Torch burns on, evolves as games grow

Kamon Simpson
The Gazette
Published Monday, January 28, 2002

Almost 3,000 years after it was first lit, the Olympic flame still burns.

The ancient Olympic Games began around 776B.C. and ended in 393A.D., abolished by Emperor Theodosius of Rome, who considered them pagan. The modern Games began in 1896, revived by Baron Pierre de Coubertin of France, who believed international competition could promote world peace.

The flame is one of the few traditions to transcend the two periods of Olympic history. Every two years, for the Summer and Winter Games, it is lit in the same place it was all those years ago -- on the altar of Zeus in Olympia, Greece. It is lit in much the same way, with the rays of the sun directed by mirror into an ancient bowl filled with olive leaves and branches.

Otherwise, few similarities exist between the ancient Olympic flame and the modern Olympic torch relay, which arrives Thursday in Colorado Springs from Denver en route to the 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake City.

The torch relay has become, much like the Games, a giant, commercial spectacle requiring a cast of thousands. It also is a relatively recent phenomenon.

And though the ceremony has produced some of the most memorable and symbolic moments in modern Olympic history, the origin of the torch relay is shrouded in controversy.

The first Olympic torch relay was created by the Nazis for the 1936 Berlin Summer Games as a propaganda tool for Adolf Hitler's Third Reich. Lasting 12 days, the 1,910-mile journey took the flame from Greece to Germany through Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Austria and Czechoslovakia.

The torch relay has been held for every Games since, evolving into a modern marvel of logistical wizardry. By the time the flame arrives in Rice-Eccles Olympic Stadium for the opening ceremonies on Feb.8, it will have been carried by more than 11,500 runners over 13,500 miles of cross-country travel covering 46 states in 65 days - an average of 208 miles every 12 hours.

The torch has been carried by as few as 52 runners - the cash-strapped organizers of the 1980 Lake Placid Winter Games couldn't afford more torches - to 101,839 for the 1964 Tokyo Summer Games.

The torch has been transported by everything from dogsleds -- for its first trip through Alaska this year -- to satellites, with the flame converted to an electronic signal and then to a laser optic beam for transmission from Greece to Canada for the 1976 Montreal Summer Games.

The 2000 Sydney Summer Games torch relay traveled farther (37,500 miles), longer (120 days) and through more countries (14) than any flame.

The 1964 Tokyo Games, the first held in Asia, illustrated how far the torch relay had come from its ignoble origin. The final torchbearer was Yoshinori Sakai, who was born on the outskirts of Hiroshima the day that city was destroyed by an atomic bomb. While Sakai embodied Japan's recovery from World WarII, the Olympics helped Tokyo become a modern city as the country spent nearly $3billion on the Games.

"We planned to rebuild Tokyo," Mayor Dr. Ryotaro Azuma said. "It really had to be done, and there was no other way but the Olympics to get the people behind it."

Sakai was one of several final torchbearers chosen for symbolic effect and who have provided some of the signature moments of the Games.

In 1952 in Helsinki, Finland, Paavo Nurmi, a Finnish distance runner who won nine gold medals from 1920 to 1928, carried the torch into the stadium and handed it to fellow Finish distance runner Hannes Kolehmainen, who won three gold medals in 1912. Athletes from 69 competing nations, gathered in the infield, broke ranks to gather around the Olympic legends.

In 1988 in Seoul, the torch was run into the stadium by 76-year-old Sohn Kee-chung, winner of the 1936 marathon. Fifty-two years earlier, Sohn had been forced to compete using a Japanese name because Korea was occupied at the time by Japan.

In 1992 in Barcelona, the Olympic cauldron was lit by a flaming arrow shot by archer Antonio Rebollo. In 1996 in Atlanta, the cauldron was lit by Muhammad Ali, who, as Cassius Clay, won a gold medal in boxing in 1960.

And in 2000 in Sydney, the final torchbearer was eventual 400-meter champ Cathy Freeman, the first Australian Aborigine to win an individual Olympic gold medal.

The final torchbearer for Feb.8's Opening Ceremony and the Salt Lake Olympic cauldron design are closely guarded secrets, but the official 2002 Winter Games motto is "Light the Fire Within."

"The fire which burned within the hearts of the earliest Olympians is passed along to those of modern times," Salt Lake Olympic chief Mitt Romney said. "(It is) a light for all the nations who join us for the Olympic Winter Games to see."

That light hasn't changed much in almost 3,000 years. But the Olympic torch relay, a parade full of pomp and circumstance, continues to evolve as the flame burns its way around the globe.


(c) 2002, The Gazette (Colorado Springs, Colo.).
