Now it’s been flickering since the first Classical Olympics so for the day that’s in we’re going on an odyssey from Olympia to Paris as we let the flames begin.
All to mark 1,000 days until the start of the XXXIII Games gets underway in the City of Light.
The flame burned brightly all through the original games in old Hellas in reference to Prometheus stealing fire from the gods.
Now you might think that the Athenians would have revived the flame.
When the Games were revived in 1896 but maybe the gods had been appeased.
Burning ambitions
It took the Dutch to bring the flame back for the Games in Amsterdam in 1928 for a more prosaic reason… to show people where the Olympics were being held.
The grandiloquent Germans of the Thirties took it up a step though not for the best of motives for the Berlin Olympics in 1936.
There was no precedent for the torch relay but then The Third Reich were reinventing everything they came across then.
was introduced by Carl Diem at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, Germany.
And seeing they were burning their way across Europe at the time they thought nothing of beating a path.
From Olympia to Berlin over 1,980 miles with 3,331 runners in twelve days and eleven nights.
Where minor protests in Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia were put down by the local security forces.
The Greatest
The torch relay became a fixture for the next 72 years becoming ever more unwieldy.
Before being discontinued after all manner of disruptions and protests on its way to Beijing in 2008.
Nowadays the torch relay only takes place in Greece and the host country.
And that’s what we saw yesterday in Hellas with the Vestal Virgins stealing the show as they always do.
Now while that’s a staple in the Home of the Games each host country has it in its gift.
To choose the figure who will light the torch when it reaches its venues.
And there was to be no more emotional moment than in 1996.
When a warrior who wouldn’t have looked out of place in Ancient Greece.
Former Olympic champ Muhammad Ali lit the flame, hands shaking because of his Parkinson’s.
So there you are and we hope you’re not too whacked after our odyssey from Olympia to Paris as we let the flames begin.