LONDON 2012: 2012 torch relay a far cry from what happened in 1948

THE neat symmetry of the 8,000 runner, 8,000 mile Olympic torch relay route - unveiled by London 2012 organisers - couldn't more different from the last time the Olympic flame came to a home Games.

FLASHBACK: An Italian captain carries the Olympic flame in Bari, as it travels from Greece to London for the 1948 Olympics (Getty Images)

Back in 1948 the torch relay was still all new. It was only introduced at the previous Olympics, staged 12 years previously in Berlin, and was the brainchild of Games chief organiser and International Olympic Committee member Carl Diem.

London organisers and their IOC counterparts had debated long and hard about retaining the concept - with some expressing doubts about the links between the torch and Nazi propaganda.

However, after finally deciding it was a 'tradition' worth keeping, the relay began on July 17th 1948 - just 12 days before the Games began - when a Greek girl guide kindled the flame from the rays of the sun at the stadium in ancient Olympia.

Because of civil war in Greece, the flame was carried to the port of Katakolon from where the British frigate HMS Whitesand Bay took it across the Adriatic on a 22-hour journey to the Italian port of Bari.

From there the relay moved through to Switzerland, visiting the grave of IOC founder Baron Pierre de Courbetin, Belgium, Luxembourg and France - accompanied all the way by a slow moving Rolls Royce and huge crowds.

Nine days later the torch arrived in Calais, where where it crossed the English Channel on the British destroyer HMS Bicester, with Petty Officer Barnes the first to carry the flame on British soil - jogging down Prince of Wales Pier in Dover, where an estimated crowd of 50,000 were waiting.

The Department of Scientific and Industrial Research in London designed a torch that would burn solid fuel for 20 minutes - enough they estimated for a two mile relay leg.

The torch was then carried through Kent, Surrey, Berkshire and Buckinghamshire with local athletics clubs providing the runners. In total 1,688 people carried the flame 1,963 miles across eight countries and two seas, with 400m athlete John Mark chosen to light the flame at Wembley Stadium.

It was all very 'make do and mend' - a far cry from the mammoth production that lies behind its successor, now just one year and counting away. 

© Sportsbeat 2011

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