ABSTRACT
This article offers a first-hand account of the experiences of an advance manager of the flame relay team of the Athens Olympic Games Organizing Committee (ATHOC). It covers the first and third segments of this relay within Greece and offers a focused description of the standard celebration events that punctuated the passage of the Olympic Flame. Organizational and managerial successes and failures shape the public experience of the Olympic Flame Relay (OFR), and the celebrations join the local and the global into performances of special demographic and symbolic power. In the model adopted for the 2004 OFR, these celebrations offered particular targets of attention for the various stakeholders (ATHOC departments, commercial sponsors, national government cultural officials, local authorities, and police). Power struggles among the various stakeholders are analysed, and the tactics deployed by sponsors to win these struggles are particularly revealed in a case study of the battle over the relay anthem. This article provides a rare published account of the experience of being a flame relay staff organizer under the emergent ‘world’s best practices’ model.
