John Duncan
THE Olympic torch has become the symbol of the Games, but it is not the ancient symbol many imagine: it was introduced by the Nazis in 1936 because Adolf Hitler wanted to draw an association between the Nazi regime and ancient Greece. Somehow it has stuck.
Lit on Mount Olympus, the flame must not be extinguished and it flickers above the Olympic stadium throughout the Games.
In Atlanta it has been used as a lucrative money- spinner, grossing the organisers an estimated $6- million. The flame has travelled a circuitous route across America after arriving there 84 days before the opening ceremony, carried in 800m stages by a small army of selected locals from Los Angeles over the Rocky Mountains and into Atlanta itself.
Muhammad Ali, now 54 and riddled by Parkinson’s Syndrome, brought a flood of conflicting emotions to the crowd when he made a surprise appearance to perform the final flame ceremony.
Most of the 83 100 people present were patently holding their breath as he stood and shook, gripping the Olympic flame like a small child wrestling with a rattle. But his eyes rage with fire still, and moving in tortuous contrast to the quicksilver smoothness of his fighting pomp, he brought the torch to the carrier that ascended a pylon to the flame.
Ultimately there was awed respect for a man whose inner strengthm is so profound that he can parade his shambling physical form in front of half the world, mingling with the fittest and strongest, the champions of today, knowing he is the spirit of survival.
One first for the torch this year is that the flame actually did go out on its travels, something that causes a certain amount of consternation and embarrassment in the Atlanta organisers’ camp. Happily there was no need for a trip back to Mount Olympus — two are always lit, though the reserve has never been used before.
Most embarrassed were the team at the Georgia Institute of Technology who had spent two years engineering the technology to keep it alight. They designed a torch that could withstand the heat, cold, wind and rain of a country such as the United States where the weather varies wildly from region to region. It is not only the Olympic gods who fuel the burning flame but a propylene fuel tank hidden in the Georgia pecan wood handle.