OLYMPIC HISTORY EVENTS - page 4

 

 
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ORIGIN OF THE OYLMPIC FLAME AND THE OLYMPIC RELAY

The Olympic Flame, Olympic Fire, Olympic Torch, Olympic Light, Olympic Eye, and Olympic Sun are all names for an important marketing promotion and symbol of the Olympic Games. 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. The fire was reintroduced at the 1928 Summer Olympics in Amsterdam, and it has been part of the modern Olympic Games ever since. (Another source, separate from the Wikipedia information used in this article says “There was an eternal flame at Olympia, but that had nothing to do with the Olympics,” said David Young, a classical scholar at the University of Florida.)

The relay of the flame from Greece to the site of the modern 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.[1]


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympic_Flame

Dr. Carl Diem (born June 24, 1882, Würzburg December 17, 1962, Cologne) was the originator of the modern tradition of the Olympic torch relay and a Nazi commander.

The Olympic torch relay is not a tradition dating to ancient Greece. The relay was invented by Carl Diem, a German who had been planning the 1916 Summer Olympics in Berlin, when they were canceled because of World War I.

Twenty years later, Diem returned, as the General Secretary of the Organizing Committee of the 1936 Summer Olympics under Adolf Hitler.[1] Seeking to glamorize the games with an ancient aura, Diem staged the first lighting of the Olympic flame. When the torches were lit at Berlin, ostensibly to signify unity among nations, they carried the logo of the manufacturer, Krupp, the huge steel and munitions conglomerate that armed Germany for two world wars.

The torch relay from Greece to the host country of the Olympic games has been continued at every Olympiad since then. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Diem

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