Below is a full list of all persons who ended the Olympic Torch Relay by lighting the flame in the stadium.
- 1936 Summer Olympics: Fritz Schilgen, a track athlete. He was not actually a competitor at the Olympics, but was chosen for his particularly graceful-looking running style.
- 1948 Summer Olympics: John Mark, a track athlete.
- 1952 Winter Olympics: Eigil Nansen, the grandson of polar explorer Fridtjof Nansen
- 1952 Summer Olympics: Paavo Nurmi, winner of nine Olympic gold medals in distance running in the 1920s.
- 1956 Winter Olympics: Guido Caroli, a speed skater who participated in the 1948, 1952 and 1956 Olympics. Skating with the torch, he tripped over a television cable but kept the flame burning.
- 1956 Summer Olympics: Ron Clarke (Melbourne) and Hans Wikne (Stockholm). Long distance runner Clarke would later win an Olympic bronze medal in 1964 ; Hans Wikne later participated in the 1964 Olympics.
- 1960 Winter Olympics: Ken Henry, Olympic champion in 500 m speed skating at the 1952 Games.
- 1960 Summer Olympics: Giancarlo Peris, track athlete of Greek descent.
- 1964 Winter Olympics: Joseph Rieder, a former alpine skier who had taken part in the 1956 Olympics.
- 1964 Summer Olympics: Yoshinori Sakai, track and field athlete, born on the day the atom bomb exploded over his native Hiroshima.
- 1968 Winter Olympics: Alain Calmat, former figure skater, winner of the silver medal in the 1964 Olympics.
- 1968 Summer Olympics: Norma Enriqueta Basilio de Sotelo, a sprinter who participated in these Olympics. She was the first woman to be the last torch bearer.
- 1972 Winter Olympics: Hideki Takada, a student and speed skater.
- 1972 Summer Olympics: Günther Zahn, a middle distance runner.
- 1976 Winter Olympics: Christl Haas and Josef Feistmantl. Haas won the Olympic downhill title in 1964; Feistmantl won the luge doubles in the same year.
- 1976 Summer Olympics: Stéphane Préfontaine and Sandra Henderson, two teenagers.
- 1980 Winter Olympics: Charles Gugino, a professional from Nevada who had been elected from all bearers to run the final part.
- 1980 Summer Olympics: Sergey Belov, basketball player who won four Olympic medals, including a gold in 1972.
- 1984 Winter Olympics: Sanda Dubravčić, a figure skater who participated in the 1980 and 1984 Olympics.
- 1984 Summer Olympics: Rafer Johnson, winner of the decathlon at the 1960 Olympics.
- 1988 Winter Olympics: Robyn Perry, a 12-year-old schoolgirl and figure skater.
- 1988 Summer Olympics: Sohn Kee-chung, marathon gold medalist in 1936, carried the torch into the stadium, and the relay was continued by Chung Sun-Man, Kim Won-Tak and Sohn Mi-Chung, three young track and field athletes. Kim took part in the Olympic marathon.
- 1992 Winter Olympics: Michel Platini, a football player who took part in the 1976 Olympics, and François-Cyrille Grange, who was eight years old at the time.
- 1992 Summer Olympics: Antonio Rebollo, an archer who competed in the Paralympic Games, who ignited the flame by shooting an arrow high into the cauldron. The last runner who lit Rebollo's arrow was basketball player Juan Antonio San Epifanio, silver medalist in 1984.
- 1994 Winter Olympics: Crown Prince Haakon of Norway. Both his father and grandfather took part in the Olympics.
- 1996 Summer Olympics: Muhammad Ali, the boxer who, under the name Cassius Clay, won Olympic gold in 1960.
- 1998 Winter Olympics: Midori Ito, figure skater, winner of Olympic silver in 1992.
- 2000 Summer Olympics: Cathy Freeman, a track and field athlete. She won the gold medal in the 400 m at these Olympics.
- 2002 Winter Olympics: The entire U.S. ice hockey team that won the Olympic gold medal in 1980.
- 2004 Summer Olympics: Nikolaos Kaklamanakis, windsurfer (Olympic Windsurfing Class), 1996 Olympic gold medalist, 2004 Olympic silver medalist.
- 2006 Winter Olympics: Stefania Belmondo, Italian gold medalist cross-country skier.
- 2008 Summer Olympics: Li Ning, gymnast, three-time gold medalist in 1984.
Cauldron
The cauldron and the pedestal it sits on are always the subject of unique and often dramatic design. These also tie in with how the cauldron is lit during the Opening Ceremony.
- In Los Angeles in 1984, Rafer Johnson lit a "wick" of sorts at the top of the archway after having climbed a big flight of steps. The flame flared up a pipe, through the Olympic Rings and on up the side of the tower to ignite the cauldron.
- In Barcelona in 1992, Antonio Rebollo, an archer shot a flaming arrow immediately over the cauldron to light it.[10]
- In Atlanta in 1996, the cauldron was an artistic scroll decorated in red and gold. It was lit by boxing legend Muhammad Ali, using a mechanical, self-propelling fuse ball that transported the flame up a wire from the stadium to its final resting place[11] At the 1996 Summer Paralympics, the scroll was lit by a paraplegic climber hoisting himself up a rope to the cauldron.
- For the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, Cathy Freeman walked across a circular pool of water and ignited the cauldron through the water, surrounding herself within a ring of fire. The planned spectacular climax to the ceremony was delayed by the technical glitch of a computer switch which malfunctioned, causing the sequence to shut down by giving a false reading. This meant that the Olympic flame was suspended in mid-air for about four minutes, rather than immediately rising up a water-covered ramp to the top of the stadium. When it was discovered what the problem was, the program was overridden and the cauldron continued up the ramp, where it finally rested on a tall silver pedestal.
- For the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA, the cauldron was lit by the members of the winning 1980 US hockey team. After being skated around the centre ice rink there in the stadium, the flame was carried up a staircase to the team members, who then lit a "wick" of sorts at the bottom of the cauldron tower which set off an impressive line of flames that traveled up inside the tower until it reached the cauldron at the top which ignited. This cauldron was the first to use glass and incorporated running water to prevent the glass from heating and to keep it clean.
- For the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, the cauldron was in the shape of a giant needle which bowed down to accept the flame from windsurfer Nikolaos Kaklamanakis.
- In the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Stefania Belmondo placed the flame on an arched lighting apparatus, which initiated a series of fireworks before lighting the top of the 57-meter high Olympic Cauldron, the highest in the history of the Winter Olympic Games.[12]
- In the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, the cauldron resembled the end of a scroll that lifted out from the stadium rim and spiralled upwards. It was lit by Li Ning a Chinese gymnast, who was raised to the rim of the stadium by wires. He ran around the rim of the stadium while suspended and as he ran, an unrolling scroll was projected showing film clips of the flame's journey around the world. As he approached the cauldron, he lit an enormous wick, which then transferred the flame to the cauldron. The flame then spiralled up the structure of the cauldron before lighting it at the top. Before the lighting of the cauldron, the cauldron structure itself was hidden from view on the roof of the stadium, before pivoting down to rest in its designated position.
Controversy
The torch ceremony is seen by some as controversial. During one incident in the 1956 Summer Olympic Games in Melbourne, nine Australian students, most notably Barry Larkin, staged a hoax during the relay when the torch entered Sydney. The students wanted to protest against what they saw as "Too much reverence," to the flame, considering the Nazi origins. Larkin pretended to be an Olympic athlete, carrying a fake torch made out of a burning pair of underpants and a plum pudding can on the end of a chair leg. He presented it to the mayor of Sydney, Pat Hills, and escaped before anyone realized he was an imposter.[13]
The torch has raised disputes about the sovereignty of the regions that it passes. The 2008 Beijing Games had initially planned for the torch to pass through the island of Taiwan before going to Hong Kong and Macau and then to mainland China. Taiwan rejected this on the basis that they wished the flame to enter the island/country by a 'third party country' and leave the island/country by a 'fourth party country', so that the torch will not downgrade Taiwan's sovereignty. Negotiations did not work out by the deadline set by the International Olympic Committee. [14]
Plans to carry the 2008 torch up the top of Mount Everest[15] have also been met with opposition by Tibetan government-in-exile and its followers. The