So whilst I am excited at the prospect of the London 2012 Olympic games finally getting underway I am totally bored with the Olympic Torch relay. There have been nearly 8,000 runners and it seems like every one of them has been mentioned on the TV, radio and in the papers. I think what disappointed me most was that there wasn’t just one torch but thousands of them.
I also started to wonder what the relay meant. I know that the torch is ceremoniously lit in Olympia, Greece which was the site of the ancient Olympic games. I also knew that it is lit by women wearing robes in an ancient Greek style and they use the sun reflected from a mirror to ignite the flame.
What I didn’t know was that the flame supposedly represents purity and the endeavour for perfection among other things. But the big thing that I have learned about the torch is that Carl Diem who organised the now infamous games of 1936 in Berlin was the first to suggest and operate the torch relay. So that whole thing was in effect started by the Nazis. But at least the Nazi scum couldn’t fix everything, thanks to the great Olympian Jesse Owens!
