Since the 1936 Berlin Olympics, tradition has it that the Olympic flame travels hundreds or even thousands of kilometers before arriving in the city that organizes the competitions.
No, the famous Olympic torch relay does not come from the ancient Greek Games. It was the Nazis who started this famous tradition. Two years before the opening of the Berlin Olympics in 1936, Carl Diem, Secretary General of the Organizing Committee for the Games of the XI Olympiad, proposed to establish this Olympic torch relay. This tradition continues for more than 70 years.
Since 2008, and following numerous demonstrations encountered during its journey between Olympia and Beijing, the flame now only travels to Greece, initially, then to the host country. But even before the vicissitudes of the flame for the Games in China, the relays of the Olympic torch were marked by a few hiccups or other unusual highlights… False relay, sent under water, in space, or even on top of the world: the Olympic flame has seen all the colors.
Melbourne 1956: an underpants, a chair leg and a tin can… Barry Larkin’s incredible hoax
This Nazi heritage, Barry Larkin did not accept it. This young veterinary student from Melbourne is not at all recognized for his sports performance but for his prank carried out during the course of the Olympic flame in the streets of Sydney, a few days before his arrival in Melbourne for the Olympic Games in 1956. Helped by a friend who knew the organizer of the relay, Barry Larkin had prepared his coup: make a fake torch and run in the middle of the crowd pretending to be an official torchbearer.
With a chair leg painted silver, encased in a tin of dried fruit pudding, and underpants soaked in a highly flammable product, the young Australian did not expect his prank to work to this extent. Because Barry Larkin was even entitled to the cheers of the crowd, before being escorted by the police to the mayor of the city, Pat Hills. The latter brandishes the false torch in front of the crowd. And as he began his speech, one of his advisers whispered in his ear: “It’s not the torch!“
Indeed, while Barry Larkin had been packing for a while, the real Olympic torchbearer arrived fifteen minutes later.
Seoul 1988: The Burning Doves
The sequence had horrified more than two billion viewers. Live, and while the images are broadcast in mondovision, the lighting of the Olympic flame takes an unexpected turn on September 17, 1988 at the Olympic Stadium in Seoul. Several white doves, which were to be released when the fire flared up as tradition dictates, were burned while still quietly perched on the edges of the Olympic cauldron.
The organizers acted as if nothing had happened, continuing the ceremony normally, and the producer of the international television signal waited long seconds before going on a wide shot of the stadium. Since this unfortunate sequence, the release of doves during the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games is carried out after the lighting of the Olympic flame.
Sydney 2000: The Torch visits the Great Barrier Reef
Australians are often known for being original. They had also, moreover, sent a very strong message when Cathy Freeman, the first Aborigine in history to participate in the Olympic Games, was appointed as the ultimate Olympic torch bearer. A few days before, the organizers had sunk the torch to the bottom of the ocean to visit the Great Barrier Reef.
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The image, obviously very well known, immediately went around the world. We can see the Australian biologist and diver, Wendy Craig-Duncan, brandishing under the navy blue water the Olympic torch of the Sydney Olympics. Four scientists have found a way to leave the flame active in the ocean where it burns at more than 2,000°C for nearly three minutes.
Beijing 2008: the flame of controversy on the roof of the world
This is the last time the torch will leave Olympia to reach the host city of the Games. A decision taken by the IOC Executive Board in March 2009 due to incidents that occurred during the flame’s journey around the world. If since 1936, his journey has been regularly disrupted by demonstrations of all kinds, this year 2008 is unique for the extent of the disputes. The Chinese had organized an extraordinary journey of more than 137,000 kilometers, crossing no less than 23 countries on five continents.
Before landing definitively in Beijing, the torch is sent in the ascent of Mount Everest (see video of the news of May 8, from 1’20”). To climb the highest mountain on the planet, great means are deployed by China. A second Olympic flame was even lit and it was on May 8, 2008 that the latter, specially designed to withstand extreme low temperatures, reached the roof of the world, at an altitude of 8,848 metres. And, for the symbol sent by the Chinese government, it is a Tibetan who carries the flame at the top…
Sochi 2014: extinguished, reignited with a lighter and sent into space…
If the course of the Olympic flame is now “limited” to the organizing country, Russia is not the type to do like everyone else. The XXL size of the country was able to allow Vladimir Putin and his Organizing Committee to concoct a gigantic route of 65,000 kilometers, thus visiting the 83 regions of the Russian Federation. Everything was thought out so that almost all Russians benefit from this festival, ensuring that 90% of the 145 million inhabitants are within an hour of the passage of the flame. This did not avoid hiccups from the first day of his stint, in Moscow, around the Kremlin.
On October 7, 2013, and a few minutes after a ceremony in Red Square, the second torchbearer, Chavarch Karapetian, saw the flame slowly go out as he ran slowly through the streets of Moscow. The former finswimming legend is forced to ask a security guard for help, forced to relight the torch with a classic lighter. During these first days of relay, the torch is extinguished then reignited several times.
A month later, the Russians became the first to send the Olympic torch into space. Leaving on November 7 aboard a Soyuz, the torch spent a few hours in the International Space Station (ISS). She returned to dry land on November 11 and resumed her journey to Sochi.
Rio 2016: a jaguar killed, the party is ruined
Until then, the Olympic Torch Relay was proceeding without a hitch through Brazil where the five regions were visited in a copious route of almost 35,000 kilometers. Until Monday, June 20, 2016, when the party is ruined. A jaguar, the king animal of the Amazon and the largest endangered feline in the Americas, has been shot dead by authorities after it attacked a veterinarian who was trying to put it to sleep with tranquilizers.
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A few hours earlier, the feline called “Juma” had been exhibited on the passage of the Olympic torch, in Manaus, in the north of the country. It was when the military wanted to move the jaguar from one enclosure to another in the army zoo that it tried to escape and then could never be controlled. “We made a mistake by allowing the Olympic torch, a symbol of peace and union among peoples, to be displayed alongside a wild animal attached“, reacted the Rio 2016 Organizing Committee to AFP.