space travel, escaping feline, underwear on fire… 9 exploits (and a few hiccups) of the Olympic flame – Libération

2024-04-27 06:54:22

It is the website of the Olympic Museum, in Lausanne, which says: “Over the last 80 years, the Olympic flame has been carried by hundreds of thousands of people and has traveled in every way possible and imaginable.” From the depths of the ocean to the International Space Station (ISS) via the summit of Everest, the Olympic flame which is due to leave Greece for France this Saturday April 27 is not far from having seen it all, all known. Unless his journey across France, which should take him from Marseille to Paris between May 8 and July 14, has other unpredictable scenarios in store for him. In the meantime, Libération retraces nine notable moments of its odyssey.

Melbourne 1956: Dummy torch and underpants on fire

Barry Larkin is gold medalist in prank. In 1956, this young medical student managed to fool everyone by wandering the streets of Sydney flanked by a fake torch he had designed. Aware of the imminent passage of the flame near his home, the young Australian had an idea: make a replica using a chair leg repainted silver and a tin can. As fuel? His underwear, soaked in a flammable liquid.

Barry Larkin – 1956.

Made a fake olympic torch from a wooden chair leg painted silver, on top of which was a plum pudding can.

The police actually escorted him all the way to present the fake torch to the Lord Mayor of Sydney, Pat Hills, at Sydney Town Hall. pic.twitter.com/L4tDXg7a1i

— Andrew Rollason (@rollo75) August 4, 2020

The prank works wonderfully: through an improbable combination of circumstances, Barry Larkin, who had planned a fake motorized escort, finds himself surrounded by real police bikers when he starts running, to the cheers of the crowd, all accompanying him to Sydney Town Hall. At the top of the steps, Pat Hills, the mayor, receives the torch from his hands, 15 minutes before the arrival of the real flame and athlete. It is as he begins his speech that the councilor becomes aware of the deception, revealed by one of his advisors.

Montreal 1976: the flame lit… by satellite

To ensure the transfer of the flame between Athens and Ottawa without having to travel the 7,750 km that separate the two cities, and with the obligation that the flame in Canada be the same as in Greece, the organizers have redoubled their imagination . No plane, but rather a satellite signal. A process worthy of the first science fiction films of the time. It is about “a sensor used to detect the ionized particles of the flame (which) transformed them into coded pulses,” the IOC tells us on its site. “These pulses were transmitted by satellite to Ottawa, where they activated a laser beam that recreated the Olympic flame in its original form.” And presto, that’s it.

Seoul 1988: flaming doves, horrified public

The conflagration of the Olympic cauldron has often brought its share of memorable sequences, from the Spanish archer Antonio Rebollo shooting his flaming arrow into the cauldron in Barcelona in 1992 to the boxer Mohamed Ali, suffering from Parkinson’s disease, lighting it despite his tremors in Atlanta four years later. In Seoul, on the other hand, everything did not go as hoped. Traditionally, since the Nazi edition of Berlin 1936 when the idea of ​​a torch relay appeared, the protocol provides for a symbolic release of doves before the arrival of the last relay. The Koreans were no exception to the rule. But when the last torchbearer ignites the large container, he does not see that several birds are flying nearby. Some burn to death under the stunned gaze of the public, on television. The tragedy sparked strong protests. Since then, it has been decided to abandon the release of doves, which no longer exists today.

Sydney 2000: a flame underwater at 2,000 degrees

As if the flame routes were not already ambitious enough, the Australian organizers wanted to make the task a little more complicated. Why not carry the torch as close as possible to the Great Barrier Reef, one of the symbols of the country, that is to say underwater? The feat requires a special flame, capable of burning at 2,000 degrees, fueled by a chemical solution. Its design took nine months of work, for two minutes and 40 seconds of immersion near the Port Douglas reef, in the hands of biologist and diver Craig Duncan.

Beijing 2008, from a Parisian bus to Everest

The events are a great classic of the Olympic relay which offers exceptional media exposure. They were particularly marked in 2008, when defenders of Tibet took advantage of the Beijing Games to protest. Of the 20 countries that the torch crossed, there is no doubt that the Paris trip was the most eventful. Coming down from the Eiffel Tower, the torch had a chaotic journey, battered by happenings of all kinds. From the start of the journey, the elected environmentalist Mireille Ferri, vice-president of the Ile-de-France regional council, equipped with a fire extinguisher, was arrested by the police, who intercepted six other people further away. steeped in the same intentions. In total, the flame had to be extinguished four times at the request of the Chinese authorities. Before being permanently sheltered in a bus.

The same year, a second torch made to withstand extreme temperatures was taken to the top of Mount Everest, climbed on its Tibetan side, with the Tibetan Cering Wangmo as the final torchbearer at the summit. For Beijing, which imposes colonial-style domination in Tibet, the demonstration is more political than sporting. The fact remains that since these serial incidents, to which are added numerous other glitches during its journey between Olympia and Beijing, the flame now only travels through Greece when it is lit for an Olympiad and then in the organizing country.

Sochi 2014: the torch travels into space

It is an understatement to say that the relay for the Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia, started with a false start. On October 7, 2013, a few minutes after the start of the route on Red Square in Moscow, the second torchbearer, Chavarch Karapetian, looked grim. The ex-finswimming champion nevertheless runs at a slow pace through the streets of Moscow. But he sees the flame going out little by little. He is forced to ask a security agent to relight the torch, using a makeshift lighter. During these first days of relay, the torch is turned off and then turned back on several times, fueling the idea of ​​a design flaw in the torch.

The Russians made up for these serial hiccups a month later, by becoming the first to send the torch into space. A four-day journey: the torch took off from the steppes of Kazakhstan on November 7 aboard a Soyuz spacecraft. The device, necessarily special, involved important precautions, even if it meant hindering certain Olympic traditions. For example, the flame was exceptionally extinguished during the six hours of the journey, for safety reasons. She only stayed a few hours aboard the International Space Station (ISS), before returning to dry land on November 11.

Rio 2016: a jaguar dies during the relay

This should have been the highlight of the relay, imagined by the Rio organizers: on the occasion of a stage of the route taking the flame through the Amazon forest, the torch was to be welcomed by Juma, a 17-year-old female jaguar , symbol of an endangered species in the Brazilian jungle.

But after the flame passes, the feline takes advantage of its transfer from one enclosure to another in the army zoo to escape. Caught, he is administered four darts of tranquilizers, which do not take effect quickly enough. The jaguar then threatens to attack a veterinarian. He was eventually shot several times. “We made a mistake in allowing the Olympic torch, a symbol of peace and union between peoples, to be displayed alongside an attached wild animal,” the Rio Olympic organizing committee reacted.

Pyeongchang 2018: two robots walk with the flame

Certainly the most unexpected torchbearer in the history of relays. Hubo, a humanoid developed by the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), became the first flame-bearing robot. From a height of 120 centimeters (for 55 kilos), he traveled without incident a little more than 150 meters in an avenue in Daejeon, a city in central South Korea. The humanoid then passed the torch to its designer, Professor Oh Jun-ho. Shortly after, the flame passed into the hands of another robot, FX-2, a prototype this time controlled by a human driver.

Beijing 2022: snowstorm and denials

Even when we think that all the pitfalls along the way have been avoided and that the flame has arrived safely, mishaps can still occur. In 2022, during the Beijing Winter Olympics, an intense snowstorm completely extinguished the flame that was shining in the basin installed at the top of the “Bird’s Nest”, the stadium of the 2008 Summer Games, a week before the closing ceremony where we traditionally extinguish. In any case, this is what a photo taken by a USA Today reporter shows. Obviously, denials from the Chinese authorities who sent an email to the American daily: “Our Bird’s Nest team declared that the Olympic cauldron and the flame are fine. But it is possible that the snow affected visibility.

Going back a little further in time, another storm got the better of the flame that lit up Montreal during the 1976 Olympics. A stadium technician was dispatched to relight it. The old fashioned way, with a lighter and newspaper.