![]() ![]() The Olympic torch relay was the brainchild of Carl Diem, the chief organizer of the Berlin Games, who envisioned an unprecedented succession of more than 3,000 runners transporting the flame from the cradle of the ancient Olympics to Berlin’s Olympic Stadium, where it would light the cauldron during the opening ceremonies of the XI Olympiad. The Greeks employed a ritual fire in the ancient Olympics, but they never staged a relay of torchbearers to open their games. ![]() While the pageantry appeared to reprise a sacred ancient Greek tradition, the Olympic torch relay was actually a piece of modern political theater carefully scripted and paid for entirely by Nazi Germany. Enveloped by ancient ruins and a dozen women dressed in virginal white tunics, shirtless Greek runner Konstantinos Kondylis dipped a torch into a burning cauldron, held the fire aloft in his right hand and jogged the first steps of what would be an epic 12-day overland relay to Berlin, host city of the 1936 Summer Games. At a solemn ceremony in Olympia, Greece, on July 20, 1936, the searing rays of the midday sun, concentrated by a parabolic mirror, kindled the Olympic flame.
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