Olympic Tourch History

The Olympic Flame, Torch and Relay draw on a history going back to the ancient Olympic Games in Greece.

The ancient Gamesd

The Torch and Relay were important elements of the cultural festivals surrounding the Olympic Games of Ancient Greece.

During the Games, a sacred flame burned continually on the altar of the goddess, Hera. In addition, heralds were summoned to travel throughout Greece to announce the Games, declaring a sacred truce for the duration.

Spreading the light from Greece: the modern Games

A very precise ritual for the lighting of the Flame is followed at every Games. It is lit from the sun's rays at the Temple of Hera in Olympia, in a traditional ceremony among the ruins of the home of the Ancient Games.

After a short relay around Greece, the Flame is handed over to the new Host City at another ceremony in the Panathenaiko stadium in Athens.

The Flame is then delivered to the Host Country, where it is transferred from one Torchbearer to another, spreading the message of peace, unity and friendship. It ends its journey as the last Torchbearer lights the cauldron at the Olympic Games Opening Ceremony in the Olympic Stadium, marking the official start of the Games.

The Flame is extinguished on the final day of the Games, at the Closing Ceremony.

Previous Torches

Scroll through to see Olympic Torches dating back to Berlin 1936.

Oliver Holt Five Olympics Moment

1. Cathy Freeman only ran in one event at the 2000 Sydney Olympics but she dominated those Games as completely as if she had been competing every day.

The first aboriginal athlete ever to compete for Australia, Freeman became the conscience of a nation during the Olympics, a symbol of the guilt many Australians still feel about the way they treated the continent’s original inhabitants.

Freeman lit the flame at the opening ceremony and when she lined up for the final of the 400m, the pressure on her to win was enormous.

The roar in the stadium that greeted the starting gun lasted the whole lap. Freeman, wearing a hooded body suit, led from start to finish. At the end, in one of the iconic pictures of those games, she sank to the track and sat down, her face a picture not of joy but of relief.

2. I am not sure that I believe in Usain Bolt but sitting in the Bird’s Nest in Beijing and seeing him obliterate the rest of the field in the 100m final still took my breath away.

I knew in those startling 9.69 seconds what it must have been like to have been in Seoul in 1988 to see Ben Johnson blow away rivals that included Carl Lewis and Linford Christie.

It was the nonchalance of Bolt that was the most shocking thing of all, the way that he eased up with about ten metres to go, looked around and spread his arms out wide in triumph.

This was the 100m men’s final and he was coasting. Despite the cursed lineage of the event, the positive tests attached to previous champions like Justin Gatlin, Johnson and Christie, there is still an incredible thrill about watching the fastest man in the world.

What Bolt did in Beijing, winning gold in the 200m too and breaking Michael Johnson’s world record, made him the star of the Games.

3. Seeing Steve Redgrave win his fifth Olympic gold medal in Sydney was special but I enjoyed seeing Britain’s men’s coxless four win in Athens more.

Maybe it was because it was such an amazingly close race between the British and Canadian boats, a contest so nerve-wracking that many did not know who had won when the boats crossed the line.

There was great drama, too, in men like Sir Matthew Pinsent and James Cracknell, incredible sportsmen in their own right, trying to win gold without Redgrave and knowing that silver would be regarded as a desperate failure.

It was Pinsent’s fourth gold and he wept like a child on the podium after the race. It was sporting drama at its very best.

4. I have not included Shirley Robertson’s victory in the Europe class of the sailing event in Sydney in my top 5 because it was one of the outstanding sporting achievements of the three Olympics I have covered although obviously it was a superb accomplishment by Robertson that was justly celebrated.

I included it because the moment of her victory seemed to me to encapsulate much of the magic that the Olympics can bring.

I spent the whole of that day in a small motor boat on Sydney Harbour, being buffeted by waves and soaked in spray, trying to follow Robertson’s exploits.

It was one of the most beautiful sporting scenes I have ever witnessed, a flotilla of boats in one of the most beautiful harbours in the world on a gloriously sunny day.

And a sport which is rarely given the oxygen of publicity was suddenly centre stage, more important for a few hours than the Premier League or an Ashes Test. It summed up much that is best about the Olympics.

5. No one ever thought that the record set by swimmer Mark Spitz of winning seven gold medals at the Munich Olympics of 1972 but American superstar Michael Phelps disagreed.

Even a few weeks before the Beijing games the great Australian swimmer Ian Thorpe poured scorn on Phelps’ ambition to win eight golds but Phelps would not be dissuaded.

Watching him swim at The Cube was just about the hottest ticket in Beijing and Phelps performed less like a superstar and more like a superhuman.

He won two gold medals in one day and won his seventh gold medal in the 100m butterfly by beating Serbia’s Milorad Cavic by one hundredth of a second in one of the greatest swimming races of all time.

He then clinched his eight gold in the men’s 4 x 100 medley relay, swimming the butterfly before handing over to Jason Lezak to complete the final leg and seal Phelps’s moment in history.

If there was a puzzling kind of joylessness about Phelps’s achievement, perhaps it was because of the relentlessness of the task he had set himself. But the magnitude of his feat will stand the test of time.

London 2012: Our pick of the Olympics

It’s the Greatest Show on Earth – and the Daily Mirror will be right behind Team GB every hop, skip and jump of the way.

With less than 500 days to go until the London 2012 Olympics, hopes are rising for a memorable Games for British athletes. The once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to perform in front of a home crowd on the world stage is providing a huge motivational boost as our top performers gear up in a marathon push for medals.

Over the next six weeks, we will be profiling some of our rising stars aiming for gold.

Here, we present the first four of our 2012 hopefuls.

And although this may be the first time you’ve heard of them, it certainly won’t be the last.

Tickets are on sale until April 26, 2011 - with 645 separate sessions in 26 sports at venues across the UK. Prices start at £20 for adults, with concessions for under 16s and over 60s at 220 events. For your chance to apply go to www.tickets.london2012.com

CORINNA LAWRENCE, 20 FENCING

Corinna Lawrence is Britain's No1 female fencer and will compete at east London's Excel Centre.

Based in London, she took up the sport when she was just seven - following in the footsteps of her two elder sisters.

She says: "When I was about nine, my coach told me I had something special and by the age of 13, I was up against girls of 17 or 18. I was in the British top four around the age of 14." Corinna, from Plymouth, trains about 20 hours a week and admits she is getting really excited about the Games.

She adds: "Fencing once had a bit of an aristocratic reputation, but has become increas-ingly popular.

"Like boxing, it is a pure one-to-one sport. It's very tactical and always seems to create a very tense close contest."

AMY OLIVER, 23 ARCHERY

Being in the top flight of Britain's archers is a talent that comes naturally to Amy Oliver.

She says: "I started shooting about eight years ago. My parents and grand-parents were always involved, so it runs in the family."

Amy, from Rotherham, York-shire, will be aiming for gold at Lord's cricket ground.

Last year the Dearne Valley sharp--shooter won silver with Team GB in the Commonwealth Games. "It was a brilliant experi-ence," she recalls. "And we were only a few points off gold, so were very proud of what we had achieved." But the Olympics will be a different challenge altogether, as Amy knows.

Since 1972, when the modern version of archery made its Olympic debut, Great Britain has only ever won four bronze medals

But Amy is relishing the chance to show her skills at next year's Games.

She says: "Every-thing is going to plan with my training so I'm really looking forward to performing for the team.

"It's a great venue and the competition will be intense."

BOBBY WHITE, 27 HANDBALL

Bobby White is the acrobatic goalkeeper for Team GB men's handball team.

The London 2012 Olympics is the first time that Great Britain has entered a team into the competition.

It is a sport that has yet to take off here like it has across Europe, but that is expected to change after next year.

Bobby, from Milton Keynes, Bucks, says: "Here in the UK, we have a tradition of foot-ball, rugby and cricket - so sports like hand-ball and basketball are not as big.

"But handball is massive all over Europe and next year we have the opportunity to create a legacy and get people interested in the sport."

Bobby adds: "I used to play semi-pro football for Newport Pagnell, but in 2007 I was picked up by UK Sports' Sporting Giants programme who helped me get into handball.

"I didn't know what the sport was about at first but after my first taste I was hooked." The team will play in a newly-built arena at the Olympic Park - and Bobby is hoping to perform in front of a capacity 7,000 crowd.

PETER BAKARE, 21 VOLLEYBALL

Peter Bakare is originally from Canning Town, East London.

He now lives in Holland where he plays volleyball professionally for Landstede Zwolle.

The British team will play their matches at the iconic Earls Court in West London during next year's Olympics.

Peter says: "I used to be a basketball player, then one day just two years ago my coach asked me to try volleyball. I was spotted playing at the London Youth Games, then got asked to try out for England Juniors.

"From there, I went to the GB development programme in Sheffield. It was a real crash course in volleyball for me."

He admits he's nervous about the Games, but adds: "I'm also really excited."

London 2012 Olympics Vs. London 1948

There was not enough money to build an athletes’ village, so competitors were housed mainly in private accommodation, and the BBC’s winning bid for the ­broadcasting rights was £1,000.

As the inventors of World War II, Germany and Japan were not invited to participate, while Russia declined to send a team because they were busy preparing refrigerators for the Cold War.

If Great Britain’s haul of three gold medals, and 23 in all, was a modest return for the hosts, the unrivalled star on Wembley Stadium’s cinder track was Dutch sprinter Fanny Blankers-Koen, a 30-year-old mother nicknamed the Flying Housewife.

Twelve years earlier, Jesse Owens’ four gold medals in Berlin had sent Adolf Hitler goose-stepping from his box in an ideological huff. Like Owens, Blankers-Koen became the face of the Games after striking gold four times – in the 100m, 200m, sprint relay and 80m high hurdles.

As world record holder in the long jump and high jump, she would probably have gone on to win even more, but female athletes were limited to entering only three individual events.

There was a dramatic finish in the marathon, where Belgium’s Etienne Gailly entered the stadium first but he was so exhausted he could barely run. Argentina’s Delfo Cabrera and Britain’s Thomas Richards overhauled him, although Gailly heroically lasted the course to take bronze.

London 1948 was also the scene of the Olympic movement’s first political defection. Czech Marie Provaznikova, president of the international gymnastics ­federation, refused to return home, citing “lack of freedom” after the country’s inclusion in the post-war Soviet Bloc.

London 2012 Tickets Phase 2 Q&A

Q: WHO can apply?

A: Only people who applied in the original sale, between March 15 and April 26, and came away with nothing. This second round is exclusive to them on a first-come, first-served basis.

Q: HOW many can I buy?

A: You can apply for a maximum of three sessions and six tickets per session for most sports. Football, volleyball and the race walk will have larger limits.

Q: WHAT tickets are available?

A: There were 2.3 million tickets on sale at 6am yesterday, covering 310 sessions, including 44 medal events with 1.7 million tickets for football.

Q: HOW much do they cost?

A: There is a range of prices and availability. There are 1.5 million tickets at £50 or less and more than half of these will cost £20 or less, says London 2012.

Q: WHEN can I apply if I got tickets in round one?

A: Anyone who got tickets on the first go gets a second chance from 6am, July 8, to 6pm, July 17.

Q: WHEN can I apply if I have not already registered for tickets?

A: Your first chance to apply will be in December this year.

Olympic Stadium Construction Completed

London broke the world record today for constructing an Olympic Stadium as officials announced home to the 2012 games is completed ahead of time and under budget.

As the last piece of the turf was draped onto the field, Olympic officials celebrated the great news. It took London workers only 1,000 days to build the 80,000-seat Stratford stadium.

According to The Telegraph, the final bill for the project is estimated to be about £486 million ($776 million USD), which is just under budget by about £10 million ($15 million USD). The 2012 Summer Olympics kick off July 27 of next year from London.

Commenting to the press, London Mayor Boris Johnson stated, "The real joy of being so far ahead is that, unlike any other host city, we are already able to focus on securing the legacy we are so determined to deliver from the Games."

London 2012: SAS join gun cops in anti-terror practise raids for Olympics

ELITE troops are training to foil any terror strike on next year’s London Olympics.

SAS and SBS special forces have launched a series of practise operations to combat a Mumbai-style massacre.

They have teamed up with officers from Scotland Yard’s CO19 Firearms Command for night-time “rehearsals” of possible terrorist scenarios.

The exercises, involving four-man teams, include realistic shoot-outs using blank ammunition.

In one recent drill, commandos stormed a building just a few hundred yards from the Tower of London and “killed” a dozen soldiers posing as terrorists. Local residents heard shouting and bursts of machine gun fire after a street was cordoned off.

With the threat level of an attack at “severe”, military chiefs are determined to be prepared for any eventuality – such as the 2008 Mumbai attack when 10 heavily-armed fanatics left 164 dead.

An insider said: “It’s is all being done on the basis of ‘practise hard – fight easy’ and it makes a lot of sense.”