The Day the Olympic Eternal Flame Died

The good people of Dorion were out in force in the square waiting for the greatest moment in their village's history since their very own son, Theodore Koloktronis, led Greece into independence from the Turks nearly two hundred years' ago. Unbeknown to them, as they stood waving Greek flags and chattered excitedly to each other in anticipation, great consternation was taking place just a kilometre up the road. Disaster had struck, the Olympic flame had just been extinguished, and there was utter uproar. Someone with a pair of binoculars would have seen a calvacade of fifteen cars, two escort runners, a couple of lorries, a dozen motor cyclists acting as police bodyguards, scores of television camera crews and even a helicopter a few hundred feet above, suddenly come to a sudden and rather frantic halt.
 
 A man started shouting, then everyone followed suit. Arms began to wave, men ran about and, seemingly, everyone was panicking as only the Greeks can do. There, in the midst of all this, standing in the very middle of what is normally a busy road, stood a runner, adorned in the blue and white of the Athens Olympic Torch Relay colours, being stared at in an accusing manner. That runner was me.
 
 A day earlier the Olympic torch had been lit using a curved mirror and the sun during a moving and remarkably atmospheric ceremony at the ancient site of Olympia. It is here that the first games were held back in 776 BC, and the remains of the stadium and the surrounding bowl are clear for all to see nearly three thousand years' on. Maidens in traditional robes danced, music from the ancient period played, the Prime Minister and other leading officials from Government and the International Olympic Committee looked on, and a nation wept with pride and gratitude. The Olympics, for the first time since 1896, had come home.

  Just over 24 hours later, after the Olympic flame had begun its journey, and over an hour's drive from Olympia, I became the first British person, indeed the first non-Greek, to receive the torch and run. Up until this moment everything had gone smoothly for the Greeks and the official start of the countdown to the Olympic Games in August. The flame had blazed proudly and constantly without a hitch as ecstatic villagers came to greet it meandering its way slowly and symbolically on the 365 kilometre journey to Athens. Then, unbelievably, it all started to go wrong. Very wrong. And all in my right hand, too. The Torch Relay sponsors, Samsung, had approached me a month earlier. I had been chosen, so they explained, because of my sporting endeavours. I asked them to run that by me again. It is true that I have participated in a good number of sporting events over the past few years, from fighting world boxing champion Roy Jones jr, to playing football for Everton, partnering Steve Redgrave at Henley to playing rugby league for Wigan, becoming a professional wrestler, a sprinter, a motor racing driver, and so on and so on. So yes, it can be argued that I have been an all-round sportsman featuring at the highest level. But it can also be said that I am to sport what Les Dawson was to playing the piano, or Ernie Wise was to writing plays.
 
 Still, never one to shirk a challenge, I accepted Samsung's offer and viewed it as it was: an unbelievable honour to play a role in a moment of sporting history at the home of the Olympic Games. Besides, I was running the London Marathon next month and saw this as an amazing part of my training schedule. As the big day drew closer, and as I pounded my way across the London pavestones in the March showers, so I dreamt of following in the footsteps of some of the greatest names in sport, from the Finn, Paavo Nurmi in 1952, to Muhammad Ali at the 1996 Atlanta Games, and Australian Cathy Freeman four years' ago in Sydney. Reports from Greece in recent weeks had outlined how far behind they were in constructing vital facilities for the Games, notably the Olympic Stadium roof, and the omens for a smoothly-organised Games appeared far from positive. Yet you would not find any negativity here at all. Just celebration and wonderment that, finally, the Olympics will happen where it all begun. If you arrived in Olympia with even a shred of cynicism, it would soon be removed, not only by the incredible history of the surrounding environment, but by the mood of the people. To be a torch-bearer, it became apparent, is to receive the greatest honour. My hand was shaken, my back was slapped, and everyone wanted to wish me good luck. 
  On day two of the relay - my big day - I was driven forty miles north of Olympia to just outside Dorion and handed a torch. Every runner participating in the relay - and there will be 7,000 Greeks, plus another 4,000 from around the world as the flame reaches five continents - will have a torch to carry the flame for 500 metres before then handing it on to the next torch-bearer.
 
 Made of metal and olive tree wood, the torch is meant to resemble an olive leaf, weighs only 700 grammes and stands just 68 centimetres tall, making it relatively comfortable to thrust high above your head and away from your body as you run. The gas-fuelled flame, so I was guaranteed, would make it impossible for the torch to be extinguished by a gust of wind or a relay runner's sneeze. Instead it was supposed to shoot upwards from the mouth of the torch, away from your right hand which should be clasping its cooler base. Imprinted on to the metal are the five Olympic rings after the five main continents, in the Olympic colours of blue, yellow, black, green and red, while the symbol of the torch is meant to reflect purity and the endeavour for perfection.
 
 I was told by an official to stand in the middle of the road and wait to be greeted by my predecessor on the relay, switch my gas on using a dial at the base of the torch thirty seconds before her arrival, touch torches in order to swap the Olympic flame over to mine, and then turn and run in a straight line along the road with the torch thrust out away from me and high so that all could clearly see the flickering flame of Greek history.[ Then the script began to change. The relay runner before me had injured herself, a situation that required me to move towards her and run 750 metres instead of the 500 metres I was supposed to run.  I had no problem with this. Far from it. It meant I had the honour of transporting the flame a further 250 metres. As this delayed the torch relay's schedule, however, I was asked to make up the time by running quicker than everyone else. The police bodyguards on their motor cycles revved their engines, accelerated up to me, and told me to speed up. 
 
 I had around a minute to enjoy this one-off experience. There I was, albeit running a little more rapidly than I had planned, with the Olympic flame burning brightly above me. I could almost hear the theme tune to "Chariots of Fire." Almost. Instead this was drowned by a man's shouts. I turned round to see what all the growing commotion was and then looked up. The flame had gone. It was no more. It was a dead flame. The Olympic torch, after over a day of relay running, had just been extinguished. A bodyguard pulled up his helmet visor and said to me: "What have you done?" I started to tell him that all I had been doing was bloody running with the thing when two other men ran up to me with a gas-lit lamp and thrust the tip of the torch towards it.
 
 
 As this happened I surveyed the extraordinary scene behind me. For almost as far as the eye could see a motor calvacade had ground to a halt and waited, along with the bemused runner, to see what happened next. The television cameras kept on rolling from the van in front of me, although you can bet these pictures will not be beamed around the world. And everyone else gesticulated in an over-dramatic fashion. A relieved cheer went up. The flame had been re-lit. "Now you must run even quicker," an official told me, making me feel as if this was my fault. I turned on my heels and changed from a fast jog to an all-out canter. My escort runner followed suit, then the absurdly long queue of cars and bikes. The helicopter above stopped hovering and started to move towards the village.
 
 Then another shout, this time louder and higher-toned, after just thirty seconds more running. I looked up. The flame had disappeared again. The same official jumped out of his car and looked as if he was about to have a cardiac arrest. "I didn't do anything," I protested, before any could start making accusations. The gas lamp did the trick again. "Now you must run like the wind," advised the official. 
 
 So off I went, a little more like a stiff breeze, but sprinting, nonetheless. Another thirty seconds passed. This time I head a multitude of shouts screech: "Stop!" the flame had gone out for a third time. A new torch was handed to me, the flame re-lit, and I ran off before I could even be told to resemble a hurricane. 
 
 Around the corner stood the woman who would receive the flame and take it into Dorio. Neither she, nor the happy villagers, had any notion of the calamities that had befallen the first British torch relay runner. She ran on to the village, while I gathered my breath and watched a horde of cursing officials sweep by mopping their brows and gazing upwards to the heavens.
 
 The torch would make its way to Australia, and onto London before returning to Greece in time for the opening ceremony of the Athens Olympic Games, where the greatest sporting spectacle in the world will begin. That's would be on Friday 13th of August, by the way.  Despite this, the Greeks told me later that I had been blessed. "Three times," another official kept repeating to me. "The flame goes out three times, and only in your hands. You are lucky. You must do the Lotto." It may have been a somewhat fraught way to make your mark on the 2004 Olympics, but it is still one that has left me as proud as I have ever felt in my life to carry the Olympic flame. In fact, I felt so good afterwards that I took up the offical's advice and played the Lotto. I lost.