The Olympic Torch: A Symbol of Imagined Idyllic Past

Marco Senaldi reflects on the contemporary Olympic torch relay, observing a crowd in January awaiting the torch's passage, accompanied by police, Coca-Cola trucks, and techno music. He contrasts this spectacle with the nostalgic image of torchbearers running alone through the Peloponnese. Senaldi notes that the torch relay was invented for the 1936 Berlin Olympics as a propaganda tool by Joseph Goebbels, immortalized by Leni Riefenstahl's film 'Olympia'. He criticizes the choice of torchbearers like Achille Lauro over Olympic champions such as Pietro Gros and Silvio Fauner. Senaldi warns against idealizing the past, noting that tradition is often an invented construct, and questions whether the torch has lost its symbolic power to connect present with antiquity.