Light the Torch – Beijing Olympics and Other Olympic News

Who was the first Olympic Torch bearer?

by Sasha Manuel on August 31st, 2007

The Flame is then transmitted to the Torch of the first runner, and the journey of the Torch Relay begins –its magic still touching people today.

Torch Relay is a non-competitive replication of the ancient Flame relay and a symbolic celebration of the Olympic Games. In a prophetic speech at the end of the Stockholm Games, on June 27, 1912, Baron Pierre de Coubertin said:

“And now… great people have received the Torch… and have thereby undertaken to preserve and… quicken its precious Flame.

Lest our youth temporarily… let the Olympic Torch fall from their hands… other young people on the other side of the world are prepared to pick it up again.”

The Torch Relay, as the opening of the Olympic celebration, was revived in the Berlin Olympiad in 1936 and since then the Torch Relay has preceded every Olympic Summer Games. Starting from Olympia and carried by the first runner, the young athlete Konstantinos Kondylis, the Flame traveled for the first time hand to hand until it reached the Berlin Olympic Stadium. Since, the Flame’s magic has marked and has been identified with the beginning of the Games.

Yes. The answer is Konstantinos Kondylis during the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin when the whole Olympic Torch Relay was first instituted.

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POSTED IN: Olympians, Olympic Torch, Trivia