ABSTRACT
This article presents an ethnographically based analysis of Olympic flame relay (OFR) relations among the Hellenic Olympic authorities and the Greek public sphere, three American Olympic organizing committees (Los Angeles 1984, Atlanta 1996, and Salt Lake City 2002), and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) across a 20-year period. It provides the first scholarly analysis of the controversies created by the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee that nearly led to violence at Ancient Olympia during the flame-lighting ceremonies for those games. It explains how the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games managed to overcome this poisonous history through intensive intercultural diplomacy and to secure an Olympic flame for Atlanta. The structures and events analysed herein transformed the OFR in a variety of ways – from the IOC’s attempts to increase its ownership stake in the ritual, to increased corporate sponsor interest in it, to the OFR’s emergence as a potential weapon of international political protest – setting the stage for OFR struggles to come in the early years of this century.
