What is the Olympic torch? History, symbolism of Olympic flame heading into 2024 Paris Olympics (2024)

There perhaps is not a more symbolic and equally visible item at the Olympic Games than the Olympic torch.

Whether it was Muhammad Ali lighting the Olympic cauldron during the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, the bullseye shot of the 1992 Barcelona Olympics or "walking on air" in the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the Olympic torch is one of the oldest and perhaps most cherished parts of the Olympic Games.

Every four years as the Olympics commence, this shining and uniquely designed piece of metal carries on a tradition like no other, one that's built in rich history — a common theme to the Olympics as a whole. And so, in the lead-up to the 2024 Paris Olympics, curiosity has once again risen on the history of the Olympic torch and its meaning to the Summer Games.

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Here's what you need to know about the Olympic torch leading into the 2024 Paris Olympics:

What is the Olympic torch?

The Olympic torch — specifically, the Olympic flame — is perhaps one of the most sacred traditions of the Olympic Games.

It dates back to the 1936 Berlin Olympics, when Carl Diem — secretary general of the Olympics' organising committee — suggested the idea of a flame being lit in Olympia, the founding site of the Olympics, and transported to the Olympic games.

The Olympic torch is first lit in Olympia, where it then begins the first of two Olympic relays. The former is shorter than the latter, as the torch travels through different territories and towns of Greece by foot to Panathenaic Stadium in Athens across 11 days. Per NBC.com, the 2024 Olympic torch relay from Olympia to Athens had more than 600 people participate in it as torchbearers.

Once the Olympic torch reaches the Panathenaic Stadium, it is carried into the stadium for a ceremony in which it is handed off to the delegation of that year's Olympic Games.

Per the Olympics, it is a "manifestation of the positive values that man has always associated with the symbolism of fire and thus makes the link between the ancient and the modern Games."

Paris 2024 Olympic torch

Each Olympic Games has its own Olympic torch built and designed. Here's a look at the torch for not only the 2024 Paris Olympics, but also previous Olympic Games:

How does the Olympic torch travel to the Olympics?

It's a two-step process.

First, following the lighting of the Olympic flame in Greece, the Olympic torch is brought to the host city of that year's Olympics, either Summer or Winter, by means of transportation. As noted by the Olympics website, the Olympic torch was brought over to France from Greece by sea and transported on the Belem, a 19th-century French three-masted ship.

Then, once the Olympic torch arrives at the host country, the 68-day long Olympic torch relay begins. For the 2024 Paris Olympics, the torch relay began in Marseille, roughly eight hours south of Paris off the shore of the Balearic Sea.

"Throughout the torch relay, the flame announces the Olympic Games and spreads a message of peace and friendship between peoples," as written on the Olympics website.

Olympic torch route 2024

The 68-day Olympic torch route for the 2024 Paris Olympics began on Wednesday, May 8 in Marseille, France. Since then, the Olympic torch has crossed through 64 territories in France, finishing in Paris on Friday, July 26 with the opening ceremony.

By end of the 2024 Olympic torch relay, more than 10,000 torchbearers will have carried the Olympic torch.

Here's a full breakdown of the route of the Olympic torch for the 2024 Paris Olympics:

May 8: Marseille
May 9: Marseille
May 10: Var
May 11: Alpes-de-Haute-Provence
May 12: Bouches-du-Rhône
May 13: Millau-Sète-Montpellier
May 14: Corse
May 15: Pyrénées-Orientales
May 16: Aude
May 17: Haute-Garonne
May 18: Gers
May 19: Hautes-Pyrénées
May 20: Pyrénées-Atlantiques
May 22: Dordogne
May 23: Bordeaux et leLibournais
May 24: Charente
May 25: Vienne
May 27: Indre
May 28: Maine-et-Loire
May 29: Mayenne
May 30: Calvados
June 1: Ille-et-Vilaine
June 2: Deux-Sèvres
June 4: Vendée
June 5: Entre Loire et Atlantique
June 6: Morbihan
June 7: Finistère
June 9: Guyane
June 11: New Caledonia
June 12: La Réunion
June 13: Polynésie française
June 15: Guadeloupe
June 17: Martinique
June 18: Alpes-Maritimes
June 19: Vaucluse
June 20: Drôme
June 21: Vichy
June 22: Loire
June 23: Haute-Savoie
June 25: Doubs
June 26: Collectivité européenne d'Alsace
June 27: Moselle
June 28: Haute-Marne
June 29: Meuse
June 30: Marne
July 2: Nord
July 3: Pas-de-Calasis
July 4: Somme
July 5: Seine-Maritime
July 6: Eure
July 7: C'Chartres
July 8: Loir-et-Cher
July 10: Loiret
July 11: Yonne
July 12: Côte-d'Or
July 13: Aube
July 14: Paris
July 15: Paris
July 17: Aisne
July 18: Oise
July 19: Val-d'Oise
July 20: Seine-et-Marne
July 21: Val-de-Marne
July 22: Essonne
July 23: Yvelines
July 24: Hauts-de-Seine
July 25: Seine-Saint-Denis
July 26: Seine-Saint-Denis and Paris

Has the Olympic torch ever gone out?

Yes, the Olympic torch has gone out on numerous occasions, both on accident and deliberately. However, Olympic organizers safeguard this by keeping multiple copies of the flame, either transported with the relay or maintained in backup locations.

Some notable examples of the flame going out (and being reignited) include the 1976 Montreal Olympics, in which a rainstorm put out the Olympic flame days before the Games opened. An official re-lit the flame with a cigarette lighter, though it was doused and re-lit using a backup of the original flame.

Another example included in the 2014 Sochi Olympics, when the flame was blown out at the Kremlin and later reignited by a security officer's lighter (instead of a backup flame). An example of the flame deliberately being put out was in 2016, when protesters in Rio de Janeiro halted the torch relay and extinquished the flame to protest spending by the city to host the Olympics.