1996 Summer Olympics torch relay

The 1996 Summer Olympics torch relay was run from April 27 to July 19, leading up to the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta. The route covered 26,875 kilometers (16,699 mi) across the United States and featured a wide variety in the methods of transport used, including bicycles, boats, and trains. The National Pony Express Association participated in the journey, with riders carrying the torch for over 56 continuous hours. The torch was taken on board a replica of a 19th-century packet boat and pulled for 3.2 kilometers (2.0 mi) along the Erie Canal by mule. The torch was also carried into space for the first time, with astronauts taking an unlit torch with them aboard Space Shuttle Columbia as part of STS-78. The relay involved over 12,000 torchbearers, including Muhammad Ali, who was chosen to ignite the Olympic cauldron.
Planning for the torch relay began in 1993. From the beginning of the planning process, the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games (ACOG) worked closely with the Hellenic Olympic Committee (HOC) to organize the handover of the Olympic flame from Greece to the United States. The last such event in the United States, the 1984 Summer Olympics torch relay, had been the subject of controversy: Greek organizers opposed the decision to allow anyone who gave money to the relay's charitable sponsors to carry the torch, and had threatened not to light the flame at Olympia. Additionally, Athens had narrowly lost to Atlanta in its bid for the 1996 Olympics, which many Greek officials believed belonged to them because it marked the 100th anniversary of the first modern Olympics in Athens. Atlanta organizers sought to minimize the impact of these events on Greek–American relations by ensuring that the HOC was always included in their plans. As a result of these discussions, ACOG agreed to "refrain from selling the honor of carrying the Olympic flame, to control and minimize commercialization of the flame or relay imagery, to prohibit any sponsor identification from appearing on the torch or torchbearer uniform, and to protect and acknowledge only one Olympic flame."
Within those constraints, the relay still relied substantially on corporate sponsorship as opposed to public funding. Most of these sponsorships were value-in-kind, with sponsors providing free products and services to the relay organizers rather than paying money to ACOG. The Coca-Cola Company was the presenting sponsor of the relay, and was the only company permitted to create relay-related merchandise and advertising. Coca-Cola was also responsible for selecting 2,500 of the torchbearers. The company gave nomination forms away as part of a promotional deal with 12-packs of their cans, with the entries largely being selected at random. Revenue from the drinks sold from the travelling party were donated to charity.
Transportation services, both for the flame itself and for relay organizers making preparations along the route, were provided by Delta Air Lines, Union Pacific Railroad, and BMW, with Texaco providing fuel for the motor vehicles used in the relay. Communications and technology services were provided by BellSouth, Motorola, and IBM. The torchbearer uniforms were designed and manufactured by the Sara Lee Corporation, which then owned the Hanes and Champion clothing brands. Holiday Inn provided accommodations and meeting spaces for organizers along the route. Troopers of the Georgia State Patrol accompanied the flame along the entire route and guarded it overnight.
In planning the flame's route across the United States, organizers drew on the successful experience of the 1984 relay as well as the 1992 relay in Spain, which had used a wider variety of means of transportation in addition to runners on foot. Combining elements of these two past events would allow for a "celebration of Americana" that would visit significantly more towns and famous locations than the 1984 relay, done solely by runners, in almost exactly the same span of time. For the first time, logistics and planning for the relay was handled by Além International Management, which has been responsible for almost all Olympic torch relays since 1996 and has followed the same model each time. A preliminary route had been decided by early 1994, and organizer Rennie Truitt was tasked with driving its entire length that summer to choose specific roads and landmarks that would be visited.
The route of the torch relay was announced on July 23, 1995, in a televised special on NBC hosted by Bob Costas and ACOG president Billy Payne. It was the longest Olympic torch relay route that had been staged up to that time, covering a distance of 15,000 miles (24,000 km), visiting 42 of the 50 states, and lasting for 84 days. The length was chosen so that the Olympic flame would burn in the United States for a total of 100 days from its arrival in Los Angeles to its extinguishing at the closing ceremonies, representing the Centennial Olympics. The flame was to be carried by 10,000 torchbearers. 5,500 of these torchbearers were chosen by local affiliates of the United Way of America, with another 2,500 chosen through a sweepstakes held by Coca-Cola, and the remaining 2,000 selected by the U.S. Olympic Committee and ACOG.
The torch was designed by Greek-American Peter Mastrogiannis of Malcolm Grear Designers. The Georgia Institute of Technology College of Engineering and Atlanta Gas Light turned the design into a reality. It featured 22 aluminum "reeds", representing the number of times that the Games had been held. A gold-plated band towards the base of the torch features the names of all 20 host cities up to and including Atlanta, while the logo is etched into another band near the top. The handle, made of Georgia hardwood collected by the Georgia Forestry Commission and manufactured by Hillerich & Bradsby, maker of Louisville Slugger bats, is found near the center of the 76 centimeters (30 in) torch. In total it weighed 1,600 grams (56 oz). Torchbearers were allowed to purchase for $275 the torch that they had carried.
During the initial leg of the torch relay in Greece, hasty modifications were made to the design of the torch. It was found that the reeds could melt while the flame was lit, requiring engineers to design a screen which could protect the reeds from the flame without affecting the performance of the torch. The propane used to fuel the torch was replaced with propylene so that it would burn brighter, requiring the thousands of torches already made to be disassembled in order to replace the fuel inside.
In keeping with tradition, the flame was lit at the Temple of Hera in the Greek city of Olympia on March 30, 1996. First Lady Hillary Clinton headed the American delegation at the lighting ceremony. Greek long jumper Kostas Koukodimos was the first torchbearer. Over 800 people carried the torch a distance of 2,141 kilometers (1,330 mi) across Greece, the most extensive in the history of the Games, to mark the 100th anniversary of the 1896 Olympics in Athens. The Greek leg of the relay culminated on April 6, when the torch arrived at Panathenaic Stadium in Athens. The flame was carried through Athens by representatives of every country which had hosted an Olympic Games in the past century.
After burning in Athens for three weeks, HOC president Antonios Tzikas formally handed the flame to ACOG president Billy Payne on April 26. A lantern containing the flame was loaded onto The Centennial Spirit, a specially painted Delta Air Lines McDonnell Douglas MD-11, at Athens' Ellinikon International Airport early on the morning of April 27. The flight from Athens to Los Angeles International Airport lasted 14 hours, departing Athens at 4 a.m. local time and arriving in Los Angeles by 9 a.m. local time.
From the airport, the flame was carried in a helicopter to Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, site of the 1984 Olympic opening and closing ceremonies, for a nationally televised ceremony to mark the beginning of the relay. ACOG attempted to arrange for the nude statues in front of the Coliseum to be covered during the event, but the statues ultimately remained uncovered. Billy Payne lit the first torch from the lantern before passing it to Rafer Johnson, who had lit the cauldron in 1984, to run the first leg. Johnson passed the flame to Gina Hemphill Tillman, granddaughter of Jesse Owens, who had been the first torchbearer on the 1984 relay. Tillman passed it on to swimmer Janet Evans.
Leaving the Coliseum, the torch was carried through Los Angeles to Santa Monica Pier, then along the Pacific coast. At one point in Los Angeles, the torch was carried by Robert Zemeckis. The first day of the relay continued until 4:59 a.m., when the run stopped for an hour in Huntington Beach before continuing on its way to San Diego. Notable torchbearers in San Diego County included Wheel of Fortune hosts Pat Sajak and Vanna White in Oceanside and 1936 Olympic athlete Kenny Griffin in Carlsbad.
After roughly following the Mexican border to Yuma, Arizona, the torch made its first rail journey to Phoenix. Security was high, as an act of sabotage along the same tracks six months earlier had caused the deadly 1995 Palo Verde derailment. In Kingman, Arizona, the route briefly followed the famous Route 66, before exiting the state at the Hoover Dam. It was carried across the rim of the dam by Martha Watson. That morning, to mark the torch's passage, the world's largest U.S. flag was unfurled for the first time across the dam's wall, but it had to be taken down due to high winds before the torch arrived.
The relay proceeded into Las Vegas, Nevada, where it was announced that the casinos would briefly dim their lights to create a more dramatic entrance for the torch, but did not ultimately do so. From Las Vegas, the flame was again loaded onto a special Union Pacific train which brought it across California, with occasional stops to run through larger cities, until it reached San Jose. The torch was carried on a cable car in San Francisco and was run across the Golden Gate Bridge before dawn the next morning. After running to Sacramento, the torch made another rail journey to Eugene, Oregon. The route continued northward, on foot and by bicycle, through Portland and as far north as Seattle, Washington, where the torch crossed Puget Sound on the Seattle–Bremerton ferry, the only ferry ride along the cross-country route. Cyclist Harley Sheffield dropped and broke the torch while riding with it across the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, an incident which received so much publicity that Sheffield was featured as a guest on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Dana Lough, a wheelchair-using torchbearer in Seattle, sustained a serious head injury when her chair was improperly secured on a shuttle bus transporting runners after the relay.
From Seattle, the flame traveled to the southeast by train. ACOG president Billy Payne joined the railway journey in Yakima, Washington. The torch then passed through Idaho on its way to Salt Lake City, Utah, which was awarded the 2002 Winter Olympics shortly before the route was announced. Bart Conner and Nadia Comăneci, Olympic gymnasts who had recently married, carried the torch in Salt Lake City. After crossing Wyoming, the relay visited Denver, Colorado and Colorado Springs, home of the United States Olympic Committee headquarters and the U.S. Olympic Training Center.
At Julesburg, the torch was picked up by riders of the National Pony Express Association, who carried it (along with a bag of commemorative letters addressed to patients at a children's hospital) on horseback to St. Joseph, Missouri. Like the original Pony Express, the riders traveled non-stop for 58 hours straight, from 9 p.m. on May 13 to 7 a.m. on May 16. While relay organizers had chosen this particular segment of the historic Pony Express route because it mostly ran alongside modern roads which could accommodate the caravan of support vehicles, road conditions forced them to separate from the torch-bearing riders for some stretches. At Rock Creek Station near Endicott, a horse was spooked and threw its rider, causing another torch to be broken.
The torch traveled southward from St. Joseph into Kansas City, Missouri, then across Kansas and Oklahoma. The relay route, as initially announced, included a stop in Yale, Oklahoma, which organizers described as the "birthplace" of Jim Thorpe. Thorpe was actually born in Pottawatomie County, Oklahoma, near the town of Prague, and about 50 miles away from Yale, where Thorpe lived briefly as an adult. Residents of Prague protested the decision and asked for the torch to be rerouted to their town. The relay organizers resisted these requests at first, saying that the route had already been carefully planned and could not be significantly altered, but ultimately agreed to visit both Yale and Prague.
In Oklahoma City, the torch was carried by first responders to the Oklahoma City bombing a year earlier. Between Waco and Bryan, Texas, it was flown on a 1943 Stearman biplane.
In Houston, the route met the Gulf Coast and continued eastward. A 310,000 US gallons (1,200,000 L; 260,000 imp gal) gasoline spillage in Gramercy, Louisiana, forced the relay to skip the town and take an unexpected 15-mile (24 km) detour along Interstate 10. The torch rode on the historic St. Charles Streetcar in New Orleans. Sister Helen Prejean ran with the torch in New Orleans.
From New Orleans, the torch was transported mostly by rail through Mississippi and Arkansas, passing through Memphis and roughly following the Mississippi River northward. Starting from the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, the torch was intended to board the American Queen, the recently-built river steamboat which was the largest of its kind in history, to be transported up the Mississippi to Hannibal, Missouri, best known as the boyhood home of Mark Twain. However, due to flooding on the river that prevented the American Queen from reaching St. Louis for the journey, an alternative route had to be devised that would still allow the torch and hundreds of honored guests to spend a day on the river. As a result, after reaching St. Louis, the torch was driven on a bus back down to Paducah, Kentucky, then rode on the American Queen from Paducah to Cairo, Illinois, before being bussed again to Hannibal.
The relay crossed Iowa and reached as far north as Minneapolis in its zig-zagging route, before making another rail journey southeastward across Wisconsin to Chicago, where it was estimated that over 500,000 spectators lined the streets. The torch proceeded through Indianapolis, Indiana and Louisville, Kentucky, where University of Kentucky basketball coach Rick Pitino carried it across the George Rogers Clark Memorial Bridge. Pitino's appearance was delayed due to a bomb threat made against the event, thought to have been made by a person angered by Pitino's recent decision to stay with the team rather than accept an offer to coach the New Jersey Nets.
A stop in Wilmington, Ohio marked the official halfway point of the torch's 84-day journey. Wendy's founder Dave Thomas carried the torch in the Columbus area. The American Republic, an iron ore-carrying lake freighter, ferried the flame from Philip A. Hart Plaza in Detroit, down the Detroit River and across Lake Erie to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland.
The torch's planned route took it briefly through Cattaraugus Reservation land in the hamlet of Irving, New York. However, the torch's passage was controversial among members of the Seneca Nation of New York, as the tribe had not been consulted about the event, and as some were displeased by the Olympics' association with the Atlanta Braves and their "tomahawk chop" ritual. Dennis Bowen, the president of the Seneca Nation, said that when the torch runner entered the reservation, members of the tribe would throw a bucket of water on it to douse the flame, then relight the torch with a flame of their own, to draw attention to the plight of Indigenous peoples around the world. The relay organizers defused the controversy by having two young Senecas carry the torch across their land.
A mule-drawn packet boat was used to carry the torch down a short segment of the Erie Canal in Camillus, New York. After passing through Vermont and New Hampshire, the relay followed the course of the Boston Marathon in eastern Massachusetts, and the torch was carried along that stretch by experienced marathoners that included Johnny Kelley, Bill Rodgers, and Bobbi Gibb (the first woman to run the Boston Marathon, without permission, in 1966). On the steps of the Massachusetts State House, the flame was passed to Nancy Kerrigan.
In New York City, the torch was carried by Katie Couric in a live segment on The Today Show, then placed on a Circle Line ferry which passed by the Statue of Liberty on its way to Jersey City, New Jersey. On its arrival in Philadelphia, a torchbearer climbed the Rocky Steps leading to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. In Washington, D.C., the torch was met on the steps of the U.S. Capitol by Georgia's congressional delegation, including Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. After Gallaudet University president I. King Jordan handed the torch to President Bill Clinton, the flame rested for the night at the White House. It was intended to burn in a cauldron on the White House lawn overnight, but due to a thunderstorm, it was kept in a lantern on the South Portico instead. The next morning, Clinton handed the torch to Olympic basketball player Carla McGhee. Leaving Washington, D.C., for Virginia, the torch was carried across the grounds of Mount Vernon by descendants of George Washington and of a person who had been enslaved at the plantation.
After crossing Virginia and North Carolina, the torch was hidden from view in the suburbs of Greenville, South Carolina after the county passed a controversial resolution decrying homosexuality (see § Anti-gay resolutions controversy). Olympic basketball player and coach Pat Summitt brought the flame into World's Fair Park in Knoxville, Tennessee. Country singer Billy Ray Cyrus carried the torch in Hermitage. In Oakville, Alabama, the hometown of Jesse Owens, the passage of the torch coincided with the unveiling of Jesse Owens Memorial Park. Former Atlanta mayor Andrew Young carried the torch across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama; Young had been among the organizers working in Selma when Bloody Sunday occurred at the bridge in 1965. The relay route roughly followed that of the subsequent Selma to Montgomery marches on its way to Alabama's state capital.
The Peregrine, a racing sailboat, carried the torch across Tampa Bay from Tampa to St. Petersburg. The next day, on the Fourth of July, the flame was flown in a 1944 Short Sunderland flying boat seaplane from Sarasota to the former seaplane terminal that had since become Miami City Hall. Dan Marino carried the torch in Fort Lauderdale. An unlit torch was carried aboard Space Shuttle Columbia during the STS-78 mission, which landed at Kennedy Space Center a few hours before the relay visited the site on its way to Orlando.
In Jacksonville, the torch boarded a Coast Guard Cutter which ferried it to a Coast Guard station near Tybee Island, Georgia. A helicopter carried it from there to Fort Pulaski National Monument, where it was placed on a replica of the schooner America and sailed into the city of Savannah. A smaller vessel captained by Olympic sailor Hal Haenel brought it to the Waving Girl Landing along Savannah's River Street, handing the torch to his sailing partner Mark Reynolds. The ceremony marking the torch's entrance into the host state of Georgia was headlined by Billy Payne and Georgia governor Zell Miller. The relay then followed a circuitous route within Georgia, leaving the state only once to briefly visit the Ocoee Whitewater Center in Tennessee. The torch spent more time in Georgia than any other state, traveling nearly 24 hours per day, and visited 90 of its 159 counties.
Former U.S. president Jimmy Carter was originally slated to carry the torch in his hometown of Plains, Georgia on July 12, but his inclusion was criticized by some Olympic advocates, given that Carter had led the 1980 Summer Olympics boycott against the Soviet Union while he was president. However, Carter later canceled his participation, choosing to accept an award from Lions Clubs International in Montreal that day instead. Billy Payne carried the torch at his alma mater, the University of Georgia in Athens. The torch visited the site of New Echota, the historic capital of the Cherokee Nation before its forced removal from Georgia. A planned visit to the Olympic Village on the Georgia Tech campus on the morning of the opening ceremony was canceled to avoid disrupting preparations for the Games themselves, and because President Clinton was visiting the village on that same day.
In August 1993, the County Commission of Cobb County, Georgia approved a resolution which condemned "the gay lifestyle" and stated that it was incompatible with the "community standards" and "family values" of the county. In response to the resolution, protestors called for Olympic organizers to move the volleyball preliminaries which had been scheduled to take place at the Cobb Galleria Centre in Cobb County to another venue elsewhere. ACOG agreed to move the events to Athens. When the torch relay route was later announced, it avoided Cobb County entirely, thus excluding the northwestern suburbs of Atlanta, including Marietta and Mableton, from the event. Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, Cobb County's congressional representative, said of the decision that "the homosexual demonstrators blackmailed the Olympic committee".
The County Council of Greenville County, South Carolina passed a similar resolution on May 21, 1996, describing advocacy for gay rights as "assaults on those community standards which further the protection of the public's safety, health and welfare" and homosexuality as being "incompatible with the standards to which this community subscribes". At the time the resolution was passed, the torch relay was already underway and was scheduled for a major celebration and overnight stop in Greenville on June 25 and 26. As a result, the relay through Greenville County was altered. Upon reaching the Greenville County line, the flame was returned to its lantern and driven in the back of a van to the Greenville city limits, and it could not be seen by those who gathered along the route. Inside the city of Greenville, the relay proceeded on foot as normal, although the flame's planned overnight stay at a Holiday Inn outside the city limits was canceled. The next day, upon leaving Greenville city limits, the flame was concealed again until it reached the North Carolina state line.
The relay culminated in the 1996 Summer Olympics opening ceremony, at midnight on July 19–20, 1996 in Atlanta's Centennial Olympic Stadium. Four-time gold medal-winning discus thrower Al Oerter carried the torch to the stadium, passing it to Evander Holyfield. Holyfield was then joined by Voula Patoulidou and the pair passed the flame to American swimmer Janet Evans, the penultimate torchbearer, who carried it around a lap of the track and up a long ramp leading towards the northern end of the stadium.
The identity of the final torchbearer had been kept secret and was only revealed when Muhammad Ali appeared at the top of the ramp. Ali, who had won boxing gold as an 18-year-old at the 1960 Games in Rome and later developed Parkinson's disease, lit a mechanical torch which then travelled along a wire, lighting the cauldron at the top of a 116-foot (35 m) tower. His appearance has been referred to as being one of the most inspiring, poignant, and emotional moments in Olympic history.
In the table and inset maps below, only those locations where the torch was carried on foot, or otherwise stopped for a celebration, are shown. The final major stop on each day of the relay is labeled with the name of the city and indicated by a larger marker; otherwise, only major cities are labeled. All locations are confirmed by the relay's official website as archived in December 1996, unless otherwise specified.