Mist clears to reveal white marble images from classical Greece culminating in Myron’s celebrated statue of an athlete poised to launch a discus in the prologue to Leni Riefenstahl’s remarkable documentary film “Olympia”.
The statue rotates and melts into an identical image of a contemporary discus thrower. It is succeeded by further paeans to the sculptured Greek ideal of physical beauty with pictures of a shot putter, a javelin thrower and rhythmic gymnasts.
Finally, flame floods the screen followed by a bare-chested runner embarking on the first torch relay of the modern Olympics. Like the remainder of Riefenstahl’s lengthy masterwork, the relay footage is both haunting and disturbing. The torch travels from Olympia in Greece through Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Austria and Czechoslovakia to Berlin and the 1936 Nazi Games. It is a journey the German army was destined to retrace.
A mighty roar and a sea of fascist salutes greets the final torchbearer Fritz Schilgen as he runs into the Berlin stadium to light the cauldron. Greece lead the 51 nations parading at the opening ceremony, under the gaze of German Chancellor Adolf Hitler. The flame, the five rings, the Olympic oath, the hymn and the anthems were products of the fanatical nationalism poisoning Europe during the inter-war years. At the suggestion of Berlin Games organizer Carl Diem the torch relay was added, with more than 3,000 runners bearing the torch over 3,187 kms.
The classical origins of the Olympic flame stem from the theft of fire from the Olympian god Zeus by Prometheus and gifted to mankind. At Olympia, site of the ancient Games, a flame burned at the altar of Hestia, goddess and guardian of fire. It was introduced to the modern Games in Amsterdam in 1928 and burned again in Los Angeles four years later.
Boosted by enthusiastic radio coverage, the Berlin torch relay was a huge success and after World War Two it became firmly established as an essential and popular pre-Games ritual. The first runner in the 1948 London Games relay took off his military uniform before carrying the flame to commemorate the sacred peace truce observed in the ancient Games. A boat ferried the flame across the channel to England.
In 1968, the relay retraced the steps of Christopher Columbus to the new world and the Mexico Games and the torch, but not the flame, has twice been carried into space by astronauts. Camels bore the flame across the Australian desert before the 2000 Sydney Games. The final torchbearer has increasingly been a celebrated athlete since nine-times Olympic distance running champion Paavo Nurmi delighted a packed Finnish crowd when he lit the cauldron at the Helsinki Games. A statue of Nurmi, who was denied the opportunity to set an unmatched record of track and field gold medals when he was declared a professional, stands outside the stadium.
At the 1996 Atlanta Games Muhammad Ali, who as Cassius Clay won the light-heavyweight boxing title in the 1960 Rome Olympics, lit the flame through sheer strength of will although his hands were visibly shaking with the effects of Parkinson’s syndrome, the cruel legacy of his professional career. Four years later, Australian aboriginal Cathy Freeman apparently walked on water to ignite the cauldron at the Sydney Games. Unlike Nurmi and Ali, Freeman had yet to win an Olympic title, an omission she rectified in spectacular fashion in the 400 meters final.
